1. Being hurt in the past- Many of us have faith in other people, until that faith is crushed. The famous saying goes “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Once people are hurt the first time, a guard goes up like a wall to protect them from being fooled again. It’s very hard to trust another person once you’ve been hurt and mentally afraid that it will happen again.
2. Believing everyone only protects themselves- Nothing makes trust harder to have than believing that the only person who will look out for you, is yourself. A big part of trust, is faith. You have to believe that there is good in people and that there is another person who is looking out for you. When that is taken away, it is almost impossible to trust someone else.
3. Unrealistic expectations- When unrealistic assumptions are made going into any type of relationship and it’s not communicated what is expected, it’s the easiest way to set yourself up for failure. The other person can’t read your mind and know what you want, if you don’t tell them. Trust is not one of the top things talked about going into a relationship and is usually only addressed when a line is crossed. Even if it’s uncomfortable to talk about, at the start of a relationship, it will be much easier to trust someone if you know they understand what you expect.
4. Social Media- Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and other forms of social media do not help this generation with trust. All of these make it very easy to track what another person is doing. When you can see what pictures another person liked or who their best friend is on Snapchat, it can put paranoia in your head when it really could just be harmless socializing.
5. Publicity of Cheating- Countless anonymous confessionals are published in magazines or posted online that feature people talking about cheating. This type of publicity shows the amount of people who are not faithful and can be harmful for everyone else reading it. It gets the idea out that a lot of people are unfaithful and the reader sees that it happens a lot and will try to avoid it by not trusting anyone.
6. Gossip- Trust is very hard to come to terms with when the fear of gossip is involved. Many people believe that no one can keep a secret anymore, so trusting other people with personal information can be very difficult. Knowing that your friends talk about other people and that other people could just as easily be talking about you, keeps many from trusting others enough to talk to them.
7. Uncomfortable with vulnerability- Control and trust contradict each other for lots of people. When you trust another person, you are giving them the power to hurt you and hoping they don’t. For people who want to control everything in their life, trust will not come easily. You have to be able to put yourself out there, knowing you can’t decide what happens.
8. Strangers- When you don’t fully know a person, it will be a lot harder to trust them. Closeness to a person also affects trust. If you do not know their intentions or character, you won’t be so willing to trust them. Being comfortable with another person will help you justify putting yourself into someone else’s hands. It’s hard to trust another person if you don’t fully put in the effort to get to know them.
