Can Your Friends or Lovers Trust You?

By: Royane Real.

One of the most common reasons that friendships and romantic relationships break up is because one of the people involved in the relationship or friendship decides he or she really cannot trust the other person.

It may be that the other person has let them down too many times, or has been lying about some important matters. Another factor that can destroy a friendship is idle gossip. Of course, in romantic relationships, infidelity is the greatest destroyer of trust.

If something happens to destroy the trust between two friends, that trust is very hard to ever establish again. If a friendship gets into trouble because one of the people stops trusting the other person, the friendship is probably finished forever. Lovers often work harder to fix a broken trust, because the emotions are so intense, and families may be at risk if the relationship fails.

When you are in a friendship, or if you want to establish a romantic relationship, it’s better to be trustworthy from the beginning. You must always be very careful not to destroy the bond of trust that you build up between the two of you.

What are some of the ways in which trust can be destroyed in a friendship?

One common thing that destroys many friendships happens when a friend finds out that you have been talking about them behind their back. It doesn’t even matter if what you said was true or false or if the gossip was malicious or not, most people are horrified to discover that a trusted friend has been talking about them to others. They become worried that many of their deepest secrets they have entrusted to you may be spread all over town or all over the Internet.

It’s bad enough if you have repeated a few true facts to others that your friend has revealed to you. If it turns out that you have exaggerated a few things or made things up, then you truly don’t deserve to have that friendship anyway, and your friend is right to dump you.

Even if you say you haven’t told all their most important secrets, your friends will stop believing in you. Once you have destroyed your credibility, you don’t have much left.

Another thing that can hurt a friendship or relationship is what one person calls harmless teasing, and the other calls hurtful remarks. If you have a sense of humor that is often quite cutting or cruel, stop it!

Don’t try to weasel your way out of your responsibility for your remarks by saying that the other person is just too sensitive and doesn’t have a sense of humor. That kind of excuse will only work once or twice. After that, if you keep making the same kind of insulting remarks and say you’re just teasing, you may have to kiss the relationship goodbye.

Even something that is as seemingly harmless as always being late, can signal to your friend or lover that you don’t really respect or value them. Once they get fed up enough because of your chronic lateness, they will start noticing more and more negative things about you.

Eventually, they may just decide that you are too unreliable and that the relationship has more negative aspects than positive aspects. The trust is gone.

If your friend or lover tells you that they are upset over something you have done, you need to hear them out sincerely, and explain yourself without making excuses or telling them that they are too sensitive. Then you must make a sincere commitment to change the undesirable behavior.

The bottom line for being trusted in any relationship or friendship is that you must always treat the other person with respect. That is how you build trust in a relationship.

PS : This article was written by friendship expert Royane Real, in her popular book "Your Guide to Finding Friends, Making Friends and Keeping Friends"