Trust

[joeys-game]

What does it mean to you?
Do you trust anybody?
What breaks that trust?

 

[Nirvanadragones]

I think there are two categories of people where trust is concerned. Those who trust automatically, and by instinct, until they are disappointed, and/ or proven wrong, and those who don't trust until someone has earned their trust.

I trust by instinct. It's not difficult for me to let people see who I am, yet there are parts of me that I only share with my soul mates.

I have a hard time trusting people who are not true to themselves. After all, if you find it easy to deceive yourself, deception of someone else is more likely.

What breaks trust for me? I can be extremely sensitive at times. When I trust someone and let them know me, and they are not gentle, and it affects me, there is a level of something that starts building up between us. It's not permanent - it can be removed or it can grow thicker.

Overall, Trust is mostly an instinctive element to me.

 

[joeys-game]

I think there are two categories of people where trust is concerned. Those who trust automatically, and by instinct, until they are disappointed, and/ or proven wrong, and those who don't trust until someone has earned their trust.

I trust by instinct. It's not difficult for me to let people see who I am, yet there are parts of me that I only share with my soul mates.

I have a hard time trusting people who are not true to themselves. After all, if you find it easy to deceive yourself, deception of someone else is more likely.

What breaks trust for me? I can be extremely sensitive at times. When I trust someone and let them know me, and they are not gentle, and it affects me, there is a level of something that starts building up between us. It's not permanent - it can be removed or it can grow thicker.

Overall, Trust is mostly an instinctive element to me.

I agree Nirvana.
I have in my life been both. I started as a person that trusted others, took thier word, believed in the best of people. Trusting a person untill they gave me a damn good reason not to trust them.

Unfortunately, as time passed and I became an adult, I have changed my trust system. Now I don't trust anybody untill I am sure that they are indeed trustworthy.

This is from just living life and realizing that oneof the things that hurts the most is when someone you respect and trust, betrays you, lets you down, to whatever degree. And in many cases the person that betrays you is the last one you would ever expect to do it.

For the most part, once someone has broken trust..I guess depending on the level and who the person is, they will have a hell of a time getting it back.

 

[rgraham666]

I think Vana summed it up nicely.

I'm in the 'trust until proven unworthy' category. I was born that way, although for a long time I was in the other category due to life experiences.

 

[S-Des]

I trust very slowly, at least for anything deeper than superficial friendships (which I am of the, "I trust you until you screw me over," camp). After a year on Lit, there are exactly two people who actually know anything about me. Privacy is both because of my situation with my ex and because of previous betrayals. I don't know if it's instinctual or not, but I do know it can be beaten out of you if you open yourself up too much.

 

[impressive]

I also trust by instinct, with the added note that I give my trust in layers -- testing the waters a little bit at a time until my intuition tells me I'm pushing the limits of a person's integrity. The times I've been burned have been the times that I've chosen to disregard that inner voice saying, "Don't!" It's never wrong, that inner voice. I just don't always listen to it. *sigh*

If I see someone deceiving others, I really can't give all of my trust to that person. Integrity is HUGE for me, even in the little things.

I posted something in ABS' pondering thread the other day about trust -- about how when we give our trust, we're not only trusting that one person, but (by extension) everyone who they trust (both now and in their future). That thought could paralyze me if I spent too much time thinking about it. In my life, there has only been one person I am absolutely certain compartmentalizes trust such that mine is completely safe with her. A confidence is going NOWHERE else, not even to someone she trusts with her life. I aspire to that level of integrity. It's not easy.

 

[Jubal_Harshaw]

I don't trust anyone. I've been lied to far to many times by people I trusted.

 

[Vermilion]

everythin Vana said. I trust people far too easily.
This makes me an ideal mark for practical jokes, though luckily noone does that too much any more. I hate practical jokes, they're hurtful. I never play them on other people. So far I have been lucky and I've not had that trust betrayed many times and not recently. If someone broke my trust I don;t know if I would be able to regain it... my trust is so instinctual that I don;t think I could coinsciously rebuild it.
x
V

 

[joeys-game]

I trust very slowly, at least for anything deeper than superficial friendships (which I am of the, "I trust you until you screw me over," camp). After a year on Lit, there are exactly two people who actually know anything about me. Privacy is both because of my situation with my ex and because of previous betrayals. I don't know if it's instinctual or not, but I do know it can be beaten out of you if you open yourself up too much.

I refuse to open myself up AGAIN, been ripped apart too many times..makes me an angry person sometimes

 

[impressive]

I refuse to open myself up AGAIN, been ripped apart too many times..makes me an angry person sometimes

But it's such a lonely existence

 

[StormRising]

I trust until someone does something to not keep my trust- and they will never get it back once they've lost it.

However in certain situations, I trust no one, because I've fucked up enough times in my life to know that when certain things are on the table- money, pride, or power- no one can be trusted.

They only time someone can't trust me, in reverse, is if they expect me to be exactly on time and move in exactly the direction they thought I should. I'm totally untrustworthy for things like that-

And that goes for both this persona and my FtF one.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

Like I said in another topic recently. I try to be a cinic. I really do. But then, at the worst times possible, I believe the most screwy stuff and end up the fool for everyone's enjoyment but my own

My trust is all over the place.

 

[jomar]

I started this thread in February. It touches on your questions.

Why do we trust others?

 

[Recidiva]

Trust essentially starts with myself.

I trust that the world is unpredictable and I can't know what will happen.

I trust there are reasons for things I don't understand, and often the people doing incomprehensible things don't understand them either.

I trust that I'm doing the best I can, and I give others that benefit of the doubt until or unless they prove they aren't, then I forgive them, but they don't get another chance. Protective custody, so to speak.

Trust isn't something I give people so that they'll please me, it's something I choose so that I just trust people to be what they are. There are very few people who know themselves well enough and are disciplined enough to not crack under the various insane pressures life brings to bear. When they do and can, I'm amazed, when they can't, I strive to understand and help if I'm able.

Trust that life is hard, people are trying, and forgiveness isn't something I do because they need it, it's something I do to move on.

This is what works for me so that ultimately, any betrayal can be placed in a context that makes it big enough to get that I don't, and can't, know the whole picture.

 

[joeys-game]

But it's such a lonely existence

well it could be i suppose ,i just don't let or rarely let anyone become to close, takes a long time

I posted something in ABS' pondering thread the other day about trust -- about how when we give our trust, we're not only trusting that one person, but (by extension) everyone who they trust (both now and in their future). That thought could paralyze me if I spent too much time thinking about it. In my life, there has only been one person I am absolutely certain compartmentalizes trust such that mine is completely safe with her. A confidence is going NOWHERE else, not even to someone she trusts with her life. I aspire to that level of integrity. It's not easy.[/QUOTE]


Well that insight made my mind whirl and spin..'by extension we trust everyone that the person we trust knows, now and forever'..
bloody hell, what a scary thought!

Integrity is huge with me too..

 

[Recidiva]

Well that insight made my mind whirl and spin..'by extension we trust everyone that the person we trust knows, now and forever'..

bloody hell, what a scary thought!

Maybe I should include that I don't have anything that I need trust about, really. Anything I'd tell anyone, I assume will work its way into common knowledge.

Now I wonder what paralyzes you. And I'm glad I wasn't the one who did it, that's a scary thought for me. Not being able to share freely who I am and have that be okay, and anyone else who doesn't like it can go to hell.

 

[cantdog]

Respecting confidences is important, and not only for the sake of the person imparting the confidence.

The house ape is a social animal. We crave validation, we crave witness. In a state of nature, humans would live in small bands, and we still feel the lack of that social space in the present society. To grow old in the atomized society in which we now live, alone in an apartment, say, at the end of the day, every day, is unacceptable enough to drive people to engage in marriages. Marriage or alternative communities of the sort have the attraction that one lives a witnessed life, that one's small deeds will be known, that one's sorrows and trials will be noted. It's very attractive, and I think that without it, one's emotional health is compromised.

It is a similar impulse which sets people to telling their secrets to trusted acquaintances. It's risky (if the secret is of any importance, anyone would keep it to themselves if they were acting rationally), but we crave community.

I receive confidences frequently, and often from people of rather short acquaintance. Maybe it's the manly, open phiz, dude, I dunno. But it happens, and I'm not the only one to whom it does.

I take exception to the youthful Recidiva. The sentiment is no doubt noble, but it is self-deceiving. If I am reading it right, anyway. This is not a sentence, so it's impossible to be sure what it means:

Not being able to share freely who I am and have that be okay, and anyone else who doesn't like it can go to hell.

If it means a determination that one shall be honest about one's life and disregard those who would think ill of it, then I think you'll find that putting more time in on the planet will revise your ideas.

One cannot abolish society, and society can do real harm to anyone it takes a dislike to. This may be a tolerant group, here on the AH, but just watch what happens when a real taboo is mooted. Oh, I don't know, pedophily, for example. Suddenly the rhetoric is charged with dire threat. In the larger world, the situation is even less tolerant. They would tattoo pedophiles blue all over to mark them for life, and license any random person to make them miserable throughout their days.

Now I imagine Recidiva has no secret that dire. Few do. The point is, there's a line there, one that pedophily is on the wrong side of. And the line shifts all the time. Homosexuality is beyond it, for many people in my country, because of the "Christian" fascist movement. Islam is coming to be: we talk about muslims in this country in a way we wouldn't think of talking about any other minority, or creed. The religion has systematically been demonized, and the talk is callous, brutal, racist, and quite ignorant. Again, much of that is driven by the "Christian" fascist right. Forces like that act to move that line all the time.

So some things need secrecy, for some people, and they are not always things which are intrinsically bad. In an ideal individualist world, one could publish and be damned to any detractors. But the realities of society are that people beat up gays, people harass muslim children in the schools, and people feel fully justified attacking abortion clinics. Society will have its lines, and they will strike those who cross 'em.

So we all have to admit of the possibility that some things need to become secrets. If only because you can't actually abolish or successfully ignore society, not entirely.

Dealing with secrets is a moral choice. For me, I have very little regard for society or its lines, but I react with prudence and keep the secrets. Why buy trouble?

 

[Recidiva]

Respecting confidences is important, and not only for the sake of the person imparting the confidence.

The house ape is a social animal. We crave validation, we crave witness. In a state of nature, humans would live in small bands, and we still feel the lack of that social space in the present society. To grow old in the atomized society in which we now live, alone in an apartment, say, at the end of the day, every day, is unacceptable enough to drive people to engage in marriages. Marriage or alternative communities of the sort have the attraction that one lives a witnessed life, that one's small deeds will be known, that one's sorrows and trials will be noted. It's very attractive, and I think that without it, one's emotional health is compromised.

It is a similar impulse which sets people to telling their secrets to trusted acquaintances. It's risky (if the secret is of any importance, anyone would keep it to themselves if they were acting rationally), but we crave community.

I receive confidences frequently, and often from people of rather short acquaintance. Maybe it's the manly, open phiz, dude, I dunno. But it happens, and I'm not the only one to whom it does.

I take exception to the youthful Recidiva. The sentiment is no doubt noble, but it is self-deceiving. If I am reading it right, anyway. This is not a sentence, so it's impossible to be sure what it means: If it means a determination that one shall be honest about one's life and disregard those who would think ill of it, then I think you'll find that putting more time in on the planet will revise your ideas.

One cannot abolish society, and society can do real harm to anyone it takes a dislike to. This may be a tolerant group, here on the AH, but just watch what happens when a real taboo is mooted. Oh, I don't know, pedophily, for example. Suddenly the rhetoric is charged with dire threat. In the larger world, the situation is even less tolerant. They would tattoo pedophiles blue all over to mark them for life, and license any random person to make them miserable throughout their days.

Now I imagine Recidiva has no secret that dire. Few do. The point is, there's a line there, one that pedophily is on the wrong side of. And the line shifts all the time. Homosexuality is beyond it, for many people in my country, because of the "Christian" fascist movement. Islam is coming to be: we talk about muslims in this country in a way we wouldn't think of talking about any other minority, or creed. The religion has systematically been demonized, and the talk is callous, brutal, racist, and quite ignorant. Again, much of that is driven by the "Christian" fascist right. Forces like that act to move that line all the time.

So some things need secrecy, for some people, and they are not always things which are intrinsically bad. In an ideal individualist world, one could publish and be damned to any detractors. But the realities of society are that people beat up gays, people harass muslim children in the schools, and people feel fully justified attacking abortion clinics. Society will have its lines, and they will strike those who cross 'em.

So we all have to admit of the possibility that some things need to become secrets. If only because you can't actually abolish or successfully ignore society, not entirely.

Dealing with secrets is a moral choice. For me, I have very little regard for society or its lines, but I react with prudence and keep the secrets. Why buy trouble?

You called me youthful. Awwww.

When I was a youth, I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. I learned how much that alienated me from other people and started telling the truth. I'm still the best liar I know. However, I don't indulge, because it does me harm.

Deception, lying, and hiding, to me, are an admission that you're not strong enough to face reality. Instead of lying or cheating, which are things I'll know when I can't face reality and come through with flying colors (I will lie or cheat or steal in a heartbeat to save a life, and I have)

However, really, it's not innocence or sweetness that makes me who I am. It's being born a natural criminal and having to think my way out of it.

I keep confidences well, those that belong to other people. But I give my own away to build my tolerance to reality. Oddly enough, being bluntly honest, most people assume you're lying anyway.

Lying is a social choice you make, and a social skill. Honesty is harder, I think. Maybe because lying always came so easy to me.

 

[cantdog]

If you have the time, then, Recidiva, might we discuss this?

"Honesty" is by no means a simple problem, and I'd welcome a little reflective talk about it.

 

[Recidiva]

If you have the time, then, Recidiva, might we discuss this?

"Honesty" is by no means a simple problem, and I'd welcome a little reflective talk about it.

Sure

 

[Tom Collins]

I would have to say that I fall into the "instinctive truster" category from birth, but things that have happened, especially a couple of recent things, have made me reluctant to trust anymore.

There have only been four people through out my life whom I considered my "best friend", and that might make me lucky. I don't know how many a person usually has by the time they reach their mid-thirties. The thing is, two of them betrayed my love and trust in ginormous ways. I don't mean little things, like spilling the secret beans, I mean, onr of them essentially dumping me to date my brother (need I say I feel just as betrayed by my brother as by her? After all, his wooing her was what pounded the wedge between us.), and the other disapearing after talking me into helping her get a large loan, which I'm now responsible for.

When you've got half of the people outside your family that you've given trust to, and one in your immediate family, betraying you on that kind of scale, it makes you very reluctant to give anyone who doesn't already have your trust anything but superficial trust and friendship.

I sometimes worry that I'll spend most of the rest of my life having only aquaintances and no true friends. I guess I've learned a few hard lessons, and have no wish for my history to repeat itself. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me, eh?

 

[Recidiva]

I would have to say that I fall into the "instinctive truster" category from birth, but things that have happened, especially a couple of recent things, have made me reluctant to trust anymore.

There have only been four people through out my life whom I considered my "best friend", and that might make me lucky. I don't know how many a person usually has by the time they reach their mid-thirties. The thing is, two of them betrayed my love and trust in ginormous ways. I don't mean little things, like spilling the secret beans, I mean, onr of them essentially dumping me to date my brother (need I say I feel just as betrayed by my brother as by her? After all, his wooing her was what pounded the wedge between us.), and the other disapearing after talking me into helping her get a large loan, which I'm now responsible for.

When you've got half of the people outside your family that you've given trust to, and one in your immediate family, betraying you on that kind of scale, it makes you very reluctant to give anyone who doesn't already have your trust anything but superficial trust and friendship.

I sometimes worry that I'll spend most of the rest of my life having only aquaintances and no true friends. I guess I've learned a few hard lessons, and have no wish for my history to repeat itself. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me, eh?

I don't trust a single member of the family I was born into.

I probably trust my husband more than anyone I've ever met.

People fool me all the time, I think it's the nature of people. No reason to beat yourself up about it.

Humanity is unique in that we provide our own predator pool within the race. I suppose that just means if I'm not one of the predators, I'm the prey. I defend myself by not giving away what I can't afford to lose, and regenerating quickly. Sorta the bunny strategy, I guess. Good for survival of the fittest to hone the race to a razor's edge of guile and strategy, bad for the bunny.

 

[Tom Collins]

I don't trust a single member of the family I was born into.

I probably trust my husband more than anyone I've ever met.

People fool me all the time, I think it's the nature of people. No reason to beat yourself up about it.

Humanity is unique in that we provide our own predator pool within the race. I suppose that just means if I'm not one of the predators, I'm the prey. I defend myself by not giving away what I can't afford to lose, and regenerating quickly. Sorta the bunny strategy, I guess. Good for survival of the fittest to hone the race to a razor's edge of guile and strategy, bad for the bunny.

I trusted my father while he was alive because I knew I could. I trust my mother as far as I know that I can. which is in most things. I trust my brother no way, and no how, because he's proven too many times that he can't be. Aside from those three, I no longer am willing to be Little Peter Rabbit any longer.

One person I could trust completely has passed, the other is here on Lit, and I hope he and I will be close and trust each other for a very long time.

I'll tell you who I certainly do not trust...the used car salesman that should be calling me back any minute now.

 

[CharleyH]

I think there are two categories of people where trust is concerned. Those who trust automatically, and by instinct, until they are disappointed, and/ or proven wrong, and those who don't trust until someone has earned their trust.

I trust by instinct. It's not difficult for me to let people see who I am, yet there are parts of me that I only share with my soul mates.

I have a hard time trusting people who are not true to themselves. After all, if you find it easy to deceive yourself, deception of someone else is more likely.

What breaks trust for me? I can be extremely sensitive at times. When I trust someone and let them know me, and they are not gentle, and it affects me, there is a level of something that starts building up between us. It's not permanent - it can be removed or it can grow thicker.

Overall, Trust is mostly an instinctive element to me.

No offence love, but you contradict yourself a few times here.

There is, I think, only one trust - and I think Captain Adama said it best in an episode of Battlestar Gallactica (seems dumb I know). While I cannot quote exactly, the whole point was that not knowing if you can trust someone and yet relying on good faith ... IS TRUSTl If you trust someone, then you are taking a chance and trust is nothing more than taking a chance.

 

[cantdog]

You called me youthful. Awwww.

When I was a youth, I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. I learned how much that alienated me from other people and started telling the truth. I'm still the best liar I know. However, I don't indulge, because it does me harm.

Deception, lying, and hiding, to me, are an admission that you're not strong enough to face reality. Instead of lying or cheating, which are things I'll know when I can't face reality and come through with flying colors (I will lie or cheat or steal in a heartbeat to save a life, and I have)

However, really, it's not innocence or sweetness that makes me who I am. It's being born a natural criminal and having to think my way out of it.

I keep confidences well, those that belong to other people. But I give my own away to build my tolerance to reality. Oddly enough, being bluntly honest, most people assume you're lying anyway.

Lying is a social choice you make, and a social skill. Honesty is harder, I think. Maybe because lying always came so easy to me.

Deception is kinda built in to modern life, and I have enough history and enough travel experience to believe that it is a feature of any way of life, modern or not. But the modern way of life, in agglomerations of many thousands of people, separated from one's birth family by custom, and expected to be willing to relocate for the convenience of employers, puts two faces (at least) on life. Let me specify a bit, so you'll know what I mean by that.

I think most people cultivate a 'public face.' This is a more or less deliberate strategem to make life easier. You can see echoes of it in many of the posts here in the thread. Reluctance to 'open up,' someone said. Letting people see who I am is even more specific. Even the notion that close friends receive different treatment is related to it. You know what I mean, Recidiva; when I called you youthful, you responded, "...really, it's not innocence or sweetness that makes me who I am."

Because anyone who reflects upon his life notices this duplicity, and often a teenager or twenty-something will resolve to end the games, and make a bold face of honesty. I misread your declaration for one of those, and you recognized what I'd done.

For me, though, the public face arises from the artificial situation moderns have to cope with. One can acknowledge the millions around one only so far, but one searches the crowd for members of one's tribe. You tell them by their manner of dress, quite a bit of the time. And much of one's social life consists of building and maintaining one's own small group, like a little tribe of one's own, because of a human preference for small, manageable groups to belong to. Such a group often develops its own rules of conduct independent from the larger society.

The tribe you live in, the tribe you prey on, the tribe that preys on yours-- these are the people city dwellers take cognizance of as the move through many thousands of others who count mostly as environment, obstacles. Eye contact acknowledgement is rare in a street throng. People notice it and feel that in a city like Boston, they have anonymity which they would lack in a small town like Littleton, New Hampshire.

That's what I mean by the public face/private face being built in. At work, particularly in a competitive work situation, you sometimes have to be guarded. In the Boston street, you look past most of humanity. And that sort of two-facedness is pretty trivial, and there is usually little reason not to wear your real face all the time, as far as those distinctions go.

Having a secret, inner life which nobody else knows, though, is schizoid, isn't it? That's what public face/private face tends toward. A city makes everyone set up a sort of schizoid stance, for insulation from the millions. It takes a deliberate effort to forgo it.

I had a fast education in this by working an ambulance for ten years. When someone calls an ambulance, they don't tidy up for company. You got a slice of life, man, stepping into all those doors. Outside, among the rest of us, people follow social norms to at least a calculated extent, but at home....! It's amazing how wildly different are the modes of living behind all those same-seeming houses' walls. My city was small, small-- only about 30,000. But I saw a bewildering variety of oddness, stepping into peoples' lives when they were in crisis. Cops see it, too, and some others.

And all this might be seen as lies, or you might reserve the term for intentional deceptions of another order, like the ones committed for gain or to manipulate.

So we have a couple of levels of the trust issue already. First, what level of trust you bring to an encounter with a stranger, and second, what level of trust you expect to be able to have in a member of your group of friends.

Skepticism and doubt can be a defense against people who lie and deceive for gain, to be sure. A junkie will tell you any story he or she can contrive. If you have picked your friends well, perhaps you can expect better of them.

And you need trust. If trust is gone between two people, nothing either one can say can help, because the other must expect a lie. Ordinary social interaction becomes impossible, if you really trust no one.