(Ed. Note: Bear with me here, since this is shaping up to be an oddly academic discussion of personal matters. Feel free to read between the lines as necessary.)
Over the course of my life, I've heard countless people say that the cornerstone of a good relationship is trust. As a corollary of that rule, it should follow that a lack of trust means that a relationship is not good. That seems like pure, mathematical, Socratic logic, right?
What does it mean, then, if it's not a question of trusting the other person -- you just don't really care what he or she does? Or, maybe more precisely, you only care what he or she does to the extent that it directly affects you? My current hypothesis is that, under those circumstances, it's not precisely a bad relationship -- it's more likely that it's not really a relationship at all.
And then, there's the whole interplay between trust and forgiveness. If you think you have forgiven someone for hurting you in the past, but you don't know if you can trust them not to hurt you again, have you really forgiven them? Based on the above, again my hypothesis is no -- it's not really forgiveness as much as it's acceptance. But maybe that's too fine a line to draw. Maybe I'm splitting hairs.
1 comment:
forgiveness and acceptance are about the same thing in my book. One is just a sugary coated version of the reality of it. Forgiviness is the soap opera romanicised version of what really happens when we are face with misplaced trust. And acceptance is the pill one has to swallow if they are willing to move on and try to get past the others moment of insanity.
I should know I was on the dirty end of asking someone to take that pill........
Post a Comment