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I Wonder If I’ll Ever Get Used to Being Trusted
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I Wonder If I’ll Ever Get Used to Being Trusted

“To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.”

-George MacDonald.

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“I hope you have a great time at your party,” CC tells me.

I’m going out of town to visit a cool person I’ve only met one time. But who I’ve been meaning to spend more time with. And meet her friends.

“Thank you,” I say. “You’re not the least bit anxious about my going? Worried?”

“No,” CC says. “Why would I be? I know you’ll make good choices, whatever they end up being. What’s there to worry about?”

I stare at him, wondering at his reaction. “Oh, oh shit,” I say, finally. “It’s because you trust me.”

“Well yeah,” he says. In a tone that tells me that to him it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Whether you should or not.”

He laughs.

“You’d climb into my panel van,” I continue. “Even without an offer of candy.”

“Basically asking for it,” he agrees.

But even so, I’m still blown away by it.

I’m Not At All Used to Being Trusted

It’s an odd feeling, to be trusted. It’s not something I grew up ever knowing. With a mother who searched my room, interrogated me over whatever writings she found. Who presumed whatever I told her was false. And my motives suspect.

Going on later to spend a decade with a partner who heard hidden venom behind nearly everything I said, regardless of how gently I put things. A haunted man who was still fighting bullies who grabbed his junk and shoved him against lockers. Nothing I said soothed him entirely. He was always suspicious. Always looking for the knife he knew I was going to one day put in his back.

I was floored when I first moved to Cleveland by how readily my new friends accepted me. A scatterbrained poly woman who basically fell out of the sky. Who had moved there from Maine on a lark. Referred there by friends of friends. But Skyspook welcomed me into his house, into his life, without a thought.

“Why do you trust me?” I said to him then, one day after I’d first moved in.

“Because you ask me questions like that,” Skyspook replied.

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Also see: The Trust Fall Point: Letting Go in Relationships

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My book is out!

Poly Land: My Brutally Honest Adventures in Polyamory

Featured Image: CC BY – Ethan Prater