Excerpt from Amy Edelstein’s book Love, Marriage & Evolution: Chapter 6
Why don’t people trust in a relationship? Common rationales include: “My partner is unpredictable,” “He or she doesn’t follow through,” “I never know what to expect.” “I don’t know if my partner wants what I do,” “My husband or wife isn’t there for me; they don’t meet my needs.” “We aren’t open with each other. We don’t really say what we mean.” “I don’t know if my partner’s faithful to me.”
Do you recognize any of these? Dynamics like these may be present in our lives now or have been at one time. Some of these seeds of disharmony can be addressed through simple and direct communication and don’t need to create mistrust. Clear communication means being able to speak together with a mutual desire to understand how we’re influencing each other and find out whether our ideals may differ in some fundamental ways. We may see things differently, that’s fine.
Becoming trustworthy ourselves is simple and enormously challenging. We develop integrity of word and deed. We are true to our higher ideals. We live a life of respect, dignity, and authenticity.
We can learn from these differences together. When we’re not seeing the same thing and we’re not able to talk about it, it creates shadow. And shadow creates unnecessary mistrust. There are seeds of disharmony that fall outside of the bounds of our shared agreements. If that is the case, we may need to make changes, respecting first and foremost ourselves and the good reasons we came together with our spouses in the first place, all that’s been accomplished together, and the higher purpose of human life.
Culture is created through our interactions, through the guidelines we set in our relationships with each other. When we aspire to create a culture that expresses something higher than the fragmentation and alienation that we too often experience, we live from a different position. We’re no longer waiting for the world to be trustworthy, we’re not sitting back with our arms folded across our chest and looking out at the world saying, “prove to me that you’re trustworthy, and then I’ll trust.” Instead, we have taken ownership and leadership in our lives; we’ve embraced the responsibility of becoming trustworthy ourselves.
Becoming trustworthy ourselves is simple and enormously challenging. We develop integrity of word and deed. We are true to our higher ideals. We live a life of respect, dignity, and authenticity. No longer victim to circumstances around us, we take hold of the reins of our own lives. We take initiative to become moral people, aligned with our higher values and life aspiration.
Regardless of whether we have been consistent and reliable individuals in the past, once we choose to be trustworthy, we can become well integrated individuals. In that alignment, we demonstrate that human beings can change—that we can transform ourselves through intention and effort. Then we pave the way for others to trust. We express stability through our own humility and transparency. This is a powerfully independent position—which takes courage and care to live from—and it inspires others to follow suit with their own transformation.
It can be challenging to stay steady when emotions are heated, when we feel angry (even justifiably so). Can we respond from a position that expresses a fundamental trust in life? Can we respond in a way that expresses our desire to be as mature and open as possible, expecting much more from ourselves than just holding our temper. Can we imagine a higher capacity in ourselves and call ourselves to live from a deeper place, not just a little bit deeper, but much deeper and become real live example of what’s possible? That is the ground of trust.
That is the trust we are called to embody when we aspire to be exemplars on an evolutionary spiritual path.
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This is an excerpt from Amy Edelstein’s new book Love, Marriage & Evolution. If you like what you read here please download the entire book, and share this content with friends and family.