On Trust in True Love

This blog is a section of a chapter of a book on true love I drafted last year. I know, hasn't everything on love been said?! I believe the contents is different enough to deserve to be published, but it may take me ages to complete the whole book around work. I hope this is a piece you can enjoy and which can serve you despite it being a fragment, despite it starting as if in the middle!

... You trust the person of your true love, and in them, in a way that is unbreakable, inexhaustible. This doesn’t mean the trust is not earnt or will not be tested.

The trust of true love is unbreakable, so much so that it may feel otherworldly. Its foundation is given to you as part of the gift of love. The rest needs to be earnt, often hard earnt. It will be tested by you, by the other, by circumstances and the doubt of other people. Most often you will pass the tests, including the as-if impossible ones. Sometimes you will fail them. Even when the tests return major flaws though, the ruptures between you two will be reparable in ways they won’t be in most relationships.

Some people and relationships pass the test of trust early on and once and for all. At the other extreme, there are those for which the otherworldly trust needs healthy protections and safeguards in the everyday. If a person cannot be trusted to take care of themselves, they will be failing to take care of you and the love between you. True love is not reserved for the healthy, mature and deserving ones.

There are at least five ways in which the trust of true love shows itself.

(1) You trust the other with your unfiltered identity, deepest truths and fears

You trust the other in receding to your simple self, the self without the roles, masks and performances. You slip into the me-without-an-audience, me-without-judges version of you and feel neither unsafe, nor boring. The opposite: you are light, easy, relaxed and buoyant in that stripped-down, home-like version of you.

It is not that you are dropping all the shows and performances when you are together,  perhaps on the contrary! We are often at our most playful and inspired with an audience which loves us. We put on the best performances when our fellow actor, musician, team-mate can catch a cue that no-one else can, then plays it back or onwards just as the game needed, better than we could have scripted it.

You trust the other with your fears, vulnerabilities and mess. You trust them with the evil you have inflicted, the evil you may feel living, bubbling inside of you while at the same time trying your utmost best to be a much better person because of them.

If the struggle of the ultimate disconnect from reality is one of your struggles, you trust the person of your true love with the truth of it too. So many good people experience this disconnect acutely or sense it vaguely, yet so many conceal it as the secret of all secrets. This is the admission that one is not persuaded by our shared social reality, by normal life, what is worse, by alternative lives too, by what ‘everybody’ seems to believe, the game everybody, or at least the most successful and exuberantly happy ones, seems to be caught in.

This is the suspicion, or acutely felt clarity, that what we believe in, what we say matters, what we hope will put an end to this and that suffering, what we call good, what we call evil, what we imagine ourselves to be, ‘even what you, my love, believe you are or believe I am or what we are together or what love is’ is not true. This is the belief that when you press deeper into things, people, beliefs, dreams, hopes, goodness, meaning all fall apart irreparably. This is the persuasion that the darkness one experiences now is not a matter of depression or hard times but a matter of the fabric of life, a life without unbreakable foundations, without a true good.

Those are scary beliefs to carry by yourself! It is even scarier to share them with the person who is one of the most real and good things in your life. Yet you can trust the person of your true love even with such a disconnect. They will know what you mean.

Then both of you will be less scared, even no longer scared. Even if all is built on sand and thin air in ways our small human minds will never fathom, some things still hold strong and true for the brief time in the tiny spaces we occupy in this world, all the more in the arms of the person you have learnt true love with.

(2) You trust that they will always have your happiness at heart and you in their heart

In true love, you trust the other person that whatever they do, whatever they have done, there will have been a thought for you being well and happy, just as there is always a parallel thought in you. You consider it impossible for them to betray you, just as you know that, to the best of your human ability, you will NOT betray them. When the relationship is flowing beautifully, this utmost-priority concern for each other’s happiness and best interests, as well as CERTAINTY that this concern is real, are as basic and as solid as the rocks.

No love stays only at the easy and simple though. In true love relationships that translate into a shared daily life, the love is easy and simple, yet not without rough seas before a relationship settles and occasionally after. Often, the greater the love is, the more it will be tested, and (so that?) the greater it may become.

Many loves with a promise will fall apart amidst hardship and through doubt. A true love somehow persists, even if its legs were supposedly severed, even if the blow to it was decimating, final. One of the ways in which it stands is through a trust that you and your happiness mattered, and matter, to the other.

Continue with 2.1 below if you are interested in those true loves where almost all the evidence suggests there was none, or not a true one, until it is shown otherwise. Those are some of the hardest tested loves. The tests come far less by life circumstance, far more by the actions of one or both graced with the love. Otherwise jump directly to 3.

(2.1.) You trust that they will always have your happiness at heart and you in their heart even if it doesn’t look remotely like it

One of the most stubborn, absurd and frustrating yet miraculous ways in which true love shows itself is by preventing you from fully believing what appears certain. When the other person appears to have done something hurtful and disconnected from you to normal eyes, even if it is fully that by any sensible, unadorned description, you continue to sense that this is not the full story. Typically, you sense it is not the full story while resisting the sensation, trusting it on some days and believing yourself an idiot to have been so deceived on others.

Your imperfect but stubborn trust is fighting the evidence of the other’s actions and not losing the battle. It is not losing it even if fighting it against all odds, including against parts of you that tell you that the person you loved so much did not deserve it, that you saw an illusion, while their true self is mean and deceitful and doesn’t care about you any longer, never truly cared.

Something within you continues to suspect that you mattered and matter to them, and that this thing hurtful and inexplicable (mostly taking the form of them putting an end to the relationship and/or settling down with somebody else) was not as selfish and as cold as it appears. Something within you continues to hold onto that stupid, inexplicable feeling – a feeling which your Sensible You angrily scrunches and bins again and again – that even if they have betrayed you for all intents and purposes, they did not do so at the ultimate doors of the heart. They kept you safe in a secret place there.

You sense that a part of them continues to seek you, talk to you, know you and insists on them having you in their life. This sensing may be feeble and suppressed. It may be bloody irritating to your mature, rational self who wants to move on and leave any illusion of a love behind. It refuses to die away.

The kernel of this trust is part of the gift of a true love. It is beyond reason and beyond evidence.

It does not mean that because it has been planted there, it is easy to accept and relax into. Oh, no. A hundred times NO. Most of us who go through the dramas of the comings and goings of a great or true love will repeatedly resist the growth of this kernel. It is hard to believe in something which corresponds to a void in one’s daily reality or clashes with social norms of expressing love and care. In some cases, you absolutely should not believe it either. True love and the one-sided illusion of a love may share appearances, while they are as different from one another as loves can be.

With true love though, there comes the time when its reality is shown to you beyond any doubt, with all the undebatable words, touch or action you may need for it to be proven to you.

This may be after, way after or right after, the paths of you two have lost the chance of becoming one.

It may be right with another chance opening.

Either way, you feel you’ve truly lived, because you loved, and were loved, as love was meant to be.

(3) You trust them with the priceless, the terrible, and the unspeakable

In true love, you trust the other person with what is most precious and most scary in life.

You trust them with your body and mind falling apart and you losing a grip on them in serious illness. You trust them with your life if your life is at stake. If need be, you trust them enough to ask them to help you die, to understand that you want to die. You trust them to do for you what you couldn’t do for yourself or couldn’t complete in this life.

You trust this person with matters of life and death even if they are anything but trustworthy. They may ‘forget’ to tell the truth; fail to look after themselves; hardly ever do anything for anyone. True love is not reserved for the healthy of mind and body, strong of character, and ethical in behaviour. If anything, at some stage it brings to the surface, as if by law, our “pain body”, dysfunctions and broken parts (more in Section 1.2 – not published Mar 25). True love is also often enough difficult to translate into a good, normal, daily reality relationship – the sort of relationship which can only function if enough areas of daily trust and reliability stand solid (more in Section 8 – not published Mar 25).

None of the above matters for the big questions of life and death, health and illness, guilt and redemption, the call of your soul, the leaps into the impossible … The person of your true love is the first, often the only person you will think of when you need someone to trust at the edge of trust.

Most normal relationships fall apart under or after extreme circumstances – when the priceless is at stake or has been destroyed, when the terrible or the unspeakable have happened or are happening. Most relationships which withstand such pressures are held together by duty, character, the weight of the social gaze or general human kindness rather than abiding love.

Some blessed souls, however, discover depths of love for the person they are with, and depths of love in general, they never imagined existed. The pressures of life that have broken bones, identities and houses have melted the hearts too. Liquid love begins to fill the space between those who loved each other a lot but never knew how much.

The terrible becomes one of the best things that could have happened to love.

May you, may I be spared this way of knowing love.

(4) You trust them enough to hand over the reins, to let go of control

In true love, you trust the other enough to let them watch out for you, take control of and be responsible for what has always been yours to take care of. Like never before, you can hand over the subliminal monitoring of your surrounding for danger, switch off the hypervigilant mind. You can rest in their experience and wisdom without the compulsion to formulate your own view. And you feel just as safe as when you do it all by yourself, let alone how much easier life becomes.

(5) You trust the light of this person, no matter the darkness they may have succumbed to

In true love, you also trust, even against all evidence, in the light, strength and beauty of the other person’s being. You trust that their best and most luminous self is unbroken and unbreakable, ready to shine at this very moment, no matter how far they have gone from him or her or how lacking their own faith in themselves is.

You trust that their dreaminess, if dreamers they are, is prophetic. They will do and become what they see in their inner horizon, no matter how incomprehensible the ‘how’. They, of all people, can and will do ‘it’.

If their life is one in the gutters as opposed to reaching out to starry skies, you see past the brokenness or evil they may be living. What is broken in them can be repaired. They will be all the more beautiful for it. You believe this even if they cannot, even if what it is coming out of them is hurtful, ugly, mean, dishonest, irresponsible to you too, not only to some distant others, as if they are trying their best to break your faith in them and prove their own disbelief justified.

Make no mistake. If this is part of what true love calls you to, the faith, resilience and capacity to stay anchored in your love vis-à-vis their pain, negativity and destruction don’t come easy. Love may feel like a curse rather than a gift. You will fight within yourself for the trust in this person’s goodness, light and chances to live them. You will fight with others too, though standing against the doubts of others is often far easier than standing against your own doubts. You will feel hurt, angry, disappointed, disheartened, ready to drop them … and rightly so.

What true love will give you, and you will not be able to argue against it rationally, are eyes for the soul underneath the shield, for the purity under the shit, for the glory beneath the failures. Since you can see that and connect to it, you will also be able to (occasionally) bring it forth. You will be one of those rare people who can make this goodness real. You will KNOW it is not just a capacity they have. It is not just a potential. It is who they are in lucid moments with you.

If this is a part of what your true love calls you to (to reiterate, drama of this kind is not at all required and I hope you are spared it), there will be times when even those inner eyes stop seeing. Then you will force them, command them to see. You will have to do it for your own survival. You will have found that you cannot live a life in which you no longer believe in a love like this. Once you’ve felt yourself loving with a true love, you will be unavailable for any other.

Being able to stand in faith of the invisible goodness of another and keep your love safe, then act out of such faith and love, does not mean you would be able to “save them” (more in Section 5 – not published as of Mar 25). It does not mean you should tolerate their shit either. If anything, the call of love is to walk away from shit. If shit persists, your love has begun to enable it, not help them heal.

(6) Some of this trust descends from other realms. Some of it is earnt, possibly hard earnt

Some of the extraordinary trust of true love seems to descend from other realms, intertwined with an uncanny knowingness of the other, which is often an aspect of true love. Some of that trust is earnt though, as in any relationship. And then more. If it is not earnt and deserved, you are relating to an image, a literary character filtered through the rose-coloured spectacles of a naïve love.

The ways that trust is earnt are many. Most are also costly and well above the social norm for “doing the right thing” or “trying hard enough”.

This trust is earnt when you hear the other person express a truth, share a pain, reveal an inner abyss that is risky to share.

It is earnt when you do the same and feel that soft, grounded support, understanding and acceptance that slows your breath and rests your soul.

It is earnt by experiencing the other person stand by you when all else is giving in or receding to safety.

It is earnt when they remain by your side at times you yourself consider yourself unbearable.

When they go out of their way – way out of – to do something for you, to show you that you matter.

It is earnt when you remember what you weren’t expected to remember. You listened with the whole of your being, not only your ears, and saved what was said in the memory folders of the heart.

It is earnt when they reach out long after the connection got broken so badly that it won’t be reparable in most relationships – broken over something big or something stupid, though the big things between you also turn out to be small and stupid, even if they continue to have all the power to keep you apart.

It is earnt when you reach out to them long after such a rupture, fearing everything, from the deafening silence to the angry request of ‘leave me alone’, and expecting nothing, from no response to no felt recognition that you once mattered. You fear everything, you may even be shaking with fear when you pick up the phone to call them or press the send button to your message, yet there is a square-millimetre inner fortress where you know that nothing between you is to be feared. You expect nothing, you are even frozen with non-expecting, yet there is a miniature boldly sovereign state of certainty where you know that all is good between you.

It is earnt when you are there for them when they have abandoned themselves.

When they support you unreservedly when you ventured, once again, into the hardly possible, frowned-upon dreamy and free.

It is earnt by you showing them that they can trust you and them showing you that they trust you, and you can trust them, in the corners of life where one is almost always by oneself.

Thank you for reading! To be continued ...

Image by Stella Levi, 2020, iStock, Getty Images