So there’s this thing called trust. It’s a sim­ple affair really, one between your strength of char­ac­ter, your nature and the qui­etly resid­ing layer of respect given by another. Trust lives in us all, be it the good kind or his close cousin, mis­trust. The prob­lem with trust though is that it can be gained, lost, sac­ri­ficed or just not accepted at all. These things are some­what accept­able in the myr­iad num­ber of events and cir­cum­stances that lead to the sta­tus of trust between us but when its flaunted and abused like some­thing eas­ily dis­pos­able it can quickly lead to a vac­uum of self-doubt and unintentional/intentional disrespect.

Some peo­ple don’t trust, that’s fine. These peo­ple may take it upon them­selves to put peo­ple through a series of tests before they open up any lay­ers and begin to lend some belief in what another is say­ing. Oth­ers trust straight away with­out doubt, this is a lit­tle more dan­ger­ous but can lend itself to an over­whelm­ing feel­ing of accom­plish­ment when that trust is returned and heartfelt.

Then there are those who find a healthy level of trust, which is usu­ally cou­pled with respect and the edu­ca­tion of learn­ing what some­body is like. This is the most com­mon I feel. The one where those who under­stand each other trust because it’s the reward gained from con­stant respect and the notable lack of abuse. This is the kind I believe in the most as blindly walk­ing into some­thing is ques­tion­able but also demon­strat­ing a God­like want for all to per­form like mon­keys is pure craziness.

Mar­riage ascer­tains a cer­tain degree of trust. Most would hope that a rela­tion­ship so devoted that chil­dren can be spawned — and loved — so effec­tively would cement a divine trust and respect between those involved. To have a child is to cre­ate life and those who cre­ate life should be the moth­ers and fathers our chil­dren look up to. Thus, no abuse should ever be forth­com­ing of this trust, this co-habitation of two lives mutu­ally ded­i­cated to estab­lish­ing the roots of a fam­ily (or merg­ing with them) and rais­ing seeds to forests.

But then this is my view, one of bil­lions. The idea of this notion is merely that in itself, a notion built upon my self-educated view of what a life­time with oth­ers entails. Respect, I think that’s the defin­ing bench­mark of trust and its foun­da­tions. To respect some­one and place some of your own fragility in their hands is another divin­ity in the world, espe­cially in these times. But do we baulk and flex when we sus­pect some­thing is off? Do we shud­der the foun­da­tions to such a degree that respect seem­ingly turns to ashes and the ques­tion of one’s char­ac­ter is raised?

This is the issue I have with those who find them­selves guilty of pledg­ing them­selves to serve a future together only to offer up this trust quicker than the sun turns to dark. One ques­tion, or even less and the respect becomes a bit­ing shard in the side. Stu­pid friv­o­li­ties become poi­son in the minds of the scared to such a degree that the fear­ful turn their appre­hen­sion and sus­pi­cion (as unfounded as it may be) on those they love and fear loosing.

The over­whelm­ing down­side to all of this is of course the plague that begins to infect the rela­tion­ship and the foun­da­tions. What we have done falls into the fire: hard work, chil­dren and our love of them, want, choice, ded­i­ca­tion and love again for our part­ners… the facets of our rela­tion­ships are insur­mount­able. But still, these things can be shot down and deflated with the sim­plest of abuse. If we start to use trust and quote it like an old poem it becomes noth­ing more than a tac­tic or even worse, a shadow of what it once was and lit­tle more than another thing lost in the fire.

Insid­i­ous­ness in the way it works, it also ques­tions our faith in oth­ers and our very nature and char­ac­ter. We begin to ques­tion our­selves as ridicu­lous as that may be even when faced with noth­ing more than sus­pi­cions and off hand remarks designed to hurt us, per­haps, or to just help an accuser defend them­selves pro-actively. The worst thing in this labour is the dis­re­spect and loy­alty lost. Some­thing gets eaten away and we’re left with self-doubt as I men­tioned before. We become self-concious, con­cerned that we may do some­thing that war­rants sus­pi­cion as inno­cent as they may be.

It’s sim­ply unfair. To have to act a cer­tain way or qui­eten those things that tend to make another worry just to keep them from the very wor­ry­ing we know they’ll have any­way. We con­tinue on as nor­mal, but like lights in the fog some things raise stu­pid ques­tions and unwar­ranted accu­sa­tions to the point of ridicule.

In my view those who find them­selves sus­pi­cious should sit down and think about their motives and what the hell it is they have to be sus­pi­cious about. Weigh the one-side against the other, the pros and cons, the gains and loses and really think hard about what it is they’re ask­ing. If I were them I think I would do this before I even open my mouth and even when I do it would be to speak with them and not to accuse with a har­row­ing pointed fin­ger or an off hand comment.

It hurts to be mis­trusted, to have some­one ques­tion your char­ac­ter and to ques­tion your devo­tion to some­thing you love more than life. Every time some­one shows a lit­tle dis­trust in you it’s like a slap in the face. If we show you respect and never ques­tion your motives when doing things — on the sole basis that we trust you and believe in you and ‘us’ — then the least you could do is return the gesture.