Trust is a Four Letter Word

It's been a hot minute since I heard from Askfriend, and this time the question came from someone new. The question is:

It is often and wisely said that trust should be something that's earned, not given. Well, when approaching relationships with tentative trust.. how should we give our confidence to others, and how do we know who deserves more/ who deserves less? And moreover, if our trust has been broken by those closest to us and those that God commands us to love, how can we allow for trust to be restored? And if offenses repeat... what are we supposed to do?

I'm going to break these down into four separate questions with responses for each, but the first thing I want to say is that anything I write here is based out of my own experience and reading that I have done. I'm not going to go digging for a lot of citations or reference other works. So, take a flawed person's experience with a grain of salt.

First, you have to define trust. Which is hard. It covers a lot of sub-concepts and I haven't fully fleshed it out myself yet. I, personally, have no trouble talking to people about events in my life or even highly personal details. I can even talk to most people I've just met about a difficult day I'm having if I gage their reaction to be fairly receptive.

On the other hand, if I do not like what another person is doing, it takes a lot of trust for me to bring that to them directly and say, "Hey, I don't like that. Can you please stop?" because that has often exploded on me. I'd much rather Manage The Situation so that the thing stops happening than confront the person to their face.

I used to joke that making friends with people was like handing them a whole bunch of knives, then turning your back and begging them not to stab you. To some extent, I still believe that. It's just that more people than I thought consciously choose to set aside the knives.

So, for me, trust is partly about the question, "Can I bring my disagreement and disagreeable requests to you for, at minimum, adult negotiation?"

Another area where I struggle with trust is speaking simply. I have had too many experiences where my words were taken violently out of context, hurling the conversation into overdrive and leaving me hurt and bewildered about how we even got here. In reaction, I began to pile on disclaimers and extra sentences, trying to get ahead of problems by telling the other person all the ways that I didn't mean for what I just said to be understood. I'd spend twice as much time and verbiage just trying to make sure my intentions were clear.

So then, for me, trust is also partly about the question, "Can I trust you to take the best interpretation of what I say, and--if you are confused by what I say--to ask me for clarification?"

Because of my fear, I don't trust most people to do well with either issue. And when I say that, what I mean is that I am almost positive that in either situation they will verbally ravage me, convince me that I am the problem, and end the relationship. Or they may not end the relationship, they may just rinse and repeat the initial part.

These are my particular issues with trust. Yours may be different, so you may have to derive the principle from what I'm working through below. That being said,

How should we give our confidence to others?

In one sense, I approach everyone with 100% trust. I will talk to you--you stranger--about nearly any topic that you choose to bring up. The more personal, the better! I really don't do small talk though, give me something important to pick through!

Oh, oh, wait, you want to talk about politics? Or a controversial topic? Well... maybe my trust in a stranger drops to about 50%. Due to the intensity of the past decade--at least in the US--I can't go into a conversation like that without a truckload of wariness. There's a lot of verbal feeling-things-out, seeing if the other person is on the same page as me or, at least, receptive to genuine dialogue even if we don't agree. Trust level may rise or fall as I sense either where you stand or whether you have enough good faith in your dialogue to sustain a respectful debate.

Oh, you just did something I... I don't... I'm not really okay with what you said right there. A very strange thing happens in this moment, where I continue to trust you in aspects of the conversation, but I can't believe you will be anything other than livid, crushed, or dismissive of me if I bring up what bothers me. Or, worse, you'll think I'm a bad person. 0% trust that you'll act like a rational human being, maybe 90% trust in continuing whatever conversation we're having as long as I don't bring up that thing that bothered me.

But then, if I go home and think about that conversation, I wonder if I want you in my life. I wonder if we can really share things if I can't even bring up these problems to you. I end up assigning you to an outer ring of acquaintances, as opposed to any inner ring, without ever bringing up the thing that bothered me because I'm too terrified of the simulation in my own head.

This is not a healthy scenario.

So here's the thing, I also believe that approaching any stranger with complete trust is unhealthy. It's a lot easier in some respects, because they haven't had a chance to hurt me and unless I hang around with them more they are unlikely to get the chance to in the future. However, that doesn't mean that placing complete trust in them is wise.

The thing is, when approaching a stranger, you have to approach them with your eyes open. There is a difference between extending your hand to a stranger with your eyes metaphorically shut and saying, "I trust you because no harm has happened yet," and extending your hand to a stranger with your eyes open and saying, "I know you could really hurt me, but I choose to initiate contact with you in the hopes that you won't." The latter acknowledges the danger, yet calls forth the best in that other person to respond to you.

How do we know who deserves more/who deserves less trust?

The sad truth is, there are many people simply out to scam you. Let's call that the low-hanging fruit of this topic, because I think we can all agree that if someone emails you from overseas about how they just need a $1000 wire transfer and they will pay you back triple, you shouldn't even respond to them (unless you are willing to waste their time like this absolute platinum record of a human being, James Veitch).

Who deserves more trust than a scammer? Most people.

Okay, maybe not politicians. But, most normal people.

Let's say you've opened your heart to a stranger, and they are now an acquaintance. At this point in time, start to watch them when you're hanging out. See how they react to situations and people around them. What bothers them. What sets them off. Whether there's patience and grace in them. Maybe, after a while, you float a couple of scenarios by them. Tell them a few trust-related stories of yours and ask how they would respond to these situations or what they think of them.

There is no step-by-step guide-book for how to do this. A lot of it will be feeling things out and intuition, but if you keep your eyes open and watch the people around you, they will tell you about themselves and how trustworthy they are. And based on what you see in them, you then decide how close to allow them to your heart.

From there, keep watching and evaluating people.

A note of warning. Testing people a little to figure out their intentions, trustworthiness, and commitment to the relationship is generally not a bad thing. However, it turns bad fast if you continue to test a person with no end in sight--a sign you need to address your trust issues within yourself--or if your tests cause the other person significant emotional distress. Don't do it. One of you will inevitably crumble. And never, ever introduce a lie into this process, because then you are the untrustworthy one.

If our trust has been broken by those closest to us and those that God commands us to love, how can we allow for trust to be restored?

This is hard, and I have not yet sorted this all out. Let's go from worst-case to best-case.

• No-Contact. A return to trust is not always possible. Sometimes the trust has been broken so badly that you need to set firm boundaries about how the other person is not allowed to contact you, you walk away, and you harshly enforce the boundary you set. In this situation, if you are a Christian, you are not excused from forgiving the other person. It is as much for your own well-being as the other person's that you find some way to release them from your bitterness and judgment, even if you never see their face again. It cannot be said enough, forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation and they should not be treated as the same thing. Forgiveness is mandatory for Christians. Reconciliation is encouraged, but not mandatory. You cannot reconcile with someone who refuses to change destructive behavior. Depending on the damage done, even if the other person claims to have changed, it may be more detrimental to you to stick around and evaluate the situation for another round, and you are not obligated to do so. If things have gotten to this sort of really bad stage, your responsibility is to take care of your own heart and let the other person face the consequences of their decisions. This is trust reduced to 0%.
• Heavy Boundaries. This is something I have never managed. As best I can articulate, this idea involves continuing in relationship with a person who refuses to change. If you cannot break contact for some reason, you need to set in place strict boundaries and keep them at arm's length from your heart at all times. Better yet, as Krav Maga instructors insist, TWO arm's lengths. And enforce all boundaries religiously. Do whatever business you must with them, but do not ever let them any closer. This is trust reduced to whatever fragmentary percentage allows you to conduct bare bones business with the person.
• Restoring Trust. The person is trying to change. They show tangible effort and results of that effort. You don't restore all trust immediately, but you see things are truly different. It is still your decision whether to continue in relationship with the person, but if you do, begin to offer concrete moments of trust and see how they handle it (see examples of concrete trust below). Have grace if they struggle and fail, but you are not required to extend trust any further than you are comfortable with. If the person truly wants to repair trust with you, they will keep trying, even if it takes a very long time. There is no set trust level for this process, it will fluctuate.

Examples of Concrete Trust

Trust is an abstract idea, and when most people talk about trying to trust again, I imagine they are trying to feel a feeling. Trust, as far as I can tell, is more about action than feeling. In fact, repeated action proven correct will eventually prompt the feeling. Below are three examples of concrete ways I have chosen to work on my particular trust issues.

• Speak simply. Lately I have begun trying to pare down the disclaimers and explanations in my emails. I tell myself, "The person at the other end of this conversation is a rational adult and will treat me as such." I don't FEEL like that's true because I'm scared, but eventually I pry my fingers off the keyboard and force myself to push the "send" button without the triple-layer padding of words to protect me. Doing this repeatedly and receiving understanding and continued communication back is slowly restoring this general-level trust in people.
• Stop asking for reassurance. I thought very little of myself for most of my life. When I was engaged to Sergey, I couldn't believe someone like him saw anything worthwhile in me. I asked him fairly frequently, "Do you love me? Really?" But after a while, I realized what I was doing. In my quest for constant reassurance, I was telling him that I didn't trust him to keep loving me. So, I made a conscious decision to stop asking, even though it made me anxious. Lo and behold, he continued to demonstrate daily that he did, in fact, love me, even when he didn't say the words aloud. There are many silent ways to say "I love you," and it was not long before those fears were laid to rest and my trust was strengthened.
• Bring my issues to the person I'm upset with. This one is more complicated, because my fears are proven correct about half the time. To this day, half the time, when I bring something to a person I care about and say, "This bothers me," the response I receive is an end to the relationship. And every time that happens I say, "I knew it. I was right. This is always how it is." But that isn't always how it is. Many other times, the person and I will work through the issue together, sharing our hearts and negotiating a solution until we both are satisfied. In those situations, I always feel closer with that person and my trust in them is drastically strengthened. In this case, I have to accept that I cannot control how people will respond to me, and that I have to step forward with what bothers me even though they may leave me if I open my mouth. It is a painful lesson that I am still absorbing, but I can tell I'm closer to a healthy viewpoint about this than I've ever been in my life.

If offenses repeat, what are we supposed to do?

Log the incidents and address the person. Jordan Peterson says that once is an accident, twice is a fluke, and three times is a pattern. If you have three instances to bring to the person and they still don't see the problem or refuse to change, then it is not unreasonable to withdraw your trust from this person.

Remember. As obvious as the trust-breaking incident seems to you, as blindingly, bloody, unconscionably self-evident as you think it is--short of someone breaking strict boundaries that you'd already set out for them in advance--it really isn't obvious to the other person.

It can't be said enough: They. Are. Not. You. They do not have your experiences, your triggers, and your hang-ups. It may be more than enough to bring the issue to their attention and explain why this is a problem for you. Don't make the mistake of lashing out and reducing trust when the other person hasn't been warned. You may deprive yourself of many wonderful relationships this way.

An anomaly in the trust process

The overlap issue. Sometimes you will be flayed soul-deep by someone in your life in ways that takes years to repair. Any event that shakes core pillars of who you are in that manner is encoded as a type of trauma. When you have encountered trauma, your body and brain set an awful lot of pattern-recognition software to high-alert so that kind of devastation can never happen again.

The problem is, the pattern-match set to high-alert will trigger on people who don't deserve it. It may be that the new person has a similar facial structure as the person who hurt you. Perhaps they share the same political beliefs. Maybe they even have similar personality traits or echoes of the same old wounds the last person talked about.

These things will make you want to run screaming from the room. I know. It still happens to me.

This goes back to what I briefly mentioned earlier, that sometimes you have to deal with your trust issues within yourself. This is not something your new friend can resolve for you by making promises. It is very unfair that you were hurt the way you were and that you have to live with the damage, but it would be another level of unfairness to foist the fallout of that damage on every person who vaguely resembles the one that hurt you.

In this case, it is very useful to have a network of people that you trust to be your eyes and ears. Talk to them about what you see. If possible, introduce them to the new friend. Ask them to help you assess if what you're seeing is a correct pattern-match highlighting someone to avoid, or if it's just your old hurts screaming in fear. In this way, you can keep from perpetuating your own old wounds out further, and perhaps they will even heal.

If you encounter a new friend who overlaps heavily on the surface with someone who hurt you, but this person does not react the same way or break trust at all, then a truly beautiful thing will begin to happen: those wounds begin to heal. The pattern-matching system tones itself down, correcting the hair-trigger levels down to something approximating normal.

Don't run screaming if someone superficially appears to be similar to someone who hurt you. If they behave differently, they may be key to your healing.

Some good reading on this general topic are Boundaries and also Safe People, both by Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend.

I wish you the best in your journey to figure out trust. Peace and wholeness to you.