To Trust or Not to Trust? The Question That's Divided Us All

Would you rather fall, be pushed or jump off this cliff?

Or would you rather find a ladder and climb down safely?

[Pistanthrophobia: Fear of trusting people due to past experiences]

Once apon a time, dating consisted of being waltzed around the dancefloor, swept off our feet, wooed, courted, proposed to and loved.

Sounds like fiction doesn't it? That's because it probably is.

Since this apparent utopian time of idealistic love and devotion, it's fair to say a few things have changed.

Feminism and the steady rise of equality has created a more independent woman, more focussed on making a life for ourselves than dreaming of the one who's going to sweep us off our feet and take care of us until our dying days. This has caused us to start thinking about settling down and finding The One much later in life, and therefore leaving so much free space for a culture of more casual dating, an increase in sexual partners and a transition away from monogamy (in some cases). The rest is history.

Friends with benefits, dating sites, one night stands, porn, literature; all leading to a massive increase of being "unlucky in love". No wonder we're finding it harder to know where our trust can lie, we can barely figure out in what situation our emotions can and can't lie.

Wrongly invested emotions and trust is, to put it simply, shit, in any situation, especially relationships. These bad experiences condition us to believe that even seemingly happy relationships will inevitably end and cause us pain.

Rihanna (not that one) has been happily in love for the last two years, despite a year of their relationship being long distance. But she wasn't always "lucky in love" and I asked her if that has effected her trust in her boyfriend: "When we started dating and I felt myself falling for him, I realised that, yet again, I was fucked and I was about to get my heart broken again." stating that, because of past experiences, she still has issues believing that someone isn't going to "jump out and inform me it's all a big prank."

For some out there, it doesn't matter how devoting and trustworthy the person you're with is, it can't stop our nervous minds from wondering, in disbelief, whether or not you're being played. Is it possible that there's truth behind "too good to be true"? Or is faithfulness and affection actually what we should expect and accept from relationships and not simply a fictional fairy tale? Or maybe the key to our lack of trust is that we refer to true love as "fictional".

Q: "Which one applies to you?"

A: "All of them."

Sassy, independent woman who don't need no man, Lavender, swears by her method for love and relationships: "Being worried that you can't trust a boy is like walking around with an umbrella 24/7 in case it rains." Her outstanding and positively admirable outlook on the topic makes me want to just conclude here and now that this is how it should be. It's obvious! If it looks trustworthy, acts trustworthy and quacks trustworthy then it's probably trustworthy... Right?

Lavender isn't alone. English and creative writing lecturer, Mandy Len Catron, spoke for Ted Talks about our bizarre views of love and she's holding literature and English metaphors accountable for our lack of trust that things will run smoothly.

"We swoon, we burn with passion; love makes us crazy, it makes us sick. Our hearts ache and then they break. So, the metaphors we equate the experience of loving someone to extreme pain or violence."

We're just full of revelations today! Is anyone else having the mind blowing, literal nerd out moment of enlightenment that I had when I heard this? She argues that the vicious circle of correlation between experience and language (more specifically, the language we use to describe our experience of love) can have a drastic effect on how we believe we should feel. What does this mean? It means the ever oxymoronic, Shakespeare, has fucked us over.

English graduate, Crystal, is happily single, and laughs at the suggestion that she'd ever expect a man to cheat on her, but that she still wouldn't trust a potential love interest with her feelings. While discussing a past relationship she says "I thought I was in love and then I just mimicked all the emotions that I've seen people who are in love do. I feel like I wasted a year and a half of my life being very unhappy, thinking "well, this is love, because we are taught that love is pain" and also, I read a lot of books." She went on to say "I don't trust anyone to be honest. When I begin to date, I assume (normally accurately) that they are just saying what they think you want to hear." Which means that she agrees that life experiences (including that of our parents) and literature damage our ability to trust a perfect love, or man, but would still rather consciously hold back.

Crystal and I both grew up learning that you must investigate any statement or idea, dissect it, and then analyse it to find it's true core meaning. So, I know where she's coming from when she's presented with a statement of love, affection or even a compliment and thinks "And how did you come to this conclusion?", "Do you have any evidence to support that statement?"

My singular representation of the male species in this post, Simba (others were approached but declined to comment) suggests that actually, the world of casual dating, contradicted by people's desire for a happily ever after, is to blame for these sob stories and first/second/third love heart-breaks that are ruining our ability to trust people, and the idea of love in the future. "Some people get into relationships for the sake of it, hence the generality of many relationships and similar downward trajectories. Probably because they actually want different things." ... Well they say love is blind.

Does our desperation to find the one, but maintain our independent lifestyles, while ignoring all the reasons not to be with a person that could actually spell out the end and therefore wrongly invest our trust, cause us to inevitably end up beside ourselves in agony, wondering how this possibly could of happened, just so we can fulfil the dramatic Shakespearean drama and move on to the next one?

So what does our expert suggest? Well, Simba actually suggests it's time to get real, drop the drama and take a leaf out of Mandy's book and stop falling and start stepping! "Imagine if we were all less passive in love; more assertive, more open minded, more generous. Instead of falling in love [which she earlier described as totally involuntary and often painful] we stepped into love." She continues, "This version of love is not about winning or losing someone's affection. It requires that you trust your partner, and talk about things when trusting sounds difficult."

Now, to some people, this might seem like a very mundane and not very passionate way to be in love. But, thanks to those all important, over-mentioned terrible past experiences of what love is and a serious learnt lesson in who not to trust, I think this sounds like a wonderful, fairy tale way to find, maintain, and thrive in love. I'm not saying it's safe, we're still stepping into the unknown and I have it on medical authority that not all men/women grow up, stop playing games and move on past the "fuck boy" phenomenon, but surely it's better than repeating past habits and ending up in just as much pain as last time?

Imagine it...

Two people, one shared goal, and, most importantly, a whole lot of fun.

Peace Out ♥