To trust or not to trust – that is the question. I’m sure everyone has been in such a situation where they’ve had to decide whether or not they should trust someone. It could be a partner, a lover, a friend, a child, or just about anyone. Trust in relationships does not grow overnight. In fact, it can take years to grow. Only if you trust a person do you commit to them, because love and trust go hand-in-hand. You cannot really be with someone that you don’t trust, because then everything goes haywire.
But that’s the thing with trust. It is something that is so difficult to gain and so easy to lose. Trust in a relationship can go down the drain with just one lie. A slippery slope of lies, if caught, can break the trust in no time. It can disappear overnight even if it took forever to establish.
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Here’s why trust in a relationship is very hard to regain once lost:
1. Old habits die hard
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Lying once or twice might seem innocent enough, but it’s easy to have one small lie turn into a bunch of small lies. Then the small lies turn into big ones and then it just becomes a problem. Your significant other will obviously lie at times, but if it becomes a pattern and you catch them doing it time and again, then you’ll feel issues cropping up. You’ll begin to question if there were other lies; that if they lied now, can they also lie later? These questions forming in your head are a sign that you’re beginning to lose the trust that you had in your partner. Point being, lying is a habit that can be easy to fall into, and the trust will diminish quickly once these are discovered.
2. One lie is all it takes
Yes, that really is all that is needed for your trust to be shattered. One lie from your partner will leave you thinking too much. Trust in a relationship is the backbone of the love that is shared by two people. The uncertainty that you feel will leave you feeling crazy and paranoid. Once you are at this stage, moving forward becomes very difficult, and it’s easy to understand why. You spent so long trusting someone and letting them be a part of your life; so the thought of them having violated your trust is very disturbing. Once you lose the trust, the rest of the relationship will automatically come crumbling down.
3. Trust needs to be earned
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Trust is not something that you can hand out to a random stranger that you meet out on the street. It takes a lot of effort and time to build trust within a relationship. It is not something you’re entitled to; it is something that you earn before committing to a person. You spend time with a person, get to know them, find a confidant in them, and that’s where the trust begins to form. It is not something that you can toss around lightly, because if you do, you might never be able to get it back.
4. Lying can be falsely rewarding
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You come back home drunk and when your mother asks you why you’re late, you say that your bike broke down. Your mother lets it go and you feel a small sense of achievement for getting away with that small lie. If your partner gets away with a lie, they’ll feel the same rewarding sense of satisfaction because they dodged a bullet – but that’s the problem here. That little sense of satisfaction is addictive – ‘like if I got away with that, I can get away with this too.’ That feeling right there is too dangerous for a relationship. When lying comes easy, there is going to be some damage coming down the road.
5. There’s always more to it
It is no accident that people are being dishonest with you. Trust in a relationship can be dismantled by a lack of honesty between the couple. Cheating is a disgraceful thing to do, but hiding the fact that you cheated is even worse. Not holding yourself accountable is definitely worse than your actions themselves. Your partner being dishonest with you time and again speaks volumes about the kind of person they are. You don’t want to get stuck with someone like that for the rest of your life, now do you?
Suggested read: 12 quotes on trust that will make you think hard about breaking it – EVER
Once the trust breaks, there is no going back. Of course, it is possible for the trust to be built again, but it’s no cakewalk. It will take years of effort and overcoming obstacles to get there. If you spend all that time trying to build the trust and get nowhere, then it is going to leave you feeling miserable. The easier way out would be to just let go of the relationship altogether.
You don’t want to have doubts about the person that you married. You don’t want to have to question something that the love of your life says or does. You don’t want any of that. Instead, you want to feel open with your partner. If you catch your partner lying repeatedly, you’re going to wonder if you even know the person that you claim to love. What if that person lied about something important in their past? What if they lied about something that is crucial to you having fallen in love with them? The ‘what ifs’ will not stop, and that’s why you will have to and want to put an end to it.
When you start to wonder whether you can trust someone or not, that is when you already know you don’t. It is just how human nature works and yours is no different. So, don’t let that trust someone has in you be lost; because getting it back is next to impossible.
Featured image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
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