Picture this: Imagine you two are very good friends and thinking of taking your relationship status to the next level. What’s the one thing you exchange after the three words? It must be, "I TRUST YOU." It performs as a sign of honesty, integrity, and reliability of a person on you. The entire relationship runs on the trust that one has in the other. It acts like a knot to bind the two together and can be distinct only with a single lie or with a third person. Afterwards, one might remain laid-back, but the other one who faced the betrayal starts living in melancholy.
Who might have trust in you?
When you think of trust and started reading this, you must have been thinking about the trust between couples, but it is far more than that! A coin has many tales; similar trust exists in many relationships between friends, parents and children, colleagues and bosses, humans and pets, and many more!
Think back—when did your mother first start trusting you? It could be the day when she let you go to tuition alone for the first time with the assurance that you would keep her trust and come back home straight after finishing the classes without wasting any time. Or the time when your best friend considered you as a confidant and shared a private matter. Or, the loyal dog who waited for days endlessly in the faith that his owner would come back. And in most of the cases, the trust has been shattered. Why? Because the first step started with "Who’s watching me cheat?"
Cheating: You didn’t intend but it just happened!
Sharing a recent example of my own: A shy girl had generated feelings for someone who was older than her but couldn't communicate openly with him about her feelings and insecurities about him. This led to a discussion about him with other girls, which revealed the action of spying and breaching privacy even though they weren’t a couple. When the boy got to know about this, he blamed the girl for cheating and breaking his trust by sharing their privacy with others! But was that the whole angle? No.
Sometimes we don’t cheat intentionally, but it just happens! What looked like cheating was more of a misunderstanding, a situation where emotions were overlooked and outer interference was set as a priority. A trust is not a process of one day to build. It is a step-by-step and gradual process, and once it gets broken, it’s difficult to build the same relation as the previous one.
Communication is the key
Clear communication is the key ingredient for maintaining a relationship effectively. Whenever you’re in doubt, keep it out by making quick remarks. A clear and honest conversation can help to prevent any sort of misunderstanding. It is necessary to not develop any confusion in the mind. I have met numerous people and found out a lot of issues were disturbed just because of miscommunication. In fact, many marriages break due to miscommunication and misinterpretation. Transparency in shared feelings, thoughts, and intentions can sustain many relationships.
Tracing the Red Flag
We all have heard about a common phrase nowadays, “red flag,” where a person’s action doesn’t match their actions. The person says something and acts something contrasting. For Ex- in a situation where the guy pretends he is frank with no girl other than his partner but in reality, it’s the opposite. Other signs of red flags are checking and snooping on social media accounts and phones, a behavioural change, making derogatory or hurtful remarks starting as a joke, ghosting you, and coming back after months with silly reasons, shifting affection with anger, blaming you for being too overwhelming all the time, and making excuses to cover their action, which is also a symbol of manipulation and ignoring your needs or opinions. The transition from the green flag, which is the positive side of a guy, to the red flag is formed because of breaching the trust, which can further cause multiple consequences.
Impact and consequences of breaking trust
The shattering of trust in somebody leaves a deep impact on an individual. It leaves a huge footprint of betrayal. The feeling of being betrayed makes you feel hurt, angry, and confused. You start feeling the ache in your heart; everything starts to replay in your mind, and if you are an overthinker, it’s a never-ending cycle. It affects people who are oversensitive and overthinkers. I personally have met many such people who claim that they cannot easily let go of anything. Because if they love something, they love it intensely. No matter if they are hurt, they still think about the well-being of others. And they are always ready to trust that person again. They also easily get manipulated by others because they consider the next person as honest.
The rebuilding of trust again and again makes a person mentally weak and emotionally unstable, which might lead to serious mental health issues. The growing trust issue further makes it difficult to trust other people in a relationship because the continuous fear is constant.
Three mantras for a healthy relationship
Trust and loyalty are the key foundations of a healthy relationship, but it is equally essential to balance the other pillars parallelly with it to hold the house together.
1. Stay trustworthy from your end Before checking on others, it is very necessary to shine a light on you. Stay loyal and honest, and fulfill promises from your side, because if things go wrong, knowing you were loyal brings peace.
2. Choose whom you are trusting- You can’t open up to anybody. Select and observe the person whom you are exposing because sharing personal matters with the wrong person only brings gossip. You may remember the phrase, “Once the chair you left, you became the gossip.
3. The second chance- If things get worse, always have the empathy to give that person a second chance. Try to understand them and keep the empathy to know their side of the story. Have the willingness to rebuild the relationship and balance forgiveness with self-respect.
(PS: Pictures taken from Freepik, Unsplash and Pexels)
Links for above pictures-
Comments