Love and Trust in a World of Woes

Love is universally sought after but only occasionally is true intimacy found.
Foundational to an authentically loving and intimate relationship is trust. To the degree that trust is too rare a commodity in our culture, the very foundation of many intimate relationships is often built on shifting sand.

Love requires that the involved individuals are both trustworthy and capable of trusting. The odds are against many of us on both accounts. Broken trust, be it by former lovers, parents, relatives or other significant people in our lives, is all too common in the 21 Century. Frankly, in counseling for the past 25 years, I find many people can't even accurately describe what trust is or how it is formed. It seems to be a nebulous concept, shrouded in a great deal of fog -if not outright fear - always a bit out of focus and most often out of our grasp.

Why are we so broken in this way? Many realties in our society likely make this so. Trust is learned first through our primary caretaker relationships. Reliability, consistency and early bonding are important factors. Touch, nurture, and related needs of a newborn must be met by primary caregivers (generally parents) in a way which wires the infant to expect that its needs will continue to be met. This is basic to the development of trust. In our society there are unfortunately a host of factors that hardwire children to expect far less and develop a mostly distrustful sense of the world and others. Parental absence, addictions, psychological factors, neglect, abuse and abandonment (physical or emotional) are a few such factors. To the extent that this most basic trust relationship is broken and often continues to be broken throughout childhood, we see adolescents and young adults who are seriously lacking in their capacity to trust or bond with others.