Many people are part of our daily lives, each with distinct roles and functions to us, and each with an ability to bring peace or cause harm. Sadly, even if you’re someone who finds it easy to give people the benefit of the doubt, if you deal with any of these types of people, your ability to trust could eventually be destroyed forever.
1. Selfish people
Selfish people can be found in all walks of life — at school, at work, with your partner. The more power you give them, and the closer they get, the more powerful it is when they betray you. Selfish people have no qualms about sacrificing you to get what they want, and bad experiences with them can really screw up your ability to trust people after that.
2. “Dark Triad” personality types
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People who possess an unholy combination of narcissistic, psychopathic, and Machiavellian tendencies are, as a general rule, to be avoided at all costs. To them, the ends will always justify the means, and if you get in the way, they’ll use you however they need to. They will make you feel weak, small, and stupid to have trusted them.
3. Pathological liars
Chronic liars can range from your aunt who always insists she works out every day when it’s clear she doesn’t to your close friend claiming to have your best interests at heart when she’s really selling you out behind your back. These people will lie to your face and force you to change how you view relationships in a fundamental way.
4. Resentful family members
Family members hold a special kind of power over us and they always will, no matter how old we get. They know what we were like when we were young and naive and when we trusted every word they said. No one screws you over like your family, and when you add resentment to the mix, it’s a doozy.
5. A partner who betrays you
There is such a huge amount of trust placed within your partner that it’s almost too much to bear. We know we’re giving them all the power over us, but if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be alive. They could bring everything down in a heartbeat, and while you hope they won’t, there’s always that chance
6. People pleasers
People pleasers seem perfectly harmless, but when you think about what they’d do to impress their neighbor or be liked by their landlord, you can see where they could do a number on you. People pleasers aren’t selfish like narcissists, but they both have tunnel vision, so beware.
7. Your favorite work colleague
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The amount of implicit trust you both put in your work colleagues is not to be sniffed at. You both know that, should the other spill the details of your complaints and petty rivalries to your line manager, you’d likely be fired. A work colleague who decides to be selfish and breaks your trust can disrupt your financial stability and any semblance of a normal work relationship thereafter.
8. Your high school best friend
If there’s a group of people who have truly seen every geeky and gawky, stupid stage of a person’s life, it’s the friends you had when you were 15. They have the sort of content stored away that, should you ever decide to run for Congress, would ensure you’d never make it past the primaries if they chose to release it. At least in that context you have material too – it’s mutually assured destruction.
9. People who will do anything to get ahead
Be wary of making friends with people who have made no secret of their ambition. It may seem like an empowering environment, but it’s not. These people are often two-faced and self-centred. They don’t really care about you and they’ll betray you in a way you never see coming. It will make you eternally suspicious after.
10. Narcissists
Narcissists are worse than just shallow, selfish people — they’re so stuck inside their perception of their own greatness that they have no other way of seeing the world. They will barely even register you exist and will reject you on the daily. Your confidence will be 6ft underground. They can cause the worst kind of hurt through indifference.
11. Your worst ex
The logistics of an ex include physical things as well as emotional baggage. Think about the pictures you have of each other, the cards, the whispered dreams, and the vulnerable confessions. That’s a lot of material that could cause you insurmountable damage. You already hurt each other once, but a rotten ex can stop you from trusting other people altogether.
12. Psychopaths
Psychopaths are unique because they won’t realize they’ve breached your trust, and they won’t care either. It’s like talking to a brick wall. You will get no closure and you won’t understand what you did to cause them to breach your trust.
13. People who don’t respect your identity
There’s a specific hurt that accompanies people who fail to respect your identity. Anyone who refuses to say the right pronouns, acknowledge a partner, or uses derogatory language, can strike a stake straight through the heart. These people will make you believe that it isn’t worth being your authentic self if people fail to support you. They’re wrong, not you. Trust in your community and in yourself.
14. People with authority issues
Anyone who gets off on authority figures is a red flag because they will be happy to put other people down in order to raise their estimation. Beware that that person isn’t you because these authority kinks come out of the woodwork and surprise us all. They could be anywhere.
15. Your boss
Your boss knows your career goals, desired salary, and ‘constructive’ criticisms about the company. If they don’t decide to advocate for you every day, they could twist those 1-2-1 discussions from private to public and ruin your reputation. Even worse, you can’t control who your boss is, so you’re at their mercy.
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