I know that there is a shared belief in our community that trust is absolutely essential and of paramount importance in forming power-based relationships. I've "listened" to untold people go on and on about giving their trust, and having their trust broken, and revoking their trust as a result. I just don't get it. I don't think there is any such thing as "trust" in the way it is typically thought of in this context. I think that we tend to see that transaction in the same way a young child views their relationship to some all-powerful personal deity: "If you will just do this whatever-I-want thing for me, I promise I will be good, say my prayers, eat my peas, and get straight A's in school."
I think there is a much more reasonable and adult approach to creating and maintaining relationships. I think self-aware adults ought to approach intimate, long-term relationships like the agreement that they are. I think that when people consider entering into a relationship, they ought to negotiate the very best bargain that they can -- bring your best offer to the table, and insist that your partner(s) do likewise. I'm not talking about finances, although that might be part of the deal. Instead, I think we ought to be discussing talents, strengths, capacities, gifts, deficiencies, fears, needs, demands, limits, history, wounds, quirks, and whatever else we can think of. No steely-eyed business person ought to ever drive a harder bargain than we do for ourselves in the beginning days of a new relationship. I don't care whether we are creating a couple, a triad, a quad, or some sort of web of partners. There is no room for starry-eyed romantic fantasies here. We ought to negotiate and re-negotiate until we are absolutely sure there is not one additional benefit or demand that we can wring out of the process.
Then, we ought to go off to think long and hard about what we want to do. There's a decision to be made, at that point. We ought to decide whether to do it or not do it, and we ought to be committed to doing our level best to live up to the decision that we make. If we are going to enter into an intimate relationship, then we ought to enter in with our whole heart; with all our strength; with a clear mind, and with absolute determination to hold up our end of the bargain. And I think that reasonable adults ought to expect that there will be times when partners will NOT live up to our highest expectations. I think we ought to know, going in, that there will be disappointments and heartbreaks and times when we will feel that the bargain we made wasn't good enough. If we are not willing, at the outset, to invest energy and effort and sheer raw guts in the endeavor, then we ought not to enter into the relationship in the first place.
If we decide to go forward, then I think we ought to begin laying up relational capital that will see us through the inevitable lean and hard times. From my perspective that means that we regularly evaluate our situation, seeing the problems, but attending particularly to the good things, the positive things, the strengths and joys that we derive from our relationships. I think that is the essence of "trust" -- that today and tomorrow and next week and next month, I am going to value and appreciate and nurture and celebrate the life I CHOSE. I am going to be gentle with myself when I fall short, and I am going to be gentle with my partners -- not holding them to higher standards than I want to be held to myself. I am going to keep on believing in the possibilities and the dreams for myself and my partners, and I am going to work to support and enhance those possibilities and dreams for myself and for us all.
It isn't about trusting. It is about working deliberately and consciously to create the thing that we hope can become between us. It is work and risk and triumph and failure. Today. And today. And today. Over and over and over and over. It is about doing it as long as I can do it in the best way I can do it until I cannot possibly do it anymore. And it is about hoping with everything I've got that it never gets to the place where I can't do it anymore. I think that when we stop believing in the numinous wispiness of "trust" we can be free to roll up our sleeves and get to work laying the foundations and building the walls and roofs of strong and healthy relationships.
I think there is a much more reasonable and adult approach to creating and maintaining relationships. I think self-aware adults ought to approach intimate, long-term relationships like the agreement that they are. I think that when people consider entering into a relationship, they ought to negotiate the very best bargain that they can -- bring your best offer to the table, and insist that your partner(s) do likewise. I'm not talking about finances, although that might be part of the deal. Instead, I think we ought to be discussing talents, strengths, capacities, gifts, deficiencies, fears, needs, demands, limits, history, wounds, quirks, and whatever else we can think of. No steely-eyed business person ought to ever drive a harder bargain than we do for ourselves in the beginning days of a new relationship. I don't care whether we are creating a couple, a triad, a quad, or some sort of web of partners. There is no room for starry-eyed romantic fantasies here. We ought to negotiate and re-negotiate until we are absolutely sure there is not one additional benefit or demand that we can wring out of the process.
Then, we ought to go off to think long and hard about what we want to do. There's a decision to be made, at that point. We ought to decide whether to do it or not do it, and we ought to be committed to doing our level best to live up to the decision that we make. If we are going to enter into an intimate relationship, then we ought to enter in with our whole heart; with all our strength; with a clear mind, and with absolute determination to hold up our end of the bargain. And I think that reasonable adults ought to expect that there will be times when partners will NOT live up to our highest expectations. I think we ought to know, going in, that there will be disappointments and heartbreaks and times when we will feel that the bargain we made wasn't good enough. If we are not willing, at the outset, to invest energy and effort and sheer raw guts in the endeavor, then we ought not to enter into the relationship in the first place.
If we decide to go forward, then I think we ought to begin laying up relational capital that will see us through the inevitable lean and hard times. From my perspective that means that we regularly evaluate our situation, seeing the problems, but attending particularly to the good things, the positive things, the strengths and joys that we derive from our relationships. I think that is the essence of "trust" -- that today and tomorrow and next week and next month, I am going to value and appreciate and nurture and celebrate the life I CHOSE. I am going to be gentle with myself when I fall short, and I am going to be gentle with my partners -- not holding them to higher standards than I want to be held to myself. I am going to keep on believing in the possibilities and the dreams for myself and my partners, and I am going to work to support and enhance those possibilities and dreams for myself and for us all.
It isn't about trusting. It is about working deliberately and consciously to create the thing that we hope can become between us. It is work and risk and triumph and failure. Today. And today. And today. Over and over and over and over. It is about doing it as long as I can do it in the best way I can do it until I cannot possibly do it anymore. And it is about hoping with everything I've got that it never gets to the place where I can't do it anymore. I think that when we stop believing in the numinous wispiness of "trust" we can be free to roll up our sleeves and get to work laying the foundations and building the walls and roofs of strong and healthy relationships.
swan
Thank you for the thought provoking post. I agree that it is a matter of working towards desired and ongoing outcomes. That said, I still think much rides on trust. At the end of the day, when all cards have been laid out and bargaining done the decision to go forth is ultimately based on trusting that person will do their best to make it so.
ReplyDeleteI found myself nodding along with so much of this posting. I think its natural at the early stages of a relationship, before we've made commitments to each other, to kind of 'drift' along in a romantic haze but, when we reach the stage of commmitment, I think we need to be as sure as we can be, for ourselves and for our partners, of what both are prepared to put into the relationship, to be sure its the kind of relationship we want, and that we're prepared to do the work and have the patience to make it so.
ReplyDeletelove and hugs xxx
p -- I understand the reaction that you give voice to when you write:
ReplyDelete"I still think much rides on trust. At the end of the day, when all cards have been laid out and bargaining done the decision to go forth is ultimately based on trusting that person will do their best to make it so."
However, I am convinced that it adds very little to our understandings to think in this way. Why is it that we place so much valance on the notion of trust in this context? If I choose an investment advisor, I do the due diligence to make sure that the person is competent, works with integrity, shares my view of things, has a good track record, etc. Then, I suppose that I move forward "trusting" her or him to do their best to actualize what we envisioned together... But really, I don't spend a lot of time debating the essential need for trust in that context. It is assumed, as an outgrowth of what goes before it. The same is true if I choose a contractor to remodel my kitchen, or a doctor to remove my gall bladder, or... In a thousand human interactions everyday, we each work to arrive at the point where we are able to feel trusting within that context. We don't think of trust as the foundation or the essential element -- it is a natural benefit and outgrowth of us doing our "homework."
It seems to me that we, in the lifestyle community, have this backwards. Trust is not the foundation. It is the capstone. It comes out of a well built and well tended relationship -- it is not and never should be looked at as the "beginning."
swan
Perhaps we are really embracing the same premise as these 2 statements from you sum up my feelings as well......
ReplyDelete"Then, I suppose that I move forward "trusting" her or him to do their best to actualize what we envisioned together... But really, I don't spend a lot of time debating the essential need for trust in that context. It is assumed, as an outgrowth of what goes before it."
"Trust is not the foundation. It is the capstone. It comes out of a well built and well tended relationship -- it is not and never should be looked at as the "beginning."
Nice post swan. There's much to mull here.
ReplyDeleteI think maybe I might use the word confident in the outset and that trust is the word that fits the emotion that grows into the capstone.
Confident seems to be what you get to when you trust in your own homework and assessments of someone or a situation.
Trust is what comes later and is much more deeply rooted in me. Its an expansive emotion.
I think that things get shaky when relationships leap beyond the evolution of that slowly rooting trust...or even beyond the bounds of the confidence.
Sometimes life happens and you get in deeper than you intended and then things get tested at a far faster rate than is the least comfy.
That's when I feel alot of turmoil really.
That and sometimes, though I've done my homework on the person I've invested my relationship energy in, there's other people in his life that I didn't vet and didn't think I needed to vet beyond is he happy with them and is that person a basically kind and healthy person? Vetting a person for a deeper relationship that effects the one I have with my partner is a whole other kind of homework. Know what I mean?
And sometimes when in a power exchange you don't get as many choices as you might have left to your own devices. That's when I'd use words like "trust issue". *smiles*