It occurred to me today that I have trust issues.

Actually, this has probably occurred to me periodically for most of my adult life. When I say periodically, what I mean is, I feel like I have trust issues every time I am forced to trust someone that I don’t necessarily have a reason to trust, or when I have trusted someone and it ends up having been a bad idea.

I don’t necessarily have any theories about why it is that trust is so hard for me; I’ve been questioning the motives of people around me for as long as I can remember. The problems with this approach to life are many, not the least of which is that I end up being overly suspicious. When people are being sincere and legitimate, it often takes me longer to realize it than it would if I weren’t so distrusting. But, when there are reasons for being suspicious, I end up well-protected by my wariness.

* * *

I’ve owned cars, of many different shapes and sizes, for a couple of decades now. I think I can say that I have only recently found a mechanic that I absolutely trust (Tim –> if you’re reading this, here’s to you, my friend). I know that I trust Tim because he is the person I want to talk to when I am having a problem with one of my cars. I am extremely happy with all of the work that Tim has done on my cars in the past, and I know that he always does his best to make sure that the problems I have get fixed.

If that sounds like an advertisement for the guy, it’s just because I am so happy to have someone that I trust.

Before I had Tim, getting car repairs was something that would cause my blood pressure to rise. Not knowing who I could trust, always wondering whether or not someone was jerking me around, suggesting fixes that I didn’t need to separate me from my money.

In fact, I recently ended up having some trouble with a car away from home. The first thing I did was I called my mechanic. It is so nice to be able to say that I have a mechanic. He was able to tell me exactly what I needed to do to be able to get to where I was going safely. Isn’t trusting someone a wonderful thing?!?!

* * *

I’ve never been the kind of person to have a lot of friends. I prefer to have a small circle of close friends with whom I share things. I suspect that most people operate in this way, unless they happen to be a lot more trusting than me.

I think part of the reason that I operate the way that I do in this arena is past experience. I had a friend, or someone that I thought was a friend, when I was in middle school. I would tell him some of my most secret thoughts, and he would either laugh at me, which is hard to take when you’re an insecure middle school geek like I was, or worse, he would use the information against me.

As an example, I told this ‘friend’ one time about a girl that I liked. She was a mutual friend of ours. I told him how pretty I thought this girl was, and how wonderful I thought it would be to “be boyfriend and girlfriend” with this girl. My ‘friend’ not only went, almost immediately, to the girl to tell her about how I felt, but he then made his move to become her boyfriend, for a short time.

And, while I don’t know where either of these two individuals, my ‘friend’ or the girl I was interested in, are today, I do know that the lesson that he taught me is still with me. When you open yourself up to other people, it’s an invitation to betrayal and pain. You should do some significant work to make sure that the decision that you are making is a good one.

* * *

The thing about trust is that it takes a long time to create, and mere moments to destroy. When it comes to the circle of people that we trust, it is probably comprised of a group of people who have, over long stretches of time, given us reasons to believe in their honesty, integrity, and loyalty.

Unfortunately, the circle of friends can more easily become a smaller circle than it can a larger circle, at least in my experience. At any moment, anyone in your inner circle could end up giving you a reason to wonder why it is that you trust them in the first place.

But then again, I don’t know if that’s how it works for me, anymore. When I was a kid, maybe, but these days, there’s grace –> at least for the slight offenses and trespasses. I suppose that, the more time you spend building a relationship with someone, the more likely you are to weather the small problems in the relationship –with grace– because of what you’ve invested in the other person.

While this isn’t to say that large misdeeds wouldn’t have very detrimental effects, I guess I can think of examples of situations where I’ve been graceful (or other people have been graceful with me) because of the importance of maintaining the relationship. As a kid, friends come and go and there doesn’t seem to be any ground-breaking significance in whether or not you gain one or lose one, in the grand scheme of things. As an adult, you understand that there is room for forgiveness and dispensation when you are dealing with others, especially if you’d like to see that in others’ dealings with you.