"Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work." --Warren Bennis 

Every relationship that you will ever have, be it romantic, business, friendship, acquaintance, or stranger requires some level of trust in order to function. Trust forms the basis of how we interact with media, the internet, banks, schools, churches, and organizations. Who you are and how you see the world is going to be mostly based on who you've decided to trust.

What is Trust?

At the most basic definition, trust is how accurate you believe the information you are being given is. Trust means we can accept what the other party says at face value without having to critically evaluate every statement. The higher your level of trust, the easier it is to exchange thoughts and ideas. That is the reason I chose the quote I did to start this article. With trust your relationships can flow open and easily, like a well-oiled machine. Without it, everything grinds to a halt as it becomes necessary to watch what you say, what you do, spend extra time evaluating the statements of others, deciding whether they will hold the agreement you made. In a trusted position you can feel secure and relaxed. In an untrusted one you waste a lot of energy on anxiety and uncertainty.

What are the different ways we trust?

There are many different ways we trust people too, often in ways that might not correlate with each other. You might trust your bank to hold on to your money, but you probably aren't giving your teller your deepest secrets. You might trust your friend to be there for you when you need them, but you might not want to let them borrow that new jacket of yours because they tend to get drunk and lose things. You might trust your parents to care for you, but you're not believing the stuff your dad says after watching Fox News all day. Often we are more open to trusting people who we already trust in one area, but you definitely can and probably should trust some people more in some ways than others. The main trust factors are support, security, property, fidelity, commitment, and factual:

Support - How much can you depend on this person to offer help and care when needed?

Security - How much can you trust them to not cause you physical or emotional injury?

Property - Do you trust this person not to steal your things or make responsible financial decisions?

Fidelity - Do you believe they will stick to agreed upon sexual boundaries?

Commitment - Will this person follow through on what they promise?

Factual - Does this person give me dependable information?

Not every factor will matter in every relationship (I don't really care who the deli guy is sleeping with as long as he washes his hands before making my sandwich), but which factors are high trust and low trust will determine what sort of relationship you are able to have with a particular person.

Trust in Romantic Relationships

 "To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved." --George MacDonald 

Romantic relationships are unique because they are generally the one relationship where every factor is important. What actually inspired me to write this piece was a close friend of mine discovered her entire relationship was a lie. Once she found one factor crumbling, the rest quickly came down as well. Interestingly enough, it wasn't fidelity that brought it down. Really up until the last 200 years, marriage was a business transaction mostly. You (or your family) found someone that you could raise a child with, maintain a house and/or business with, and provide stability and security. Love was not the most important factor like it is today. But I can tell you love does not make a relationship work, trust does. Your spouse is your partner for the rest of your life. I have been in a relationship with someone I loved very much, but was a terrible partner. I can tell you with certainty there is no amount of love that can make a relationship or marriage work if you can't trust them to be a good partner. Additionally it seems bizarre the disproportionate weight fidelity gets when it comes to defining the factors too. I guess it's because humans tend to like black and white ways of evaluating things, but your partner having sex with someone else (assuming you don't contract a STD from it) is a lot less harmful to you than wrecking your credit. That doesn't mean you should just let someone trample your feelings and your boundaries on the issue, but it's more to say that it should be co-equal with the other factors and not the primary one as it seems to be with a lot of people.

What to do when trust is broken?

 "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it." --Warren Buffett 

When trust is broken often what is needed is the one thing that is most difficult at the time; an open and honest conversation. Take a moment to be upset and work through whatever emotions you have regarding what happened. The offender should also take a moment and think about why they took the action that they did. I believe that most people do not act out of purely malicious intent, especially towards people they care about, but instead have underlying reasons for the malfeasance. Broken trust is an infection that will rot the core of your relationship until it can be fixed. If you can move quickly to establish the reason you can recover much faster than if you let it linger. This means the offender needs to be introspective and honest as to why they made the choice they did, and the offended needs to be willing to listen and be understanding and empathetic. Often the reason we choose to lie or do something untrustworthy to someone we care about is a failure to communicate a need, insecurity, or a simple mistake. In fact, if you are able to establish and address the underlying reasons, you may even find yourself in a better position than before anything happened!

This of course is a best case scenario. Sometime people ARE malicious. Being open and honest is hard, maybe you're not ready to do that yet. Maybe you don't truly understand your reasons for taking the actions you have. Trust takes forever to build because you are essentially trying to prove a negative. You can do the right thing 1,000 times, but 1 example to the contrary will always be enough to give people pause. If you break it, it's going to take a long time to rebuild. Where you go from there often depends on your relationship with the person, how important the trust factor that was broken is to that relationship, and how egregious the offence. Often the solution is to avoid having to trust them until you feel confident in doing so again. That friend who spilled your gossip, don't tell her secrets. That co-worker who keeps not following through on assignments, mitigate their role in your projects (also hope they get fired). That new boyfriend who got drunk and yelled at you, break it off with them. Someone you've been with for a year or two that does that however, try to address the issue and ask that they avoid drinking around you. Maintaining a relationship with broken trust is difficult to deal with and will take a lot of hard work to overcome. Often times ending it is a healthier move than dealing with the stress of distrust. Unfortunately, the only fix once you get there is time to rebuild. Sometimes you can restructure the relationship in a way to avoid those feelings while you rebuild, but only if there is enough of a base to the relationship to support it.

Does this mean you always have to tell the truth?

Paradoxically, no it doesn't. But you should understand why you are lying or omitting things and the consequences of those actions. Let's look at coming out as gay as an example. Ideally you should be able to tell everyone that. However, you can't trust everyone that they won't be judgmental or discriminatory with that information and therefor you don't feel safe putting that out there. Cheating is another example. A lot of people say they want to know about it, until they do, and then they wish they didn't. My general advice for people is to ask why they did it, and will they do it again. If it was because they are unhappy with their relationship, then go either fix that or break up with them. If it was an isolated incident then just suffer with your guilt unless you do it again, at which point it's probably time to talk to your partner. Often the damage done by that broken trust can poison a relationship that is otherwise fine over a moment that is objectively inconsequential. Even personally, I have this amazing fiance that I feel confident I can say anything to, but when we first started dating I was intentionally vague about my living situation (was with my parents) and reasons for it (crazy ex-girlfriend) until I felt comfortable enough to tell the truth. Ultimately you need to let your personal ethics be your guide here, and we should strive to have an open and honest life, however you should exercise you own judgment to determine when you should or should not lie or omit. Ironically, we often lie because we don't yet trust the other party enough to be truthful. If you do lie though, make sure it's because you aren't ready to tell the truth, or because you are protecting yourself or people you care about, and not because you're just trying to get away with something you know you aren't supposed to be doing.

 "It is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest, that holds human associations together." --H. L. Mencken 

In short, without trust, no relationship can function well, if at all. You don't need to trust everyone with everything, but the factors that are necessary for that relationship to function are essential. Almost every relationship will have a point where trust is violated, but if both parties can work through the issues that caused it then much of the damage can be prevented. If not, then you have some hard choices to make about whether the relationship is worth continuing and in what capacity. And of course telling the truth is essential to have other people trust us, however if you do need to lie, do it for the right reasons.

Hopefully this post can help anyone out there dealing with trust issues and I'm always happy to discuss things more in the comments!

Photos: 1, 2