Trust, Love & Other Stuff
Throughout much of my life I’ve heard that Trust and Love are intertwined. The implication was and is that if you genuinely love someone then you intrinsically trust them. For better or worse, that’s complete nonsense. I’ve said before that Love is a verb. Loving is something you do. Making your spouse coffee just the way she likes it - is an act of Love. Doing things around the house you know will make your spouse happy even when you’re less than thrilled with him or her - is an act of Love. Trust however, is a different animal altogether.
When we “Trust” someone we Love it does not (and cannot) mean we don’t believe they’ll make mistakes, it means quite the opposite. Trusting another human being means we believe and presume that they will, first and foremost, be human. Close relationships are challenging because they involve forever imperfect humans. When someone we cherish does something which negatively impacts us we believe they no longer deserve our trust yet what is it they’ve done for us to NOT trust them?
When I presume an important person in my life will be human I can never presume that they’ll live a life without ever making a mistake, whether it’s large or small and, in fact, knowing that they will make mistakes (and relatively often). The same is true when it comes to trusting ourselves. We may want to always do what is right and worthwhile but it is literally beyond our abilities as imperfect beings. That holds true for EVERY human. Jesus of Nazareth is said to have admonished his followers saying _ “You are not sinners BECAUSE you sin, you sin BECAUSE you are sinners.” Because we are inherently imperfect it is certain we will sin.
One of the more specific reasons we can’t Trust someone to never make a mistake is the all too human reality of emotions. We experience emotions many times a day. Problems however arise and multiply when we allow our life’s choices to be made in response to emotions. The biggest reason for this is that we do NOT choose to have emotions. Emotions/feelings are biochemical in nature. We experience them but we do not choose them. So long as humans continue to equate love and feelings they will forever be disappointed. Love involves acting DESPITE our feelings. When another person, particularly one we hold in high esteem, does or says something that invokes emotions we tend to blame them for our emotions or feelings. In fact those things are a response and we often have no idea why. Blaming someone else for what we feel is as meaningful as blaming an inanimate object upon which we stub a toe for the resulting pain. In fact the pain is the result of our failure to see a danger and when we experience pain we often become angry because of whatever we presume caused the pain (in fact it’s the human nervous system).
We have somehow assumed that if someone is “trustworthy” they will never do or say anything that might trigger a negative emotion in us. The reality is just the opposite. When we love someone we act in certain ways towards them. The perfect cup of coffee, performing household chores we hate because it matters to them, effectively dealing with hurt or anger and seeing the other person as deserving of our loving actions regardless of their shortcomings and failures, even if we have emotional responses to them.
Love requires we act regardless of our feelings. When a child disappoints us we don’t stop being their parents, we never in fact stop loving them because we care for and nurture them. We may be angry, hurt or both, but we still do the things they need by acting out of Love NOT feelings. In the end, there is no requirement of those we love that we can or should “Trust” them to be less human than us. Our national divorce rate remains high because we have the expectation that a spouse “deserving” of our Trust will not err, will never succumb to ever-present temptation, when in fact they will make so many mistakes we will lose count. The problem with Trust isn’t with those we love, it’s within ourselves. Don’t trust someone you love to be perfect, trust them to not only make mistakes but instead to genuinely endeavor to be better or, as the Catholics say, to try and “sin no more.” Even though it’s certain they will continue to sin, this is one instance where the genuine act of trying to be better, done each day and every day, is what we ought to trust another (and ourselves) to do. Trust me!