Anonymous | 13 Dec 2011

What is the meaning of trust in a relationship and how much can you hide it before it all breaks loose?

When we talk about a relationship, we think of “Love”. If “love” has always been in the spotlight, then “trust” should be the one playing in the shadows. If “love” is what started a relationship, then “trust” is what maintains it. 

I must paraphrase William Shakespeare “love all, trust a few”, it is relatively easy for us to fall in love, harder to find the perfect soul mate, but, it is by far the hardest in any relationship to gain trust. In my definition, “trust” is the foundation on which a relationship is built upon. Without a foundation, everything that has been built up can easily crumble down with a slight tremble. 

To love is to open up your heart and to accept someone, but to trust is to give your heart to someone, knowing that it will be cherished and treated well. All said, “Trust” is imperative in a relationship and its essence is in its bond, not its bind. 

I believe it takes years to build trust with a special someone. Unlike “love", that can be hard to justify, “trust” comes with a fixed composition. Just like concrete foundation that consisted of sand, stone and cement, trust can be found with honesty, sincerity and loyalty. When we love with honesty, people believe us better. When we love with sincerity, people understand our intentions better. When we love with loyalty, people are more assured being with us. 

However, perhaps because we are imperfect humans, that we can’t perpetrate the act of trust so flawlessly. When we lie (regardless the intention), or hide a part of ourselves from others, or lost our focus on what’s truly important in a relationship, we can easily lose the trust that we have relentlessly built in the past. 

Once “trust” is lost, the effect is almost immediate. Hearts will be broken; tears will fall; and connections will sever in a blink of a second. Just like the saying, “Trust is like a mirror… Once it is broken, you can never look at it the same again...”, it was never a concern of how long one must hide “it” before it all breaks loose because, in the end, it will break! When trust is perished, it is the same as saying "game over" in a relationship and, unfortunately, relationship isn’t a game where we could restart from the last save point if we lost. Honestly, I don’t believe that there is any way to patch up a broken trust. 

Although I stated that trust cannot be mended, I believe they can be built anew. When “trust” is lost, never try to search for it, instead recreate a new one. Of course, building a new foundation for a devastated relationship will be much harder and tedious than creating new trust in a new relationship. It will require more than just sincerity (because it is now been judged), loyalty (because it is now lost) and honesty (because it is now been lied upon). It will also require us to summon up our courage to face our mistakes, to suck it up and start all over from scratch. We can only hope that the trust we rebuild can be stronger with persistency and time, if not, as strong as the one we once created.