Out of all the things that we want from any relationship (be it with friends, family, boyfriends and girlfriends, or someone else) trust is perhaps the most vital. But despite the fact that it’s something that we all want, both in ourselves trusting others and others trusting us, it is one of the hardest things to define.
One of the most important aspects of trust is to being able to place confidence in another person. Often this comes down to being able to tell someone a secret of some kind and knowing that they won’t reveal it to another soul. This is important, especially with friends, because we all have things we need to talk about but that we might not want shared with everyone. On other occasions, although not being the best thing that any of us do, it can mean telling someone else’s secret to a third person and knowing that they will not give away that you broke someone else’s confidence.
The other main aspect of trust is knowing that a person will always tell you the truth and not hide anything. This is often the biggest problem with trust with lovers, when on person will be hiding things from the other. This often leads to the suspicious person snooping around in their partner’s things, reading their text messages and emails, and even following them if they suspect that they are lying about where they are going. Often this problem is caused by another break of trust: cheating.
Cheating is often the worst thing that people can do their partner, as the trust placed in that person is on the understanding that they will not be with another person. However, it is often that lying that goes with cheating that is the biggest problem, and worse than the cheating itself. For example, many people are able to forgive their partners if the offence has been admitted to straight away and apologized sincerely for. However, if someone finds out another way that their partner has cheated, through another person or through their own investigations, it is often unforgivable.
Trust is also something that must also be placed with people you don’t know all that well, or even people that you don’t know at all. For example, we have to trust teachers to be teaching us the right things and grading our work fairly. In terms of total strangers, we have to trust doctors to take care of us and give us the right medication or perform surgery well, and emergency services like the police and fire services to come to our aid if we need them. All in all, trust is a very important thing that we must be able to place in many different people.
