Trust and Trustworthiness

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. Today’s topic for Tranquil Thursday is trust. This topic is relevant to my life in so many ways.

Maggie starts her post with a quote which says that, for there to be betrayal, there has to have been trust first. This hits home quite hard. As someone who was at least partly rejected by my parents from infancy on, I am not sure I even remember what it is like to have had that basic sense of trust babies need. It may be for this reason that I never felt particularly affected when family members passed away. Even with my maternal grandmother, with whom I was quite close, I never even felt a sense of grief.

Then again, I did feel this sense of grief when my former assigned staff back at my old care home left her job at the care agency in July of 2022. She was the first person I’d ever fully trusted in my entire life. There were others at that care home whom I trusted almost as much.

I am pretty sure I’ll never trust a professional ever again. Not because of this staff, mind you, but because of the way the staff here at my current care home handle the relationship they have with us residents. Several staff have left their jobs here without ever saying a word and then I didn’t find out until after they’d left. Yesterday a staff I’d repeatedly talked about this to, left as well and I only found out, from his colleague, at the beginning of his last shift.

You may be wondering where my spouse is in all this. Well, I do trust my spouse not to betray me – in the sense of leaving me, mistreating me, or the like -, but it’s only been over the past few months that I’ve been able to truly be myself around my partner.

I am, generally speaking, a very distrustful person. When someone enters my life, their first impression has to be really good for me to have a positive idea about them and, when they mess up, I feel very easily betrayed.

With respect to being trustworthy myself, I’m not sure. I don’t think I am very trustworthy, but it isn’t intentionally. I mean, often I struggle with distinguishing between safe and unsafe people and in this sense end up putting myself at risk as well as potentially betraying my spouse. I remember one time a fellow patient at the psych hospital offering to hold my hand when guiding me and he commented about our spouses not liking this if they saw it. I up till that point was cool with this man as a peer and I initially didn’t see the signs that I was firstly betraying my spouse and secondly also possibly being groomed.

In addition, I can be quite impulsive and dysregulated. I’ve told my spouse that I’m leaving too many times to count. I understand my spouse sees this as significant betrayal too. I know – and my spouse knows this too – that we are meant for each other, but still it probably comes across quite harsh.

14 thoughts on “Trust and Trustworthiness”

  2. Astrid, I can see how important it is to have a trusting relationship with the staff you work with every day. It must have felt like the biggest betrayal for them to simply disappear without warning.

    When we lose trust at any t8me in our life, especially from family that should love us without reservation, it is difficult to recover the ability t9 trust again. I wish you well in finding trust with those closest to you.

    Thank you for responding.

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  4. Trust is a huge issue and I think it’s something that’s very hard to develop if we have a difficult childhood. I married a man completely different to my father because I could never have trusted someone who was like my dad. And I also have never felt sadness over my dad’s passing – which is a little sad in itself really…

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  5. Trust is such a hard thing. I’m sorry you were never able to establish it with anyone properly as a child, and then when you finally trust that staff she broke it. THat must have been really painful, and same about staff in your current home leaving without saying anything. It would sure be a huge problem for me too. I have been lucky to have a healthy family so I’ve been able to establish some level of trust as a child with my parents, but I guess I just don’t have a very trustful personality by nature so I’m generally quite suspicious and wary of people anyway. I’m used to it but in some life situations it really bites. I’m glad you’ve been having a more trusting relationship with your spouse lately. Sometimes it totally does take years for trust to develop.

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    1. I completely agree with you. Re the old care home staff, of course carers can get a new job and that’s totally okay, so in this sense I don’t blame her for having broken my trust. I feel much worse about the staff here who leave without ever saying anything.

      Re my spouse, I think our marriage has grown especially strong over the past few months, when I started treating my spouse as an equal rather than as someone who is higher up somehow than me.

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  6. Astrid, I completely understand your feelings of betrayal. Being betrayed as a child is difficult because it is your first experience with trust. I’m also sorry that the people you cared about didn’t say goodbye.

    I’ve been betrayed several times in my life, and I’m still learning how to trust others. 

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