Trust

A bit of an epiphany last night. 

Epiphanito? 

I have had a concept of trust that is fundamentally flawed. It's more accurately been a series of positions I've taken that are more related to control, self-protection, safety and emotional distance. When I have set things up so that I feel safe, then I have said "I trust you." 

To a degree, we want to trust people who are trustworthy. That is a valuable way to navigate the world. It's one of the promises of Codependents Anonymous:

"I am capable of developing and maintaining healthy and loving relationships. The need to control and manipulate others will disappear as I learn to trust those who are trustworthy."

But it seems obvious to me now that feeling invulnerable to being hurt, being in control of a relationship, holding most of the cards or at least thinking I do— none of those constitute a foundation on which I could legit say I am building trust. 

Trust now looks like 

1. Allowing myself to be in an important relationship where it is clear that I could get eviscerated

2. Staying open to the other person anyway

In other words, now it seems like trust can only live and breathe in an exchange where there is risk, where I am vulnerable. Where I am not in control and neither is the other person. Where I could get hurt but I'm staying in the game anyway. 

This is probably obvious to a lot of you, but not obvious to me at all. I have thought that I trusted someone if I felt safe being in relationship with them. There's an element of that, for sure. It would be unwise to leave oneself open to someone who is untrustworthy. A liar, a cheat, an unreliable person. But even in relationship with someone with integrity, trust isn't about safety. 

It's about staying open to risk.