Trust is the basis on which we build almost all of our relationships. Without trust, we can find it difficult to interact with friends, family members, and acquaintances. That said, trust is also a significant factor in our relationships with ourselves. This is true because trust allows us to rely on our instincts and to have faith in what our inner monologue has to say.
There are many types of trust, and there are many ways to manufacture it in various parts of our lives. In the following article, we’re going to take a close look at the importance of trust. We’ll also help you identify signs that trust is missing in your interpersonal relationships, and go over some of the best ways in which you can forge trust in your daily lives.
Types of Trust
When you break it down, trust has a lot in common with another word: faith. This point is not to say, necessarily, that trust is a religious sensation. Still, we can apply the same feelings and beliefs that provide us with security when we interact with people we know well to our feelings about the world around us and, indeed, the universe.
Below, we’ll go over some ways that we put our faith in outside forces every day. We’ll also talk about self-trust, which is arguably one of the most important aspects of our development and understanding of ourselves. While it’s important to see these factors as positive forces in our lives, we must also understand that the lack of each factor listed below can be incredibly damaging to our relationships and self-understanding.
Trusting in Intentions
Trusting the intentions of others means putting faith in the fact that their heart is in the right place when they act or speak. This type of trust is built in part on honesty but is mostly something displayed through repeated demonstrations of faithfulness. We can build this type of trust over time, but each individual will have different requirements for its fulfillment.
When a person with whom you have a “trust of intentions” makes a mistake, it is this trust that convinces you that they were not deliberately trying to harm you or others with their actions or words. Though this type of trust is invaluable to intimate relationships, it is, unfortunately, one of the hardest things to rebuild after it is lost.
Self-Trust
Self-trust is not self-confidence (at least, not in the way many of you think). Self-trust is more about self-understanding and self-realization than it is about believing we will always do what is right or always make the correct choices. In a way, you could say we are “confident in ourselves,” but it is more confidence in that we know ourselves and our best and worst attributes.
As with main forms of trust, self-trust requires an understanding of motivations and a faith in overall integrity. When we learn from our experiences, apply lessons, and try to observe ourselves from the outside in, we make progress in developing this type of trust. The enemies of self-trust, however, are regret, avoiding our “inner critic,” and not living in the present.
Spiritual Trust
Many would argue that trust is the most basic component of spirituality. We can apply this concept to various religions or faiths, as well as many meditative philosophies and non-religious worldviews. While this type of trust doesn’t necessarily require a deep faith in God or an intelligent deity, it does require us to acknowledge that the world is bigger than our individual problems.
Admitting that there is more to the world than the stressors that we feel every day allows us to free our minds of a lot of emotional baggage, anxiety, and worry. That said, spiritual trust isn’t necessarily stopping working on your world and saying, “Jesus take the wheel.” Instead, it is more of an acknowledgment that there are limits to what we can control, and we shouldn’t concern ourselves with the rest.
Trusting in Judgement
In general, people will make good decisions. If you think about it, finding a truly selfish person who only makes decisions in their self-interest at the cost of the happiness of others is quite rare. So, just as we trust in the intentions of our close associates, to do we trust that their decisions will largely not end up doing us physical or emotional harm.
Unfortunately, countless factors can impact a person’s judgment, from external factors (alcohol, drugs, situational extremes) to internal ones (stress, mental disorders, lack of sleep). So while you might get into a car with a friend trusting that he won’t get into an accident, the fact that he’s been up all night studying, has been drinking, or is distracted by a personal problem might influence him.
Trusting in Competence
Not everyone is good at everything. Even the most skilled polymaths in history had massive gaps in their abilities. You see this in the modern world every day. That brilliant CEO might have no idea how to navigate with a map. That Engineer might be completely unable to have a conversation that lasts for more than a few seconds.
Trusting competence in others, however, means putting a reasonable amount of faith in the areas in which they excel. Doing this would include allowing a mechanic friend to work on your car, or letting a neighbor who’s fluent in Spanish tutor your child who’s struggling in the subject. Though we rarely think about them, we make these sorts of judgment calls dozens of times in a single day.
Trusting in Honesty
There is probably no greater component to trust than honesty. It is also, unfortunately, one of the easiest types of trust to lose. When you have faith in someone’s honesty, you believe that they will tell you the truth, never withhold information that is relevant or important to your wellbeing, and not hold back when there are interpersonal issues to be addressed.
Honest behavior displayed time and time again can forge some of the strongest types of relationships in the world. Unfortunately, even a single withheld secret, misplaced criticism, or lie can force all of that trust to come crashing down.
Signs that Trust is Lacking
We cannot overemphasize the importance of trust in your day-to-day relationships, be they with a partner, friend, or even casual acquaintance. Protecting yourself from potentially untrustworthy situations and individuals, however, often requires that we teach ourselves to identify the signs that trust is lacking between ourselves and others. Such signs include:
They Can’t Commit to You
People that have trust issues have a terrible time being in situations where they are vulnerable. These issues often stem from a breach of trust they experienced in their lives, which they have not unconsciously translated into their relationship with you. Though it is sad that they have had to endure a trust breach, we cannot put our faith in them until they’ve properly addressed their own issues.
The most common way people will demonstrate a lack of ability to commit is by being “wishy-washy” or inconsistent. These people might seem erratic emotionally or have an “all-or-nothing” approach to interacting with you. This type of behavior is tolerable (in the best of circumstances) with friends, but it can be disastrous if you allow it to creep into romantic relationships.
You Assume the Worst About Them
Our body and mind provide us with a lot of signals every day. Indeed, these intuitions harken back to our discussion about “self-trust” earlier. One way our subconscious tells us that someone we’re interacting with might be untrustworthy is when we almost always assume the worst about them. These assumptions can be both irrational or perfectly reasonable, but their mere existence signals a problem.
Assuming the world about a partner, friend, or acquaintance is a double-edged sword. Not only does it confirm that we secretly suspect that person to be untrustworthy, but it also signifies that we might have trust issues ourselves. Until one can confirm the source of the feeling, it’s best to put the relationship on hold.
They Project Behaviors on You
Untrustworthy people have a unique habit of accusing others of behaviors that they themselves are exhibiting (or at least thinking about). The most common trope is the person who cheats on their significant other and deals with it by accusing them of being a cheater. While this is quite a dramatic example, there are countless other ways this takes place in our day-to-day interactions.
If you have a friend or partner that is constantly accusing you of things that, for whatever reason, just don’t seem to add up, you could be dealing with someone that is wholly untrustworthy. Probably the most manipulative version of this behavior is what we today call “gaslighting,” in which a person deliberately confuses another to make them question their mistrust.
They Hold You to an Unrealistic Standard
People with trust issues will commonly hold both their friends and their romantic partners to a completely unrealistic standard, often expecting near perfection in virtually everything they do. This misrepresentation is a clear sign that they are trying to sabotage the relationship from growing, giving them the power to accuse you of causing it to fail.
They Lie to Themselves
When a person cannot be trusted, you will often see them display behaviors in which they lie to themselves. The fact that they do this doesn’t necessarily mean that they outwardly tell themselves things that aren’t true (though it can), but instead refers to their having a view of themselves that is relatively inconsistent with what others, including you, know to be true.
A big red flag for this type of untrustworthiness is when a person displays an emotional disconnect from how their actions harm others. It is also very apparent in people who describe themselves as something they are clearly not, such as an extrovert that parties every night describing themselves as a book-reading introvert.
They Repeatedly Breach Your Confidence
Quite obviously, a surefire sign that someone is untrustworthy is that they repeatedly breach your trust. They talk to others about you behind your back, they spill confidential information that you intended to only share with them, and they display an overall lack of respect for your feelings and emotions. Such behavior is not typical of people who can’t be trusted, but of people who lack respect and empathy.
They Lack Empathy
Continuing from our last point, we cannot overemphasize the importance of empathy in any person with whom you plan to have a trusting relationship. From the most basic of interactions to our most intimate of relationships, empathy is the glue that holds trust together. Without it, there is no way to tell whether or not someone can truly understand how their breaches of trust affect you.
As most of us now, empathy is the ability to put oneself in another person’s shoes, feel their emotions, and see a situation the way they might see it. This trait is a hallmark of a trustworthy person, as they will most likely operate on a “golden rule” principle, being fully aware of how a person will want to be treated due to knowing how they would like to be treated.
Why Trust is Essential
Now that we have a better understanding of what types of trust there are and how to identify when trust is lacking in a relationship, we’re going to go into more detail about how surrounding ourselves with trustworthy people can affect us and our relationships. While not all of these points will apply to every situation, they are all worth keeping in mind as you interact with others.
Trust is Essential to Intimacy
Many of us long for true intimacy. While we generally associate intimacy with romantic relationships, it actually plays a part in almost every other type of relationship as well. After all, intimacy requires unparalleled trust that is built on the sharing of deep feelings, personal experiences, dreams, and other closely-guarded details of our emotional and private selves.
As we mentioned earlier, those who are unworthy of trust will often shy away from intimacy in all its forms. While this is often because they suffered a breach of trust in the past, we cannot allow ourselves to suffer a similar fate merely because they are yet to address the damage done to them.
We Feel Less Lonely
When we are constantly interacting with people we mistrust, we can develop a very toxic worldview in which almost everything (and everyone) we know is against us. Such a mentality is a recipe for loneliness, which in turn can lead to depression, misery, and an endless slew of mental and physical problems that can be very hard to reverse.
Developing trusting, intimate relationships, however, allows us to open up ourselves more easily, repair our worldview, and all but demolish the symptoms of loneliness. Where we once felt bitter and alone, we will instead feel a part of something greater thanks to the trust we have for our friends and associates.
We Are More Likely to Be Ourselves
Even the best of us put on airs for ourselves and others occasionally. When we don’t trust others, however, we can often allow ourselves to become this in-authentic version of ourselves to keep the real us shielded from emotional damage. Living this way can lead to many harmful interactions with others, and cause us to lose faith in our own self-knowledge.
When we develop more genuine, trusting relationships, however, we can show people who we truly are with more confidence. This means that we can drop all the lying, put the “masks” aside, and be honest with both ourselves and others. Once the lies begin to fade, we will find ourselves renewed, peaceful, and happy.
We Are More Capable
The more we can trust openly in others, the more we can approach the daily challenges thrown at us with gusto. For many reasons, intimate relationships help us become much more capable in our lives by allowing us to tap into a network of social support. When you feel like you have people you can trust at your back – suddenly those problems don’t look so insurmountable.
We Develop a More Positive Worldview
When we begin to understand that there are trustworthy people in the world around us, it can dramatically change the way we view that world. Each of us has a “worldview” whether we are consciously aware of it or not, and that worldview is integral to how we act in our daily lives, how we perceive others, and whether or not we feel empowered or confident.
When we have a “team” of people that we deeply trust, we will almost immediately begin developing a more positive worldview. We can let go of fear and mistrust and begin to see more people around us as positive includes in our world and that of many others.
We Are More Likely to Act Ethically
Intimate, trusting relationships require mutual empathy and honesty. When you have success with those types of emotions, you will almost always begin applying them to other parts of your life. From business dealings to investments to your interactions with strangers, your newfound belief in trust will cause you to become a much more ethical, emotionally–responsible person.
Ways to Build Trust
If this article has made you long for the type of trusting, intimate relationships we’re discussing, never fear. In the following section, we’re going to describe some practical ways in which you can build trust with others (even those you’ve had trust issues with before). Keep in mind: these steps need to be taken by both parties. If you can get them to agree, consider that the first step toward a more trusting relationship.
Communicate Openly
Trust lives and dies by the way we communicate with others. If we make a concerted effort to communicate openly, however, the development of trust is almost a given. After all, lies, secrets, and other trust-killing factors need places to hide in a conversation. Without words to hide behind, we can lay them bare for the other person to see.
It’s important to understand, however, that learning how to communicate this way can take a lot of work. We all have situations in our past that taught us not to be honest for fear of hurting others (white lies) or have had unpleasant reactions to our honesty and openness. Still, if you and your friend, partner, etc. practice, you’ll see huge results in a short amount of time.
Don’t Judge What Comes From an Honest Place
Open communication requires a promise not to judge what a person says, providing it comes from an honest place. We all tend to hide our feelings from time to time, sometimes because we don’t want to hurt a person’s feelings or for some other benevolent purpose. A lie is a lie, however, and lies have no place in an open, trusting relationship.
We need to avoid judging any information or criticism that comes to us from a trusted source as long as it is honest and free of ulterior motive. While it can sometimes be difficult to hear things we don’t want to, we need to learn to appreciate the fact that we’re hearing them, and they aren’t using them in a way that will hurt us.
Keep Your Word and Be Sure to Follow Through
Modern social interaction encourages us to make thousands of empty promises in the average year. No matter how small these little promises are, when we don’t fulfill them, they erode the trust people have for us. This reason is why it’s very important to develop an “honor code” in which you always strive to keep your word and follow through on every promise you make.
Accomplishing this may sound difficult, but we can often turn it into a game of sorts. All you need to do is track every time you make a promise or assurance to someone and ensure you delivery by all means necessary. It won’t take long before you see the results of your newfound trustworthiness blossom.
Constantly Remind Yourselves that Trust is a Process
When working with a significant other or close friend to build a more trusting relationship, it’s crucial to remind ourselves that this kind of trust doesn’t develop overnight. Rather, it is a process that takes months or even years, depending on your past experiences. Merely reminding each other of this fact regularly demonstrates empathy, which – in and of itself – builds more trust!
Take Nothing and No One for Granted
Even if you’ve had dodgy issues with people in the past – if you’re going to develop a stronger sense of trust, you need to learn to take nothing for granted. Every positive interaction or trust-positive move should be acknowledged and appreciated. Doing this will demonstrate appreciation and make the other person more likely to act accordingly in the future.
It is also crucial that you acknowledge when you are forthright and honest with someone so that you can receive positive reinforcement from them. It may seem self-serving at first, but it will help facilitate the open type of relationship you and your friends are pursuing.
Help Whenever Possible, No Matter the Situation
A trustworthy person is always helpful, no matter the situation. Being helpful, however, doesn’t mean that you have to be able to solve every problem that your friends or acquaintances might have. What it does mean, however, is that you find some way to provide beneficial assistance to them without the expectation of something in return.
This type of selflessness breeds trustworthiness over time. When you can honestly demonstrate that you care about the problems of others, they will learn to see you as a person worthy of their trust and feel more confident doing the same.
Never Hide Your Feelings
We’ve mentioned several times before that hiding our feelings is not that different from lying. At the end of the day, you’re still being dishonest about how you feel and holding in information that you should be saying aloud. When we hold things in, we allow them to become a source of bitterness, which will eventually ruin a trusting relationship.
Do What’s Right, But Admit Mistakes
When interacting with others, it is imperative that you always strive to do what’s right by them. There will be time, however, that we will fail to do this either due to miscalculation, lack of foresight, or pure accident. When this happens, we must admit these mistakes, avoid becoming defensive, and do what it takes to foster forgiveness in the other person.
Conclusion
As you can see, the importance of trust is pretty clear, especially once we consider the many ways the lack of trust can negatively affect us, and the gaining of trust can benefit us. If you want to have more honest, open, trustworthy relationships with others, this article should serve as a helpful guide. Just remember to be truthful, helpful, and to remember that trust takes time (but it’s well worth the wait).