“Everyone got invited but me,” the child sobbed in her mother’s lap. The adult version of feeling betrayal occurs when someone says, “Oh, I’m so sorry! I never would have mentioned the party if I’d known you weren’t invited- but I thought you two were good friends?”
Who can you depend on? Who can you trust? Whether the people in question are friends, lovers, or family, to risk becoming intimate and vulnerable with another human being is to risk disappointment, rejection, and abandonment. These are big risks, but with varying degrees of possibility and pain.
With friends and potential lovers, you may be well advised to take little steps into the shallow end of the pool, testing the waters, before you plunge into the deep end and reveal your most sacred secrets. But eventually, after time and good sense have prevailed, you have to risk intimacy. You must be willing to try and to risk feeling the pain, because the empty alternative hurts much worse.
Without trust, we can’t accept the intimacy of gently holding another’s trembling heart in our hands, or placing ours in theirs.