Trust Your Sweetheart

Trust develops trust. Acknowledging that you trust the person you love with your life, with your heart, your body, your talents, your fears, your children, your worldly good, invites him or her to become even more worthy of that trust. In a wonderful upward spiral, the compliment of trust encourages even more trustworthiness. To trust means that we start from the position of believing that our sweetheart is motivated by a deep concern for us, that he or she in spite of occasional missteps or mistakes, truly has our well-being in mind. When we trust, we believe that the other loves us dearly and intends to love us well and long. Trust imagines the best: trust expects the happiest possible outcome. Trust serves with joy in the expectation that trust will be returned.

Just as trust engenders trust, doubt, its opposite, creates more suspicion. The more you suspect, expect and imagine that your sweetheart doesn’t love you and doesn’t want to care for you properly, the more it will become impossible for him or her to scale the wall of your doubt to give the gift of love, the blessing of undying affection. But trust comes from more than your own state of mind. It developed in response to the actions, words, and ways of the person you are choosing to trust. Trust is delicate, easily damaged, it can be destroyed by a single sentence of spirit-crushing attack, on thoughtless night of betrayal, a passel of lies. In matters of trust, we are the guardians of one another’s psyches and we must take the creation of trust as a serious responsibility. 

Therefore ask the best of yourself and your sweetheart after all you are worth it. Be trustworthy yourself and show integrity with your actions, intentions, and words so that you are able to create an atmosphere of trust that will last a lifetime. With all that being said, if you are in a relationship and you know that your sweetheart  isn’t trustworthy then consider getting counseling or ending the relationship. Remember if you can’t trust your sweetheart you would be able to experience  true love. Don’t let an untrustworthy person rob you of that.

Try Walking A Mile In Your Sweetheart’s Shoes

One of the great pitfalls in any relationship is to use the other person as a handy-dandy dartboard for all the things that are irritating you. It’s easy to fall into the habit of blaming them for everything that goes wrong, and/or expecting them to make everything right. In order to avoid succumbing to this unkind position, try walking a mile in your sweetheart’s. Walking a mile in your sweetheart’s shoes means that you will put yourself in their place, allow their experience to penetrated your consciousness, and feel it deeply enough so that you can console one another if necessary and not blame each other if tempted.

So, anytime you’re sure he or she is at fault for your bad mood, the broken computer, the leak in the roof, or the fact that life is boring, try putting yourself in his or her place. Imagine that your are she and bring to mind the myriad of stresses, insults,assaults,disappointments, and disasters, miniscule and gigantic, that are now besetting her life. Take a minute to think about the trauma your partner may be going through now. If you have trouble identifying with what your sweetheart is feeling, if his boots are too big or her glass slipper only has room for your big toe, here’s an exercise to try: Become your sweetheart. Begin by saying,  I am . . . ” and call yourself by your sweetheart’s name.

Then pretending you are he or she, start talking about what’s going on with “you.” What has bruised or dampened your spirits? Try to see from inside his or her heart  how your own critical, unsupportive, or blaming behavior feels when you are the person who has to receive it. What do you wish the person who loves you could do to understand or console you?

This exercise can be an opportunity for learning empathy from the inside by experiencing your own behavior through the other person’s consciousness as you assume for a moment his or her emotional identity. “Being” her or him can move you very readily to a more understanding between you. Walking a mile in your sweetheart’s shoes can enable you to see around the corner of  your own assumptions, to discover that in your need to be loved and understood, we are all one.