knowing and trust

can you ever know someone completely to trust them?

Salvador Dalí, Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds, 1936

I’m intrigued by the idiocy of trust. I’ll never trust a man I love. In fact, if I trust him, it will mean I don’t love him enough. And a man should never trust me.  

— Lisa Tadeo, Animal

If I could wave a magic wand, I wouldn’t be afraid to get hurt in love. It’s the worst kind of fear because it’s constantly with you, not like a fear of heights or a fear of spiders that only gets activated in the presence of the feared thing. And it’s cruel because it’s tied to something so good. Maybe it’s possible to love without fear, but that seems really, really hard. Generally, the more you love someone, the greater the power you give them to potentially hurt you.

I used to think there comes a point when enough trust is built in a relationship to feel totally unburdened by the fear of betrayal. Maybe the fear lessens with time, but I don’t think it’s possible to be fully rid of it. You can try to neutralize the fear by reframing it as a “possibility.” So the question becomes, how do you love someone given the possibility that they might hurt you?

Assuming you’re in a monogamous relationship and not a more complicated dynamic like a situationship or an open relationship, there’s a good amount of comfort in knowing that the person you’re with has chosen to be with you. Sometimes, we have to be reminded of this simple fact. In Monogamy, Adam Phillips interrogates what it means to be a “couple”:

Coupledom is a sustained resistance to the intrusion of third parties. The couple needs to sustain the third parties in order to go on resisting them. The faithful keep an eye on the enemy, eye them up. After all, what would they do together if no one else was there? How would they know what to do? Two’s company, but three’s a couple.

In order for the couple to exist at all, there must be at least one other person. Two people stuck on an island isn’t a “couple” because there isn’t a choice about who to be with. In some ways, the presence of others—of temptation just within reach—can strengthen the bond between a couple because you are constantly reaffirming your choice to be together. So instead of imagining your partner’s resolve wearing down from repeated exposure to temptation, try imagining it strengthening like a muscle.

It’s not an entirely bad thing to feel some amount of jealousy. Seeing one’s partner get attention from an attractive person can spark desire. Attempting to eliminate sexual jealousy altogether is probably not a good idea if you want to sustain a level of passion in your relationship. Of course, this isn’t for everyone. As Adam Phillips points out:

The fact that jealousy sustains desire—or at least kindles it—suggests how precarious desire is. Not only do we need to find a partner, we also need to find a rival. And not only do we have to tell them apart, we also have to keep them apart. We need our rivals to tell us who our partners are. We need our partners to help us find rivals.

Some people are fine being in a relationship that’s calm and stable and free from “rivalry.” But if you’re not in that kind of relationship or you’re someone who has a hard time seeing your partner talking to attractive people, it’s worth getting in touch with what other emotions it might spark in you besides jealousy. You might find it actually kind of hot/thrilling/exciting.

I am a very anxious person in love. My anxiety stems from a deep fear of abandonment. When I was in a relationship, I wanted to know where my partner was late at night, I wanted him to text me back quickly, and I felt deeply uncomfortable if he was hanging out with another girl. I’ve come to understand a few things:

1. Underlying my fear of abandonment is the fear of lacking something that someone else has that’s more desirable. It’s worth examining why you’ve made someone your sexual “rival.” When I truly examined this, I realized it had less to do with my boyfriend and more to do with some desirable quality I perceived the other woman had and I didn’t have.

2. The harder you bind someone to you, the more they try to break away. No one wants to feel inhibited. Behaving in an anxious, controlling way is only self-sabotaging.

The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable.

― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity

It’s pretty easy to fall into the trap of thinking that your partner belongs to you, especially if you’re married or exclusive. But regardless of the contracts we enter into, our partners are fundamentally separate. No matter how hard you try, you can’t force another human being to be faithful to you. But you can create the conditions for mutual trust and faithfulness to grow. And the way to do that is entirely within the scope of your own body, emotions, and language. Are you embodying the values you want to inspire in your partner?

As Esther Perel points out, every person has their mystery. No one can ever be fully known. Even if you’ve been married to the same person for fifty years, your partner still has the potential to surprise you. So maybe the question isn’t “can you ever know someone completely to trust them?” but rather, “how do you learn to trust yourself?” To trust that you’re good and deserving and incomparable. To stop measuring yourself to other people and only seeing what they have that you lack instead of what you have in abundance, the reasons your partner chose you in the first place. To accept that people change, but to trust that you have what it takes to survive any possibility on the horizon.