I DON’T KNOW YOU WELL ENOUGH TO TRUST YOU

When I was a teenager, I was walking past the local train station when a man with a briefcase asked if he could borrow money for a ticket. I don’t remember the specifics but I’m sure it had something to do with him losing his wallet. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I not only gave him money I also gave him my address so he could repay me later. When I relayed this story to my parents, they were…pissed. How could I have not seen that this man was clearly lying? Why did I think it was a good idea to tell a stranger where we lived? While I understood their concern, especially about the sharing of personal information, I also felt defiant in the face of their disapproval. I insisted that I would rather live my life assuming people weren’t out to get me than have a default setting of distrust and suspicion.

Now that I’m older—surprise, surprise—my perspective has changed. Part of that has to do with no longer caring what someone does with the money they ask for. If I choose to give it, it is not my business if it is spent on a train ticket or something else. Oh, they are just going to use my money on beer after saying it was for food? Who cares. I am not in charge of their finances or their approach to a life that is likely much harder than mine.

It's been nice to realize that living with more skepticism doesn’t deprive me of empathy. In recent years, I have stopped believing what everyone says simply because they said it and have still managed to hold onto my humanity—a feat I didn’t understand was possible when I was younger. I used to think that if I didn’t assume the best from everyone, I would assume the worst and become a cynical, angry shut-in. But what I’m learning is that there is a third option, which is to wait and see.

This more agnostic approach has been helpful in protecting my feelings and expectations. For example, if I met someone in my twenties who promised to put me in touch with a lot of people to help me with an upcoming project, I would expect them to follow through. Then if they didn’t, I would be disappointed, hurt and confused. Why say that if they didn’t mean it? Now, if I meet someone who makes the same type of promise, I think, we’ll see. I don’t assume they are blatantly lying to me, but I also recognize that I have no insight into their pattern of behavior. Perhaps they are someone who always keeps their word. Perhaps they historically make a lot of promises in the moment that they struggle to follow through on. Perhaps they are completely full of shit. Until I have more experience with them, I have no reason to trust them, which is different than not trusting them. It’s opting out of the question of trust all together until I have more information.

The conundrum then becomes, when do you know someone well enough to trust them? According to my peer-reviewed research study, it takes exactly two months, five days and 3 minutes. Don’t believe me? Good! Because there is no foolproof answer. At a certain point we have to take a leap of faith with the people we want to rely on. One way to determine if they are worthy of that leap is to look at their actions rather than their words. Actions build credibility, while words often show who we want to be rather than who we are.

A few months ago, I was walking my dogs past a neighbor’s house, and she remarked that all the dogs love to pee on her lawn because it is the only one on the street with real grass. I remember thinking, that makes so much sense and how interesting. Then I started to notice all the other lawns on my street with real grass. I felt like a fool! It was a wakeup call to not indiscriminately listen to the last thing someone told me.

Do I think my neighbor was blatantly lying to me in an effort to distort my sense of reality and chip away at my mental acuity? Probably not. More likely, she is under the false belief that her lawn is the only one with real grass on our street, which is what make the whole issue of trust even more complicated. The world isn’t divided into honest people and dishonest people. Instead, it is filled with misinformed, heavily biased, well-intentioned folks who often don’t realize they have no idea what they are talking about. Add in people’s lack of self-awareness, despite their insistence that they are completely self-aware, and it can feel impossible to know what to believe. That’s why reserving our trust for only those who have earned it isn’t pessimistic or mean-spirited, it’s reasonable.

I find it helpful to remember that people can be trustworthy in some areas of their lives while clearly lacking in others. I can trust a certain friend to responsibly take care of my dogs and not trust any of their supposed new sources. There are some people I believe wholeheartedly when they tell me a story and others I always take with a grain of salt. Just believe I love to spend time with someone does not mean I trust they would show up for me in an emergency.

Having a more nuanced relationship with how and to who I dole out my trust has helped me become more secure in the world. I no longer feel like I need to implicitly trust everyone from the get-go to feel safe so when someone inevitably proves untrustworthy, I am not shaken to my core. But I do still need the capacity to trust some people in my life, the ones who have earned it, or else that is a pretty lonely existence.

xoxo,

Allison

P.S. It would mean a lot to me if you hit the like button to increase chances of engagement! Also, if you are able to upgrade to paid subscriber or share my posts with a potential reader, I would be incredibly thankful! Thank you for reading!