I am not a very trusting person. And I don’t know how that sounds to you, but it’s just a reality I’ve had to deal with most of my life. It dates way back to when I was a kid and how I saw trust in a relationship completely eroded because one person decided to treat another like crap. This can have a profound impact on you when you’re growing up, and you won’t even realise it until you form relationships of your own. And that’s the annoying thing. It doesn’t even have to be a relationship with a significant other because trust is the basis for all healthy relationships (in my opinion) and if you don’t have it, you don’t have much at all, really.

I actually regard trust as one of the most difficult things to obtain in any relationship. It is without a doubt, my “trigger”. I have had my trust in people broken time and time again. And I still don’t know why. When it happens, it’s not like you’re sitting there waiting for an announcement when trust is gone, it hits you like a 10-tonne hammer right on the head, and it’s completely out of the blue. You cannot prepare yourself for when trust will walk up to you one day and say “Adios Amigo”. It’s a wake-up call you hope you never have to receive and if you ever do, well, I feel for you my friend because it hurts like a well, like a bee sting in the eyeball.

When trust is abused, you can’t help but build a wall around yourself. It seems I have been building the wall for so long now, I no longer have the capacity to make new “friends”. I know that sounds really awful and lonely, but trust me, I am very OK with this in my life. I know how important it is to have friends, but I also know how important it is not to be trampled over by people you trust and personally, I prefer not to have friends if that’s the alternative. And yes, I know what you’re probably thinking; “but you’re stopping yourself from meeting someone who just might surprise you one day and be trusting” and blah blah blah. Yup, I know but this is not a decision that I made on the spur of the moment. This is a decision that took more than a decade of failed relationships to make. Which is why when I say, I am OK with it, I really am OK with it. This is just how I have avoided heartache. I now surround myself with people I love and trust in equal measure, and it has worked out well for me. I am more guarded than ever now about who I give my trust to, and it works – for me. I am not advising anyone to do what I did. I am just allowing myself to open up about it because I feel comfortable about the choices I have made.

Letting people in is a big deal, trust is one of those things that I think people under-estimate all the time and I think that’s why so many people in the world are broken as a result of trusting the wrong people. Ask yourself this; how many people do you know that you could trust with your life? I’m betting that number is a whole lot lower than you thought. Having a lot of friends isn’t what’s important. Having one person in your life that you can trust implicitly is worth a dozen people that you can’t.