quote:

ORIGINAL: sravaka

The "questioning your submissiveness" thread has me thinking about trust.  Specifically, the bit about the dominant not expecting submission until he'd earned the OP's trust.

I'd love to hear others' thoughts on this:  What is trust to you?  How does it develop?  How is it earned?  How do you know (or what makes you suspect) you have enough of it for x/y/z/ purpose?

By way of background, I have an ongoing dispute with someone about the nature of trust.  He insists that trust is a choice-- decide to trust someone, and voila! you trust them.  If you turn out to be wrong, you worry about that later.  But to me, trust is something I feel or don't feel.  I may choose to behave in a way that indicates trust, but that choice has nothing to do with actually feeling it.  You can choose to take a calculated risk, and and see what happens, and come to trust as the result of a good outcome, but again, that's independent of having or not having little doubts somewhere in your core to start with.  I guess I see moving forward with trust as a combined activity of brain and heart.  But, since no amount of reasoning will bring this guy around to my way of thinking (shocking, that), I'm forced to conclude that he really does feel trust in some other, to me alien, way.  (whether this is a dom vs. sub thing, I will not venture to speculate.)

Grateful for any/all thoughts.
--sravaka