Friendship is by the far one of the purest relationships a person has during his life and also one of the relationships a person cherishes the most. We find almost everywhere several quotations regarding how gifted a person is when he has friends or how friendship too is one of God’s many blessings to a man. It is the very essence of a good friendship that eases our hurdles along the toughness of life. Let it be in school, in college, in the university, in an office, or in our neighborhood, we find surrounded by friends who cheer us up, give us peace and create memories to remember and smile on to. But as easily as one gets to make friends, maintaining friendship is just as difficult. So, a person can not afford to take for granted a friend. What makes maintaining friendship difficult is the very heart of friendship and that is: trust. Although, most believe that friendship is based upon love, honesty, and respect, trust is by far the most significant issue in a friendship. In fact, the entire relationship is based on trust and starts off with the feeling of trust.
Before we discuss the importance and significance of trust in friendship, let us establish what trust really is, how it is developed and then relate it with friendship. Trust is highly associated with faith and belief, where we believe in the other person as being true and holding high aspirations. Why do we trust people? We do this to relate to them. A relation, any relation, is built upon trust, where we associate ourselves with others through believing in them that they would hold up and live up to our expectations. Our expectations and our trust that they will be fulfilled, associates us and binds us to people. Where there are no expectations and faith, there is no trust. That is why we say ‘don’t trust strangers’ as we only trust those whom we know and are close to and are bound with due to many expectations. The more the trust is in a relationship, the more the expectations are and the stronger is the relationship. Trust calls for honesty and truthfulness of words and promises. Some people find it extremely easy to trust people, and for some it is highly difficult. The ability to trust is directly related with the upbringing and the psychological development of a person during his or her childhood. Other than that, when people find themselves having to face disappointments often from broken promises and shattered trust from people, they tend to get pessimistic and for any one new to enter into their life they hold high doubts and hardly trust them. So we can say, if broken, trust is hard to develop for not just the same person who broke it but for others relatively. Other than friends, family is the most trusted entity in a person’s life and when friends betray, a person comes right back down to appreciate the trust in family.
When we reflect upon the relations of friends, expectations, and promises are extremely common. Friends tell each other secrets and trust each other for them to be kept under all circumstances. This very secret keeping activity bounds them in a bond that is the strongest part of their friendship and the most prone to break and devastate the entire friendship. When friends trust each other, their relation is the strongest. Each of them feels highly esteemed and valued for having a person who shares a part of them, who knows their deepest insights and would not let them down. Just by knowing that fact they are filled with confidence.
Just as important trust is in a friendship and lets it blossom and grow, sustaining the trust is the hardest, because at times there are some external forces acting on to break promises. Sometimes there are ethical and moral issues and sometimes there is a higher authority acting on to prevent from keeping the trust. This only brings a dilemma for a person where he finds himself stuck between moral and emotional conflicts. For example, a friend may be inclined towards doing something utterly useless and destructive, such as running away, and his or her friend might feel that it is wrong, but would be expected by the friend to support the decision. If the friend tells on him, he is a bad friend, but he or she might be saving the friend’s life and he or she would still be a good friend to his own eye and would be having a clear conscience, though chances of losing the friend would be extremely high. So what does a friend do in such a situation? Many friends lose out because of similar situations, while others simply never had the enough trust to sustain and they move on.
Trust is surely difficult for every relationship as it puts a person in various dilemmas. But nonetheless, it is highly important, and like other relations, trust is the heart of friendship. Let it be for keeping secrets, expecting honesty or support, friends trust each other from small to big things in life. Trust once broken is hard to grow back and for friends, betrayal or a broken promise spells doom for the entire friendship.