Having a healthy and good relationship most certainly requires trust. This can be in any type of relationship whether it is friends, family or significant others.
I have lost trust in many people throughout my life and most of those people I no longer speak to. There are different levels of trust and each person has their own limits as to what they can and cannot handle. The person I want to talk about for this post is my dad. My dad is wonderful and has always been there for me, but I do not have that close father-daughter relationship with him. We speak and all, but it is not the way it used to be and I do not think it will ever be like that again.
As I grew up and started understanding issues of trust and relationships, I realized my dad would always lie to me and my mom. Not about cheating on her, but about the smallest things that are just ridiculous to me. He has always had issues with saving money and that is where he broke the trust I had with him. He just cannot keep his word and that really ended our close relationship. The trust I had in him will never be restored because every time I give him a chance and try to trust him, he just messes up again. Of course we will always be close, but not the way we used to because of those trust issues that will always linger in my mind. This makes me feel bad because I wish I had that “daddy’s little girl” relationship with my dad, but I realized and came to terms that it will not happen.
Trust is a big issue in all relationships. Once it is lost, it is difficult for both sides to continue having that good relationship.
You wrote, “Of course we will always be close, but not the way we used to be because of those trust issues that will always linger in my mind.”
ReplyDeleteI think this is the essence of the harm that is done when trust is broken. Even if we try to forgive and forget, thoughts will always linger in the back of our minds that what happened before could happen again.
This is especially true in a relationship with someone of importance to us, such as you with your dad. If trust was broken because of a casual acquaintance’s behavior, we wouldn’t have much to lose if we broke off the relationship or if we decided to give them another chance.
With people whose relationships are important to us, we will again and again give them the benefit of the doubt to give them more chances to prove that they can earn back our trust, but often in the backs of our minds is the persistent, nagging thought that zebras don’t change their spots.
So we are in conflict with ourselves because the relationship is important to us and we’d like to continuing to give the other person another chance, but we know through experience that they are not likely to change.