Distrust

With the advent of western culture infidelity has become a normal word now. I don’t say that it dint exist earlier , just that we talk openly about it and don’t hide in our closets. And if we try to increase our focus from marital relations to normal friends; the situation just becomes a cliche. How many people can we actually find in whom we can bestow our trust!

But then the coin has the another side also, what if you have found a person in whom you can bestow your trust, but you can’t! Trust becomes a rather heavy word here. Being in a relation we expect to have trust in each other and anyway a relation is supposedly built primarily on trust itself. But then irony is if you can’t trust the person, how can you have a healthy relation? Lets take the case of the Muslim community, if you can imagine how they would have felt in America post 9/11 then you got my point. Nobody likes being suspected and distrusted, especially if they have been true.

Distrust is the confident expectation that another individual’s motives, intentions, and behaviors are sinister and harmful to one’s own interests. In interdependent relationships, this often entails a sense of fear and anticipation of discomfort or danger. Distrust naturally prompts us to take steps that reduce our vulnerability in an attempt to protect our interests. Accordingly, our distrust of others is likely to evoke a competitive (as opposed to cooperative) orientation that stimulates and exacerbates conflict.

Once in place, distrust forms a powerful frame on subsequent events in the relationship, such that even good-faith efforts by the offender to restore the relationship are met with skepticism and suspicion. The result is a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” where every move the other person makes is interpreted as additional evidence that justifies an initial decision to distrust him/her. This distrust not only inhibits cooperation in the relationship, but also may result in retaliation that causes the conflict to escalate. When the other person reciprocates this sentiment, there is mutual distrust that further fuels the escalation of conflict.

Moral of the story: If you decide to form a relation, then develop trust first. Relation without trust is like ice on water, it can break anywhere and time and again.

And if you have trust, then even in worst situations you shall only get closer and closer. So which side you are?