43: If someone you really love does something to betray your trust, how can you learn to ever trust them again?

I think my response to this question may seem harsh and unromantic, maybe even negative but I only believe in ‘trust’, when it comes to humans, as a concept. Dictionary.com defines trust: “confident expectation of something; hope.” I’m always saying, and don’t mind repeating here, that hope is just another side of fear. When you hope for something you are actually fearing its opposite. For example, if you hope your lover is faithful, you are afraid that they are not. In the above definition of ‘trust’ it even gives us the word ‘expectation’ which again is a ‘hope’. There is no reason to hope, trust, or expect anything in life. You have to take the actions to make a reality for yourself, based on your ideals. You can only take ownership for your own actions so it just doesn’t make sense to expend energy on things outside of your control. You can be faithful, and believe me you stand a better chance of having a faithful mate, but ultimately there is no guarantee. We don’t always know the ‘why’ behind things but you can be sure there is a reason. My saying is, “I only trust God/the Universe 100%. Everyone else gets 99%” I trust that all things happen for exactly the right reason, regardless of our ability to interpret them. Trust to me means, 100% faith. Now going back to trusting others 99%, what that does is it allows a buffer for humanity. We need the same thing for ourselves. Many times when we try to quit a bad habit, we don’t do it the first time. When we fail, we must understand our humanity, we can’t beat ourselves up! Do your best everyday and you won’t have to worry about trusting or hoping, about this and that. Besides, this and that are in the future, make the best of the moment. For those that question my romanticism I ask what’s romantic about thinking about trusting when you’re kissing someone?

Again, there is a second side to this. That is forgiveness. We must always forgive in order to ask for forgiveness. How can you ask God/the Universe to forgive you, or even, how can you forgive yourself, if you fail to forgive others? A better approach is figuring out if, and how, you can safely give other people influence over your feelings. Instead of ‘trusting’ your partner, know that they are doing there absolute best for you, themselves, and you both as a partnership. If you witness them doing their best today, contemplating tomorrow is fruitless, enjoy! If another’s actions are inconsistent and it’s affecting you, then you need to communicate, forgive, and quite possibly, out of self-love, let them go. If you find yourself compromising yourself too much, you are. Be careful of relationships that are co-dependent, where both people NEED each other’s love to survive. A healthy relationship consists of people that WANT each other’s love. That means loving yourself. God/the Universe created us all of equal amount of energy, not to place one at higher value then another. You have to know yourself and love yourself so you can teach your partner to! Returning back on track, if you were hurt by another and don’t think that their actions were appropriate you should first confront them and communicate your feelings. Hopefully the communication will give you a basis for forgiving them, if not, forgive them out of their own ignorance. Next, decide to what degree you want to grant them responsibility over your feelings or actions, that they may make toward/for you in the future. I can’t lay that part out because it depends on how they viewed their actions, if it, or something related to it, has happened in the past, and a variety of other considerations. There are many people I love that I wouldn’t base my outfit on (because their description of the weather can’t be trusted), but I’m not going to ask them for stock tips any faster then I’m going to ask a gambling addicted friend to deposit $5k into my bank account for me ;-) The best thing we can each do is our best to be accountable, honest and keep our word. Doing this will change world!