Lust for Trust

  Trusting is fairly difficult for most people. We burn others and we get burned by them. Promises made get broken on a regular basis. Sometimes the promisor had no intention of keeping the promise at the time it was made. We get deceived. At other times, things happen that cause the promisor to change his mind about keeping the promise. We feel hurt and/or disappointed when we are on the receiving end of the latter type of broken promise. But we are usually not too angry with the promisor  in this scenario because we almost always get some kind of explanation as to why the promise could not be kept. We WANT to believe that the promisor had every intention of fulfilling the promise when it was made. It is very unsettling to believe we were victimized by a serial liar.

   Humans crave consistency and reliability. This seems to be hard-wired in us. We like that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. We like it when our cars start each morning. Uncertainty is one of  our most formidable enemies. In the realm of human relationships, however, we learn from sometimes painful experiences that we cannot always rely on others doing what they say they will do.


   We are flawed by nature and we have this wild card quality known as free will. So it is not rational for us to believe that humans will always keep their promises. Of course, this deep-seated need for consistency and stability is not based on anything like rationality. It is purely emotional and primal.

   I have disappointed others and been disappointed by them. In back of my disappointments, I have learned, is an unrealistic failure on my part to factor in the many different reasons why people don't do what they say they are going to do.

  If you are blessed enough to be in a loving relationship with someone, you have probably found that you can trust the person 99% of the time (or maybe 90-95%). I think the starting point for being in a loving, trusting relationship is this: we must learn to trust ourselves. What do I mean? First, we have to have an honest and accurate view of ourselves.. including all strengths and weaknesses. Next we have to get in the habit of making those promises to ourselves that we are sure we are going to keep. If we are brutally honest about ourselves we will not make internal deals with ourselves that we have no intention of honoring. If you lie to yourself about yourself, there is a really good chance that you will also lie to others. Self-assessment is simple but not easy (to borrow an expression from the 12-step groups). I am working hard on it at this point in my life. To the extent I have been successful in this endeavor, my happiness has increased.