Trusting again after the end of a relationship is difficult. Trusting after divorce? That’s even harder. Your first instinct is to protect yourself in order not to get hurt again. Not an easy task. What is trust? What attributes are associated with trust? Trusting is believing something is reliable, whether it be a person or a thing. You trust that your house is sturdy enough to weather a storm. You trust that your friend will not tell anyone your secrets. You trust that the person driving you will drive you safely to your destination. Essentially, trust is an emotional reaction. It’s something you feel. You’re giving a part of you away when you trust. This is why it’s so hard to trust again when you’ve been hurt or betrayed. You’ve become jaded. It’s like any other time you get hurt … you have to allow yourself time to heal. Sometimes, jumping into things too quickly leads you to further pain and ultimately more distrust. How do I know? Well, I have learned this lesson the hard way.

Trusting After Divorce

I had been dating someone who I thought was great. We got along quite well actually. So what went wrong? Trust. We both came out of bad situations in marriages and relationships. We had our defences up at all times. He felt he had to administer a series of “tests” to be sure of my loyalty and sincerity. I felt that if I wasn’t getting constant devotion and attention, then he didn’t really want to be with me. We both unintentionally sabotaged our relationship. We took our baggage from our past hurts and applied them to an otherwise good connection. I am quite sad about this because it is senseless. Had we acted like a normal couple, we wouldn’t be apart now. If you want to read the story of what happened, you can click here to read my blog post “The Whirlwind Romance”

How can we fix this? Well, we can’t go back, but how can we avoid this in the future? It is as simple as not judging everyone by mistakes others have made. It’s not that simple is it? You can’t help it. Just like if you burned yourself bad on the stove, next time you go to use the stove you will be hesitant to touch it and you will take every precaution not to get burned again. But what if you just trusted that as long as you use the stove correctly you won’t get burned? It’s not that easy, I know. I think it begins by adjusting how you look at people and what you expect from them. Let me explain. If you always expect someone to cheat on you, you will always be paranoid that they will. If you expect the best from someone you typically get the best. It goes for all types of relationships. If you are looking for problems you will always find them.

Fear also plays a big role in learning to trust again. We are afraid that what happened before will happen again, so we protect ourselves. In the process, we ruin everything because of our lack of trust. This is what happened to me and him. We assumed because others have treated us a certain way, that we were the same. It wasn’t the case, and wouldn’t have been the case if we just stepped back and trusted. Lesson learned. Paulo Coelho wrote that “to heal our wounds, we need the courage to face them”. I learned this lesson the hard way this past weekend. It was quite evident that people with old wounds sometimes take it out on other people with their lack of trust and insecurities instead of dealing with things like adults. I am guilty of that too. Perhaps it’s time to turn a new leaf!

Stirring the Dating Sauce,

Your Sister in Dating Bliss,

Single Dating Diva

Copyright Single Dating Diva

Originally Published on The Dating Sauce