You treat like normal and move through life assuming and hoping for the best. You basically have two choices in life: 1) you can be paranoid and assume that everybody is out to get you; or 2) you realize that folks can get you if they want to and decide not to live life in fear that you're going to get taken advantage of.
Here's a proper analogy. Every day you wake up and decide to get into the car you stand the risk to crash and die. But you do it anyway and never really think about the risk involved. You just go where you're trying to go and assume you'll get there. Now, if while driving all of your "problem" lights come in and you chose to do nothing about it you increase the risk of some sort of problem that could do long term damage right? That's just like dating. If you chose to ignore all of the red flags then you can find yourself getting hurt. But you can't date people under the assumption that they WILL hurt you. What kind of way is that to live.
All humans make mistakes. This is just a fact. But humans are also entitled to second chances because of this fact and really, if you trust people enough (not fully, that would be crazy) to let them earn your trust then you may meet a great person worthy of your time. Otherwise you just have to seek out a cave and hope to never get screwed over by an errant missle that was aimed wrong.
Love that analogy! Needed to hear that!
I second that. I really needed to hear that. Thanks for your insightful posts!
I think this is great advice. we can't live our lives thinking everyone we meet is going to screw us over. i read this quote on another website and thought it applied here:
"Life holds no guarantees. If you eliminate all of your possibilities that may not work, you eliminate all your possibilities."
The only thing I slightly disagree with on Panama's advice is that people have to earn your trust. I believe the best way to start a relationship out is with a clean slate. You should start out trusting the other person, rather than earned your trust - they've (hopefully) not done anything to break that trust. You have to go in believing the best in people, not the worst, otherwise you're always going to be paranoid and sabatoge your own relatonship (That's what I've always done anyways!)
I think this is great advice. we can't live our lives thinking everyone we meet is going to screw us over. i read this quote on another website and thought it applied here:
"Life holds no guarantees. If you eliminate all of your possibilities that may not work, you eliminate all your possibilities."
The only thing I slightly disagree with on Panama's advice is that people have to earn your trust. I believe the best way to start a relationship out is with a clean slate. You should start out trusting the other person, rather than earned your trust - they've (hopefully) not done anything to break that trust. You have to go in believing the best in people, not the worst, otherwise you're always going to be paranoid and sabatoge your own relatonship (That's what I've always done anyways!)
Wow PJ. Didn't know I needed to hear this...but I did. Good lookin out for us all.
Hmm,
I thought the definition of trust is putting your emotions, life, whatever, into the hands of someone else even though they are human, not infallible, etc.
To rephrase the original question: Hey Panama, I've read about this thing called trust, but what is it that I need to have in a relationship to cope with the chance that someone could let me down? Guess what, the answer is trust.
Perhaps the OP just doesn't know the definition of the word.