It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.

The girl game. Where everything has a secret meaning.

Take flowers. Girls like flowers, and they'll say they want them because they're pretty, or they smell nice. But that's not really why they want them, they want them because it means someone likes them. So they'll go out of their way to protest 'Oh goodness ME, I NEVER get flowers!' until the boy of their choice gets them some. And see, at that point, it doesn't matter whether the guy is getting them because they like the girl or not. At that point, it means 'OHMYGOSH HE LOVES ME'. Because that's what flowers MEAN to girls. What's sad is that he's probably just buying them to shut her up, and by doing so he completely invalidates the very meaning that the flowers are supposed to represent.

Then there's the "Does this make me look fat" game.. which the man NEVER wins. Don't get me started.

Then there's the photo game.. "Oh, don't take my picture, I look horrible in photos - look at these, don't I look ugly?" Girls say that because they want to hear "Oh no, you look BEAUTIFUL". Guys coo and gush over them because they want to make them 'feel better' - but what's the point of a compliment if it's out of pity?

And then there's the sex game.. which is all kinds of complicated. A girl will say that she's really into sex and loves it and doesn't get why other girls don't because it's just a natural thing - and that's because they think that guys think that a healthy interest in sex is 'hot', or a girl will pretend to be a shy lilting flower - "Oh, I'm so pure! I've never done ANYTHING sexual!" Because they think that for some reason being 'pure' makes them that much more attainable and appealing.

But beware, you can't say anything about this because if you try to tell the truth or call a girl on her game, then every person that's fallen for it will come galloping to her defense.

Without trust, most of the things we care about would not be safe. Yet not all things that need trust are things that should thrive. Trust can exist between intimates, strangers, and even enemies.

Sometimes we are let down. One can be disappointed, not betrayed, if someone is not following their expected habits. One can be betrayed if one's trust in the other's good will is shown to be misplaced. So a rough definition of trust is: "accepted vulnerability to another's possible but not expected ill will (or lack of good will) towards one"

The trusted one has some distrection over what counts as a breach of trust. One needs room both for forgiveness of unfortunate outcomes and for tact in the treatment of the question of whether there is anything to forgive when there are actions that may or may not have violated trust. If the truster is too unforgiving, and the trusted person too sensitive to criticism from the truster, then the trust relationship is unlikely to last long. And the trusted person also needs to be able to forgive unfair criticisms. A vulnerability to well-disguised breaches of trust is also part of trusting another.

Trust can also be less explicit or more gradual. It can even be unconscious.

Who else never wants to trust again?