Trust And Your Relationship Self-Care
One question I hear often, and I myself have struggled with is "how to I take care of myself in relationship with other people AND also trust people?"
Great question, and often times when we discuss trust, it is a conversation lacking nuance and reality. We see movies where people in castles trust roguish good-hearted villains to ultimately do the right thing. So we think we need to be people who accept trusting other people—because that is what “good” people do.
What happens, however, when our trust is betrayed? What happens if we were children who lived in households that lacked trustworthy adults? Are we doomed to forever wish we knew how to trust others with no real understanding of how or why we would or should change?
I hope not.
Because I am a firm believer that how we care for ourselves, our hearts, our well-being, and peace of mind within the context of relationships is a crucial part of our own self-care. We, as human beings, are hard-wired to crave connection and community with other human beings. So how can we bring the idea of trust into our self-care strategies?
“I trust you, until I don’t.”
This phrase is one of the most common phrases I hear in yoga therapy sessions where we are unpacking our relationship care. People often talk about how they are immediately a person who will trust other people, but if you cross them, damn is it over. No take-backs. No second chances. I trust you…or I don’t.
This kind of thinking can cause us all sorts of suffering as we move throughout the world in romantic and friendly relationships. It doesn’t make any sense for us to decide to completely trust a person we’ve only met weeks or months prior, without any evidence that would suggest that they are a trustworthy person.
The kind of knowledge that someone is an overall trustworthy person is something that happens over time. And time, my friends, is the one thing we rarely consider when talking about trust. So let me build you a picture.
You need a glass of water.
We all get thirsty from time to time, so I want you to imagine a glass of water. In the above description of how people identify “trust” they just walk around with full glasses of water giving them out to people they meet. Maybe they meet a new friend at pickleball, or at a café. Maybe they meet a new romantic potential online.
Once you meet this new person, you decide to give them a full cup of your trust water filled to the tippy-top. “Here you go, virtual stranger” you might say. “I have decided to trust you”.
But then that virtual stranger might, over the course of weeks or a few months, do something that violates your trust. Sometimes it is something that feels serious, but sometimes it is just that they made a decision based on their own core values and beliefs—and those beliefs don’t align with your own core values or beliefs. Then, instead of taking some of the water out of the glass you just knock the whole cup over spilling your given trust all over. There it goes, all your trust, all over the table. And we know we can’t refill a glass from water spilled all over a table.
Stop Giving People A Full Glass Of Water.
Seriously.
When you meet people they are strangers.
I don’t care if you are vibing.
I don’t care if they have the best, most soulful eyes. Or if you like the same music, books, clothing, or know the same people. None of that is a reason to trust someone.
What is a must more reasonable practice is that when you meet someone, you give them ½ a cup of your precious trust water. You hopefully have faith that they will not push you into a well, or say terrible things to you. You know— the basics of human decency. That is the level of trust you should be giving people right from the get-go. Then over time, as you get to know people and they deposit a bit more water into their trust cup, you trust them more. Trust builds over time.
We All Do Untrustworthy Things.
As I said earlier, a lot of our violations of trust involve people making decisions based on core values that are different than ours. For example, someone might make the decision to stay late at work instead of keeping their plans with you because their core values might involve money or work ethic, while yours involve connection or friendship. So when that person flakes out you are left feeling like there is less trust in your class.
But perhaps that person later decides that they value you enough to come to meet you spontaneously because they realize you have different values or priorities but they still want to connect with you. Then what was once a withdrawal of your trust water, is now a deposit. And so on and so forth.
Sometimes people do truly untrustworthy things, and then the withdrawal is much larger than any subsequent deposits of trust might be, so we choose to see less of that person. They get moved to a full-shade garden in your relationship garden beds. That is okay, we maybe need to compost every person who has ever wronged us or chosen based on different values than ours. But we can choose to see less of a person, because their values and ours aren’t quite aligned.
Relationship Care Involves Understanding the Flux.
Other people will be constantly depositing and sometimes withdrawing our trust. That is how relationships work. We use discernment to identify if those relationships are worthy of continuing our time, effort, and attention now. We also care for ourselves by being gracious with ourselves when we withdraw from someone else’s trust because that is bound to happen. The idea that our self-care is related to how we navigate our ties to others is a powerful shift away from self-care being a solo, or isolated activity. We don’t live in isolation, and neither should our care.
Want to chat all things relationship care over mocktails? Grab tickets to our Self-Care Virtual Retreat July 28-30th, 2023.