To make any relationship in your life truly work long-term, you need both trust and love. However, they don’t always come hand in hand. While I’ll always strive to maintain the two, if I had to pick just one, trust would win every time. here’s why.
- Trust is earned, whereas love is often given freely. Trust is something that usually takes time to build in every kind of relationship, including platonic, romantic, and even work-related. It’s possible to love someone (or the idea of someone) without knowing them very well. Being loved and well-liked is great and I appreciate when people feel that way about me, but earning someone’s trust is more important to me.
- Trust and respect often go hand in hand. It’s possible to trust that someone is honest and respect that they are but also disagree with their opinions or who they are and what they say. Being trustworthy is a commendable quality, and people often admire it when they recognize it in others. Someone might not always agree with me, they might not always like who I am, but they can always rely on the fact that I am the person who I say I am and that I’m always honest.
- Love without trust becomes a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. If you love someone but don’t trust them, the relationship will eventually blow up and the explosion will most likely be destructive in an emotional and possibly a physical way, depending on who the person is. If someone loved me but didn’t trust me, they would essentially be waiting for me to disappoint and hurt them, and even if I was being honest, they would treat me as if I was being shady.
- Trust is the foundation for meaningful relationships. Being able to trust one another is one of the most important qualities in any relationship and it is the foundation that keeps it intact when things get rocky, difficult, or scary. Love is beautiful, but trust is real and long-lasting, which is why it’s ideal to have both. However, without trust, the love has no real base and is likely to crumble if things get hard or messy.
- The people in my life know that they can trust my advice and opinions and that I won’t just tell them white lies to make them happy. It might not always be the easiest things to say or for others to hear, but I always tell the people I have relationships in my life with the truth even if I think it’s going to disappoint them or sting a little. I don’t go out of my way to insult them or belittle them, I just give them my honest opinions and thoughts without sugarcoating. When people ask me for advice or vent to me about a situation, they can trust that I’m going to be real with them. Not everyone can handle the truth and some people would rather be coddled than accept reality. Those kinds of people might not like me let alone love me, but they do trust me.
- To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. Anyone can be loved for a variety of reasons, but to be trusted means that you have proven to be dependable and someone with integrity. It is much easier to be loved than it is to be trusted because trust takes time, effort, and genuine honesty.
- Love can be blinding whereas trust is illuminating. I would rather someone trust me with their eyes fully open than blindly love me. I only want people to love me if they love me after knowing the real me, not an idealized version of me that they’re convinced is who I really am.  I don’t need everyone to love me and I know that not everyone is going to like me or agree with me, but I do want people to perceive me as trustworthy and honest above all else.
- I’d rather someone know the real me. It’s easy to be a people-pleaser by saying specific things just to make other people like you that you don’t necessarily agree with and/or acting differently depending on who you are around. It takes guts to be honest and stay true to who you really are no matter what other factors come into play. I would rather be the honest, real version of myself all of the time and have other people trust that about me than be loved by everyone.
