Trust Issues
Most people with "trust issues" got them from depending on what was undependable. Dependence requires a lot of trust, and the fall from dependence can break every bit of it.
However, something undependable is not necessarily untrustworthy.
You may be able to trust it for what it's designed for, but depending on it for what *you* need of it could spell doom.
Because so many people could not depend on safety from their early caregivers, when they were dependent, they go on looking for something to depend on.
They did not make a consensual transition to independence, to the sovereignty that facilitates interdependence. The resentment of being forced into independence before they were ready keeps them trying to find something they can depend on, at least now and then.
But other adult humans are nothing we adult humans can depend on.
Best-case-scenario, they're an individual of integrity in a fragile meatsuit that could fail at any time.
Worst-case-scenario, they need as much help as we do, and we pour into each other, sharing of depletion, experiencing "betrayal" and "abandonment," as someone without the resources to serve us inevitably fails.
The way so many of us want to depend on a partner is not available at all.
We cannot depend on someone else to make sure we only experience pleasant emotions, or to do the chores the way we like, or to parent the way we imagine, or to fix our unhealed places.
We cannot depend on someone else to only experience desire for us, and desires we agree with. We cannot depend on someone else to continually sacrifice themselves for what we desire, nor to change in any way that suits us.
Can we depend upon ourselves?
Only to exist until we stop existing. Only to make every choice we make and reap every experience that results from those choices. Only to be there, any time we experience what we want to call "betrayal" and "abandonment" at the hands of another.
We can depend on ourselves to be what is left for us in the stark reality of loss.
We can depend on all we know we are personally equipped to manage and serve. The rest is up to miracles.
Miracles are in the land of interdependence, when you know it's all your responsibility, but somehow, miraculously, someone else shows up and serves it! Each time, it is a miracle, because you stand firm in your sovereignty.
Trust yourself. Then see how much trust you really need in order to consider sovereign interdependence with another fragile adult.
I bet you'll find you have all it takes.
