Have you ever trusted too much and gotten hurt? Too early and felt disappointed? Too little and lost an opportunity? Or too late and lost an entire relationship?

Trust is the glue that connects people, but to trust someone else, we first need to trust ourselves. We need to define and accept our values, self-worth, talents, and assets. To invest in a relationship with another person, we must know how much we’ve invested in the relationship with ourselves and whether there’s a balance.

If you know your qualities, then you’ll feel secure enough to invest and build up joined values, talents, or assets with someone else. You define trust based on your upbringing, culture, societal values, and your own belief
system that determines what it takes to trust or how long.

But you need to make these definitions clear to everyone you want to have a relationship with. And although trust has these fixed elements, it can also have flexible elements that evolve over time or sudden elements that can arise in a situation.

Learning as much as you can about your definitions of trust allows you to build strong, reliable relationships and avoid difficult or inconsistent relationships.