A Relationship Without Trust is a House with no Foundation
Trust is learned. You are lucky to find good teachers. Really lucky if they’re your parents, or people in your family. You can learn a good deal from books, but you can’t learn trust. For this you need people, and if you can’t find them, you make them up.
Trustworthy people are reliable and honest. They would never say, “Go outside and play and I’ll take you to the zoo,” then laugh that you believed them. The laughing is nearly worse than the lie. A double attack on innocence.
Trustworthy people speak verifiable reality. They have nothing to hide, have no intention of misleading you. They would never send you to bed in the afternoon, children playing in the street, because they didn’t know what time it was.
Trustworthy people care about your feelings. They listen to your viewpoint. They would never say, “Do what you want. I could give a rat’s ass.”
Trustworthy people admit when they’re wrong, acknowledge their mistakes, and apologize. Seeing their failures, they try hard to do better.
By some holy miracle, I’ve learned these things, so I never had to see the hurt and disappointment on my own child’s face, when I said I would show up and didn’t.
In a nutshell, Trustworthy People Show Up. It’s really very simple (though the untrustworthy will have a million and one excuses which they’ll defend to the grave).
A relationship without trust is like a house with no foundation. Build all the floors you like. They cannot stand.
LBM 11/28/2020
