Is trust really so hard.

In talking with many of my coworkers and mates over the years it occurs to me that the biggest necessity and problem in relationships is trust. Now to all you clever blokes this might not be an earth shattering revelation, but it still seems that I hear a lot about it so I feel like writing about it.

Now I am not going to sit here and ignorantly suggest that we all just try and trust each other a bit more. I am sure that most of us have been screwed over in the past by someone we trusted or maybe we were the betrayers, that's not the point of this little write up. I'm sure we all have good reason to be paranoid or suspicious of most people. That is part of the world we live in these days and in one way or another we are all to blame, but that's a different book. Here I want to put forth some thoughts of my own on the subject of trust and it's role in relationships.

One of my previous coworkers has had very bad luck with his two long term girlfriends. The first dumped him on his birthday and the second (which is almost a horror story to me) dumped him the day before his birthday by coming out of the closet to him. Now some people would have turned into horrible misogynists after such events (I know one of my old friends from back home did after only one really bad relationship). But since then he has been dating a very nice woman and they seem to be in what most people would call 'love'. Now he admits that he is a very jealous and suspicious person with regards to his current relationship and I can't say I blame him. But the defining difference with his current girlfriend is honesty. He and his girlfriend are almost perfectly honest with each other and I am sure that has helped their relationship considerable.

When you and your significant other are honest with each other (at least as any two people can be honest with each other) this has a rather wondrous effect on the relationship. Now let us assume for the purposes of this little statement that both parties involved are 'reasonable' people. That means Typhus, shut you whore mouth for 5 minutes I realize these are hypothetical conditions here. If two reasonable people are honest with each other a likely conclusion that both of them will reach at a certain point is that there is an unspoken understanding. That is, if one of the involved parties doesn't wish to talk about something, then the other party is likely to assume that there is a good reason for this. This is one of the principles of trust.

Unfortunately this thought process is often perverted by the person that is hiding something, temporary as it may be, into thinking that not telling the truth in a potentially harmful situation is for the benefit of the unknowing party. This is bullshit, plain and simple. What you don't know can and often will hurt you and likely those around you a great deal. Example being a server I work with. A series of events that I won't get into lead to a mate of her boyfriend feeling her up, and another of his mate's seeing her leave the room. Basically she was against telling him what had happened in an attempt to stop him from hurting the offending friend. Every guy that was told this basically said to just tell her boyfriend, she was not really at fault and most guys knew they would rather be told the truth by their significant other than one of their mates, or someone else.

I apologize for this getting a bit round about, but really the point is this. Once trust is established it can cover a lot of areas, but even the smallest betrayal can shatter it like a glass snowflake.