October 2000
A discussion of trust and how it develops in different situations arose on alt.polyamory at one point. Here is my take on the matter.
For me, trust is something that develops over time and has lots of different components. I might trust someone to keep a confidence but not trust them to think before doing something stupid, for example. So saying "if you can't trust them they're not your friends" is over simplistic, at least in my life.
I find that if I am going to trust someone then that is something that takes a certain inevitable time to develop. I don't look at a new person in my life and say "yes! I trust you!" instantly, no matter how much I might want to. I have to observe them over time, see what they do in certain situations. For me, real trust is based on repeated examples of people acting in a trustworthy way, and those examples take time to accumulate.
Which doesn't mean that I start out expecting people to be untrustworthy, either. My starting position with a new acquaintance is to assume that they are basically trustworthy and observe them for a while to see how they behave in different circumstances. I act as if I trust them, while keeping mental reservations until they have proved themselves trustworthy. This makes it possible for them to prove themselves, since if I weren't acting as if I trusted them they wouldn't really have the opportunity to do that. But the mental reservations give me enough emotional space that if it turns out that they aren't as trustworthy as I had hoped, then I'm not too shocked-and-appalled.
The acting-as-if-I-trust-them is a calculated risk, but generally I find it worthwhile. I know people who won't extend that initial trusting behaviour to folk unless they are sure of them; and of course, if you don't give someone an opportunity to show that they are trustworthy you'll never get to see them being trustworthy.
I think of it as an investment.