The Beautiful Truth about Trust, Forgiveness and Self Respect
Forgiveness is given only when it is earned. When someone has done wrong behavior toward you, you forgive them when they have truly made a sincere apology, and have made acts of contrition. Meaning they have made sincere changes in their behavior toward you going forward, indicating that they take responsibility for their actions. Otherwise they do not deserve forgiveness. And, the forgiveness given is empty, and merely an act of stuffing emotions that will resurface later.
Trust. Trust-Worthy behavior is proof that the person has really changed. Building trust takes time - more time than it takes to break it.
Trust Building:
- The trust-breaker admits they violated the truth-values that caused the breach in the trust, and owns up to the behaviors (takes responsibility for their behavior).
- The trust-breaker builds a solid track record of improved behavior over time.
Without the first step, there should be no attempt at reconciliation in the first place.
When we allow others to disregard our boundaries of behavior toward us, or do not have good boundaries for others behavior toward us, we compromise our self-respect. This impacts us in lowering our self-esteem. We are good people and others should treat us well, as we treat others well. Not speaking up when others are disrespecting our boundaries of good behavior, is allowing ourselves to be treated badly, and is an act of self-disrespect.
When others repeatedly disrespect our boundaries of good behavior, we lose trust in them.
Close relationships are built on a strong base of mutual trust built over time.
Trust is like a china plate. If you break it once, with some care and attention, you can put it back together again. But if you break it again, it splits into even more pieces and it takes far longer to piece together again. If you break it more and more times, eventually it shatters to the point where it’s impossible to restore. There are too many broken pieces and too much dust.
