Have you ever gotten a chance to reflect on the above question? I’d love to know your thoughts!
I tend to separate the genuine and incredibly beautiful form of love we call unconditional or universal love from a healthy relationship.
While unconditional love can be given to a stranger human being, an animal met in the street, a plant, a rainbow — you name it; sometimes even to a person who hurt you deeply and with whom you decided to go no contact, a relationship is earned!
It seems to me that the fuel of a healthy relationship is unconditional love as an emotion—which transcends romantic love. Nonetheless, its foundation is trust, and building trust is a reciprocated process requiring investment.
In the words of the legendary mentor Stephen R. Covey from his book “The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People”:
We all know what a financial bank account is. We make deposits into it and build up a reserve from which we can make withdrawals when we need to. An Emotional Bank Account is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust that’s been built up in a relationship. It’s the feeling of safeness you have with another human being.
To withdraw money from your physical bank account to fulfill your daily needs, you first need to have the money. The same principle applies to trust.
To avoid suddenly losing trust as many folks deeply believe and share it as being part of life, following some ‘unforgivable’ mistake, the trust reserve needs to be high enough to allow withdrawing from it, I suppose.
In reality, it is not that the mistake was unpardonable. The problem is that we gifted our trust, instead of giving ourselves the required time to observe the person’s behavior, and how ready they were to wholeheartedly invest in building trust.
What if we are responsible for the suffering created by losing trust given that we allowed our lack of self-love to take control of our life through craving others’ validation and being delusional enough to believe that trust may be as unconditional as love, in the first place?
Admire without trust no partnership nor any transactions. Hence most important element to develop for sucessful life.
see my views : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/trust-reputation-vinod-dahake/