Last night we attended yet another marriage class brought to us by the Catholic church. I like the priest, because he’s really liberal and doesn’t have that attitude that I’m going to hell because I’m not religious. Anyhow, his lecture partner, a married Italian woman, gave a long lecture on trust. I can basically sum up the entire speach in this sentence: Trust your partner no matter what. Seems good, but I actually don’t agree with her.
In my experience as a living human, I believe that trust is dynamic, it fluctuates, and there are a lot of factors involved in trusting someone. Trust is very individualized, for example. What creates trust and breaks it is different for everyone, so knowing your partner and what they need to fuel their trust for you is by far the most important thing. I don’t believe that saying, “trust them, it’s fine, trust is a risk you have to take.” This sounds very impratical to me because trust is different for everyone and in every relationship the trust will change at some point, if not regularly. An example? Making the bed in the morning makes my husband trust me more. Why? I have no bloody idea, but it does. When my husband tells me things in detail it makes me trust him more. Why? I don’t know. But what I do know is that if he does something to screw up my trust (which he does, because he has a penis), if his response was, “you just have to trust me,” my response might be, “But I don’t, so get fucked.” Instead, I say, “Hey, now I don’t trust you, bitch,” then he’ll say, “oh..shit, okay, well, what would make you feel better?” Then I say whatever will, and he does it and my trust goes back up.
Like my mother says, never, ever, trust anyone who just expects you to trust them. You have to earn it, and take care of it, you don’t just get it because you signed a marriage license, people.
Now I’ll get off of my soapbox and get back to the classes. So, after the lecture on trust everyone commented as they usually do. The comments are my favorite part of class.
“Trust is…well…it’s enough to walk hand in hand”-I’m sorry, what? Are you drunk? She’s drunk. Please share.
“I trust my girlfriend now but who knows if I will trust her in fifty years. Nobody knows.” -This marriage is starting out strong and sounding very American. You’ll be divorced soon.
“I mostly trust her, but I believe that one can only fully trust Jesus.”-So, marry Jesus. The priest did. (The priest actually rolled his eyes at this guy, which I found fascinating. I kind of love him.).
“When you marry someone you made your choice and in this choice you must trust them always, without question, no matter what.” -No. You shouldn’t. That’s just dumb. “You know, I want to ask Bob about that hickey on his neck, but you know, I did make a choice so….” This is probably why the cheating statistics are so high in this country. People are really taking advantage of this marriage class which teaches everyone to be an idiot.
