Recently I was sitting in church observing a parent whose child did not want to go off to the children’s play group. He looked to be about three years old. He clearly insisted that he would be just fine staying in church with his parents. It looks like he promised them that he would sit quietly during the service. That lasted for maybe five minutes. Soon he was speaking way too loudly, grabbing things that shouldn’t be touched and making both his parents very angry. They trusted him to do what he said he would do. To me this is a case of unhealthy and unfair trusting. Three-year-olds are typically not capable of sitting still for an hour in a church service.
According to the Oxford Language Dictionary, trust is “a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.”
I began thinking about who I trust in my life and why. One thing I concluded is that I needed to consider the person’s history. I think trust is something that is earned, and if you don’t know how over time a person has shown themselves to be trustworthy, you should not immediately trust them. I guess in a way we have to vet our relationships to determine if and to what degree we trust someone.
If you observe that someone over time breaks trust in other relationships even though they seem to be trustworthy in yours, I think you need to be very cautious. Dr. Phil said it well: “If they will do it with you, they will do it to you.” What he means is that if someone will collude with you to do something that is morally unethical with you, don’t be surprised when they turn around and do something unethical to you!
They go on to say, “In Dr. Phil’s world, that could be if you met and dated your husband or wife when they were married to someone else, don’t be surprised when they cheat on you!
How does this rule apply to real estate? On the consumer side, if you are dealing with a realtor, and they tell you it’s ok not to disclose a defect in your home, when you are looking at a home with them, can you really trust them to tell you any potential defects they may be aware of in a home?”
Sometimes I think our hope that someone will treat us differently gets in the way of healthy trust. Sometimes if we find ourselves loving someone, our judgment with regard to trust suffers because we don’t want to believe anything negative about this person, thus the saying, “Love is blind.” Then when they betray our trust, something they may have never promised us they would do, we can be devastated, hurt, disillusioned and grieving the loss of trust in our relationship. We have to then decide if we can tolerate a relationship in which the other person will probably break trust and potentially break our heart, or we need to put up very strong boundaries within our own mind in order to be self-protective, or we need to end the relationship.
I think it can be helpful when beginning a new relationship to check the expectations you have about this person as you go into that relationship. What do you believe is true about them?
You can also pause to see what happens if you look in the mirror with regard to trustworthiness. To what extent do you consider yourself to be a trustworthy person? Do you ever promise something knowing you probably won’t fulfill that promise but you will get something out of having the other person believe you? To what extent do you care that others find you trustworthy? Is it something you want to work on so you become more trustworthy?
Becoming more trustworthy involves intentionally making good on any promises you make, on paying attention to the importance of apologizing if you need to alter something you previously promised, to inviting the other person to share with you how much they trust you, if that is something they feel comfortable sharing.
I feel like I learned a lot from watching the parents in the church service feel betrayed by their little one who was acting like a normal three-year-old. I could see on his face that he knew he was disappointing his parents every time he did something he shouldn’t do in church. I felt sad for him because I think these kinds of reactions by parents can make a child feel like they are bad, or not as lovable as they deserve to feel they are.
So many direct and indirect messages: “You should know how to behave!” “You said you could sit still and you lied about that.” “We can’t trust you when you promise to behave.” So many emotions for parents and for the child: broken trust, betrayal, frustration, sadness, hurt, confusion, helplessness, powerlessness, to name a few. Possible beliefs parents may now have: our child is not trustworthy, he let us down, we should know how to make him behave, he must be punished. Possible beliefs the child may now have: “I’m bad.” “My parents hate me.” I should know how to sit still.” Even though this happened over a period of about 45 minutes, I wonder what messages and what beliefs might stick. If only the parents knew what reasonable expectations for a child of this age should be and therefore why it is unhealthy and unfair to trust him, how different the impact of the interactions might be!
Deciding if, when, and how to trust another person, whether it’s a child or an adult, can be tricky. It also is very important to process your responses to these questions because of the potential for unhealthy and unfair trusting to damage emotional and relational health. When you pause to consider if, when, and how to trust another person, it can result in promoting greater emotional and relational health for both of you.
Invitation for Reflection
- Can you recall a relationship (or are you currently in one) where you may have trusted that person and discovered they weren’t really trustworthy? How did that make you feel? What was the impact on your relationship?
- If you could go back in time, what would you do differently based on a better understanding of being careful about if, when, and how much to trust someone?
- If you have children in your life, can you recall any times when you were too quick to trust a child? What were the circumstances? What were the consequences with regard to the possible messages, emotions and beliefs of that child? How might this impact the health of your relationship with this child?
- Consider the degrees to which you are trustworthy in your relationships with family members, friends, colleagues and others in your life. Are there attitudes, beliefs and behaviors you and others would benefit from if you made some changes? What specifically do you need to change?
Diane Wagenhals
Director Emeritus, Lakeside Global Institute