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LadyAngelika -> RE: why do we trust (12/24/2009 9:05:51 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Justme696
but the "prior" is often influenced because of thinsg that happened in the past.
It is indeed not fair to judge "a new"person based on issues of the past.
But that is how we often work....we learn and try to prevent things to happen again.
There is a balance to be had here.
First off, I believe that my life is more harmonious because in general, I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt that they are being honest with me. Often, just the fact that I approach them with trust, and in some cases inform them that I am trusting them, will make them act more responsibly. On the other hand, this might seem like an open door for scammers to take advantage of me. But to this, I've built up quite a bit of wisdom and instinct. I can weed out a bunch. Not all, but a bunch.
Though I give a baseline of trust, I don't leave myself wide open. More trust can be earned with time. For example, the amount of trust someone has to earn to be let into my house is very different from the level of trust to have a copy of my house keys. But they are both forms of trust.
Now as Justme696 says, the past will influence the future. He's absolutely right. Until a few years ago, I didn't know what it was like to have someone cheat on me. Until that relationship, I didn't even take into consideration that it could happen to me. I was perhaps naive but at the same time, I wasn't burdened with that worry. Ignorance can be bliss.
When this event happened, I felt a whole lot of things for the first time. Doubt about myself for a while, though I got over that part rather rapidly. But most importantly, I had never met someone so close to me who had so literally been two-faced about something. I was apparently a woman like none he had ever met before, a breath of fresh air with my confident, dominant nature. Yet he reverted back to the psychologically unstable meek and manipulative girl he had an on again off again relationship with over the years. That hit me like a ton of bricks. I could not believe that I let someone like him get so close to me. That is when I started doubting my judgement. That is a very scary feeling to go through as you, at least it was for me, as I've always prided myself on being an excellent judge of character. I felt like I wasn't me anymore. I felt like life was playing a cruel joke on me. That took a very long time to get over.
I recently had a flashback of this with a trust issue with someone, many similarities to the initial event, though we weren't in a relationship, just getting to know one another. Many of those feelings resurfaced and all those feelings came back again, not as strong, but pretty strong, stronger than I expected, which is making me think that I might never go back to the way I was before the initial cheating event. What has happened to me has left me scared somewhat. There is nothing I can do to change that.
I'm not big into self-help or motivational books, but one book that was given to me about 10 years ago really gave an excellent perspective. It is Don Miguel Ruiz's Mastery of Love. He talks about two tracks, the track of love and the track of fear.
When we start doubting our judgement or live in the track of fear, we start doing what many would call hypervigilence. That means, we are on our guard. That is normal after we go through shock, but the idea is that we get through this as it never serves us well. Hypervigilence is one of the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It isn't healthy and when we are living on the track of fear, we can't open ourselves to receiving love. We can't be in healthy relationships when we are in this state. To a certain degree, I think the man who cheated on me was living on a track of fear and could not see the harmonious possibilities or our relationship.
However, it is possible to get through all of this but still pull out of it some lessons learned. For example, in my case, I learned to look for signs. I can keep an eye out, not be so naive, but still start from a place of trust. Does this mean that I won't have someone cheat on me again? Nope. Life doesn't come with that guarantee. But if I keep living on the track of fear, I might totally miss out on the opportunity to have a wonderful relationship with a man worthy of my trust.
I prefer to live my life on the track of love, even if that means that I'm leaving myself open to potential hurt. Scary? You bet! But what else am I to do? Live in fear? Not in my character.
- LA
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