Who CAN you really trust?

I’m finding my sense of trust diminishing as I progress in life. Life has taught me people lie through their teeth at times, people don’t fulfil their promises. You cannot take anybody at their word.

I’ve always known corruption to be universal, I’ve known people who have committed vile crimes against children.

On safari, I’ve witnessed wild animals behave as they are programmed to do. They don’t go out of their way to impose more suffering than is needed to gather food. Well, except for more domesticated animals, animals over which mankind has had strong influence.

Humans calculate their moves with malice as well as with ingenuity and altruism. I do concede that very many people act with incredible altruism, and a small cohort of people spend most of their lives being altruistic. Thinking of people like Sister Stan. Some people come to it later and dedicate themselves to being mostly altruistic.

I’m as flawed a human as they come, but I’m interested in thoughts regarding whom you have genuinely found to be trustworthy, and why, and conversely why some people let you down.

Jequ0n

You can’t trust anyone. We all learn this it sooner or later, sadly.

cj maxx

NO-ONE . Every fùkcer is out to feather their own nest. Look after yourself and yours but trust nobody

RobbingBandit

No one not even myself life just keeps on bringing me down but as the old saying goes dust yourself off and start all over again. But it's getting harder to do with the fight having an endless cheat code I'm gonna fall hard enough one day that that dust will consume me.

BrianD3

If I think about the (small number of) people I've found to be trustworthy, honest and not manipulative, they had some of the following traits:

High intelligence with good memory

Signs of being on the autism spectrum

A frugal mindset with a high level of financial independence

Low profile, not the sort of person who would be known as a "pillar of the community" or be on the committee of a local sports club

Contrast that with normies whose words mean nothing, They duck, dive and cute hoor their way through life, splurge money on crap to make an impression, don't plan ahead, fall out with family over money, do Darkness Into light walks and make sure to get their photo taken while doing so.

There have been a small number of people I could/can trust in the ways that matter. My parents to have always loved me, my mother (my Dad died first) to put me first & foremost above her own needs, although she could get a tiny bit frustrated occasionally. There’s one or girls from my old school who are really really solid.

My Mum’s sister was the most gentle, forgiving, loving person I have ever known, she had no flaws whatsoever. Absolutely none. She died of a stroke the following day after a very happy party in my place, just after coming home from holidays, aged 87, and having been diagnosed with severe heart failure years before. She always brought joy wherever she went. My own Dad was highly respected in his business world for his straightforward honesty. If he didn’t think a piece of engineering was suited to a company client he would typically divert to something more economical even if if meant less in his own pocket. He was greatly trusted by major clients.

I utterly respect a person’s right to be angry, offended, hurt, to self defend. Most people have their bad moments. But some folk take advantage with dubious intentions aforethought.

I have some wonderful relatives who love me and would ultimately do anything to save the day for me when it would come to that. But I am firefly independent whenever possible, I keep plodding along.

Fecebtky I’ve become aware I have prigressive MS, the emotional support from relatives and sone friends has been immense. I treasure those people. But when I was trying to seek medical help from a private hospital I was very badly let down. So I’ve very limited trust overall. Those who either live or respect me from a distance do their best to be the best they can for me. That’s magic.

nachouser

Op, I'd say you're having a tough night. Good luck with it.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120633490#Comment_120633490

Yes I go through cycles every few days or a couple of weeks where I get seriously depressed, even suicidal, but I regain my composure, maybe after days of bed rest. I’m quite unwell with MS, and it really scours you mentally apart from physically. Then I get a new energy for sone days where I dust myself down and start over. Thought cycle tends to be on fast repeat these times. It used to be on slower repeat🤣 I think fast repeat might be better!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120633519#Comment_120633519

You have eaten my own thoughts.

hayrabit

AH so answer here is Morgan Freeman

always a good guy , #apart from when he aint

so, going on "Morgan Freeman equation" , #ya can't always trust Morgan Freeman; thusly one can never really trust anybody 100%

answer: No one , not even oneself should one put all their trust in.

☺️

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120633530#Comment_120633530

Ah, I’m going through coming to terms with MS. It’s rough out there. But I must nurture my sense of humour, I do have one!

dxhound2005

Fecebtky = Recently.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120633559#Comment_120633559

I wouldn’t trust myself if I were anyone else in certain respects. Given basic respect I will bend over backward to assist. Taken for a ride, I will subsequently fly p1$$ on you. I will trouble myself greatly to explicitly point out where you have wronged me, and I won’t let it go. I’ve experienced a few very bitter moments in recent years where I believe a couple of people have deliberately set out to wrong me, or at the very least they have been so utterly thoughtless to allow it to happen and continue on. I was deceived about something a couple of years ago, untrained to this day.

Oscar_Madison

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058297681/who-can-you-really-trust

So what you’re really saying is

“I got to go on safari back in the day when safaris were cool and you didn’t - ha ha ha”

Jez. Can’t even trust an AH thread these days. ☹️

Strumms

trust your instincts, regarding people, situations, life….

19 times out of 20 you’ll be right…

you get the odd person… “ no look for the good in people, don’t look for or think the worst “… Personally the responsible thing is to be savvy to see both….

BrianD3

Re: being badly let down by a hospital and losing trust in people - even though I am not sick myself, I can relate given my experience as an advocate and carer for an elderly family member. People cannot be trusted to do the fcuking jobs that they are being paid to do. Then when you complain you are met with excuses, silence and apathy. Money, money, money and vested interests protecting their positions while you suffer. Hospitals, nursing homes, homecare, GPs, public and private sectors.

I find it to be a battle and I am in the full of my health, I shudder to think what would happen to my relative if I wasn't around. When I myself reach the stage of failing health and being dependent on healthcare and other people, I won't have anyone to advocate for me so am probably fcuked. Many boardsies will be the same even if they don't realise it yet. Anytime a thread is started on here about abuse of the elderly and vulnerable and our debacle of a health service, it gets far less interest than many threads about topics that have less impact on people's lives.

I was going to start a thread here entitled "will you be scammed, abused and neglected when you are old?" and still might.

nachouser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120633562#Comment_120633562

I had a partner who had MS. I'm looking at a laminated "Wholefood plant based diet" card as I type. Get some sleep if you're reading this:-)

Tavrin Callas

I am heartened by the responses here. When I saw the title I thought it'd be full of responses of people listing a select few close people in their lives that they trust. Those kind of responses always make me feel like a freak for being (seemingly) the only one who can't trust anyone. So, the truth is that I'm not paranoid or delusional. Everyone really IS out to get me, just like they're out to get the rest of us too!

Count Dracula

I think you have to trust people. You trust more than you would imagine. Think about it.

In general mortals will go out to do the best that they can for you. It is your perception of them that is qualifying your trust in them.

If you want anything done, the way you want it done, you will have to do it yourself.

Keep your secrets a secret. A story that more than 2 people hear is no longer a secret.

suvigirl

You can't trust anyone.

It doesn't matter though, just treat everyone with honesty and respect and decency.

When they let you down/do the dirty/ prove themselves dishonest/ stab you in the back, whatever......it won't really matter because you will never have really trusted them anyway, deep down.

slightly related, I myself an completely honest, ridiculously so, no one appreciates that!

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120633519#Comment_120633519

It's one of the things that people don't get about autism. Autistic people tend to have higher empathy. People think autistic people can't feel but they tend to feel more. It's just reading social cues or knowing how to react that can be hard. They also tend to have very strong moral compasses. Because being moral is more rational.

So where I wouldn't say that being autistic would mean an individual is automatically more trust worthy, I'd say it's statistically more likely. How much more likely, I don't know.

brokenbad

From personal experience - outside of your 4 walls don't trust anybody........

niallpatrick

I have to trust people, my wife and mum would never betray me. I have to trust locals I've known for over 40+years to pay me for work I do for them if I charge them, some I'll refuse payment or 'owe me it later'. I'm no fool some locals I won't touch them or their entire family for work even if we were starving. If I consider myself trustworthy or some local families so on the level you could lay brick I can take the opposite spectrum as a guide and there is no in-between. Sorta trust worthy doesn't cut it, once I fill my tool bag I get stuck in and don't stop.

Local lovely families hell yeah I trust them and my wife and mum implicitly, friends I have none and I don't have any workmates either. In my regular full time job I work on my own.

Tavrin Callas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120635610#Comment_120635610

You can't really trust people just because they pay you. Anyone would be an idiot not to pay someone for their services as it's be just bad business not to pay, and incur bad credit. Most people, if they could get away with not paying with no consequences, they probably wouldn't bother their arse.

Good though that you have your mum and wife though.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120633911#Comment_120633911

I’m very blunt myself 🤣🤣🤣

aero2k

@[Deleted User] I'm sorry to hear about your worsening health, and also that your life experiences have made your sense of trust diminish over time. I have also seen some terrible behaviour from other people, and suffered because work colleagues and financial institutions didn't behave with integrity, but I've also seen and benefited from staggering acts of kindness and bravery. I've benefited from people doing the right thing even when it wasn't in their own best interests, in fact they suffered because of it. I myself have experienced negative consequences for doing the right thing.

I don't know who said "better to trust, and be miserable occasionally, than never to trust and be miserable all the time." I know you're into online dating - that requires a level of trust and vulnerability if you're going to make a connection with someone. And in some situations you've nothing to lose by trusting - eg taking a flight or having surgery. Once you're committed to either, better to trust and relax rather than being tense.

I try to be sceptical but not cynical. Sometimes I just lower my expectations a bit and it's grand. All that said there are only a very small number of people I would trust not to let me down, or at least make a decent effort not to.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058297681/who-can-you-really-trust

Interesting I was just thinking , we are in big trouble, Ireland as much as anywhere , organisms are dying out at an alarming rate , the facts are there to see, yet humans are thriving. We are a virus and we’re killing everything

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120636502#Comment_120636502

It’s true that some people need consequences to do the right thing, they have no moral compass of their own. I saw a New Zealand based documentary on human personality/behaviour and it uncovered the fact that about two out of ten people are fairly dysfunctional, with half of those being narcissistic/parasitic on their fellow humans. At the other end of the spectrum are the those who would always do you a good turn, but most of us are fairly decent but imperfect and fit nearer the middle of the spectrum.

buried

You can definitely trust a politician anyways. Well, that's what they f**kin told me, the last time they came to my door.

Andrea B.

Slightly off topic. Trust in terms of confidentiality is something that I thought about last few days.i

As example, there is a high staff turnover over last few years at work.

It has become quite comical, the speed at which the news of someone's departure spreads.

They tell one "confidante", sworn to secrecy. Come back from lunch and even the company next door knows.

People just love to own gossip.

aero2k

@[Deleted User] You mentioned "corruption" in your OP. I always used to think of that word in the sense of the term "bribery and corruption", people being paid to do bad things. More recently I've come to think of it as we use it when computer files become corrupted, and it seems that most large organisations eventually become corrupt in that they are no longer fit for their original purpose. Protecting the organisation above all becomes the priority, and that inevitably leads to a lack of trust.

orourkeda1

Philip schofield

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120633526#Comment_120633526

It seems you have had and currently do experience the kindness and support of people. Does that not help affirm for you that there are those who you absolutely can trust?

It's a big world. There are plenty of people who cannot be trusted for various different reasons. Maybe they have no word, are flakey, breaks confidence, steal, can't be relied upon when it counts or at all.

I've encountered quite a few. They don't colour my view of all people and for that I'm very glad. It's important for me to be able to trust in order to be open to connections. Luckily for me I have good instincts so if I sense someone is a bit off then I listen and will be wary or have nothing to do with them.

Something else, people (for the most part because there are awful ones among us) aren't "normies" or "fuckers". They are your fellow humans with all the complexity that brings.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120637753#Comment_120637753

Gossip is power, knowledge is power, information is power. It can be as powerful as money, hence black hat hackers who do it not for financial gain, get the thrill of influencing something on a higher level, even if it’s not the Pentagon.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120640134#Comment_120640134

Oh yes, there are those I can implicitly trust. I prefer to be able to trust people, I grew up in a household that valued straightforwardness & integrity above anything else, so I didn’t grow up to cope at all with those who actually set out to deceive. Where I sometimes fall down is that I can allow flaky people too many opportunities to try and reprieve themselves. I set out to try and take people at face value, but some people have a second face they only show when they run out of energy trying to give a fake good impression.

RobbingBandit

Diabetes for me with terrible complications I'm early 40s lost my sight feet are bolloxed bloods can't be controlled due to mobility and activity levels have to have cataract surgery then add in I am autistic too and that opens a shitstorm of sidebars.

Dying is easy it's living thatsthe tricky part.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120647519#Comment_120647519

That’s an awful burden. It does take big effort to keep going, and an ongoing search for the reason to do so. Important to have people on call you can trust.

growleaves

Family & very close friends obviously.

I've become sceptical of large organisations. They are social systems primarily and the blurred subjectivity of a large org allows the slick and charming, maniupulators and even psychopaths to progress with only partial reference to their skill level or accomplishments (which can be exaggerated, hyped, deliberately mis-attributed etc.)

Often these large orgs are disguised job programs - including ostensibly "private" companies that in reality are plugged into state money from a remove of one or two steps.

The whole point of throwing a large bunch of strangers together in an organisation is that it can scale bigger than a family business. There are undoubtedly advantages in this in terms of efficiency. However it can be awkward for the people themselves and you can't automatically trust people who may, effectively, be your business rivals behind a thin facade of friendliness.

The main way to do well in a large place is to make no enemies. Trickier than it sounds since some people can hate you just for existing. Easiest way to do this is to keep your mouth shut and back down from all conflict.

If you can somehow please everyone, through charisma, then you can be in the top rank of careerists.

Tavrin Callas

Ah, I guess it turns out I am the only one that genuinely has nobody at all to trust. Oh well.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649820#Comment_120649820

You can trust me as long as you humour me 🤣🤣🤣 otherwise I’ll turn you inside out.

Seriously, there is probably somebody you could trust, but maybe you haven’t put them to the test. You have to stand to be let down if you attempt to allow yourself to trust somebody. It depends how you cope with being let down. I don’t respond well to it myself, but I will tend to give people the benefit of the doubt in the first place.

Tavrin Callas

Yeah, must be unusual alright, because I always get similar responses. People just can't believe that there are some people in the world that have nobody.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058297681/who-can-you-really-trust

Your mother, but that's about the limit and isn't even true for some.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649907#Comment_120649907

I remember when a colleague’s mother died, my boss at work said “well you do right to be very bereft after the death of a mother as she might be the one and only person who will never really walk away from you no matter what, your partner can up and put any time, friends can abandon you, you mightn't get in with siblings”. It was quite bluntly shocking but it acknowledged the ultimate nature of that type of bereavement.

I have limited trust in medical settings. Obviously when submitting to surgeries I’ve had to foster trust, and mostly surgeons have done well by me. I did however come back from a major emergency surgery at a public hospital with a newly closed incision from below chest to pelvis, a prescribing doctor’s error meant I had not been prescribed any painkillers whatsoever. Any one person can make a mistake, but IMO the nurses should have questioned why none of the patients on the ward had received any painkilling medication after some massive surgeries, it they did not. I was rushed off with a crash cart following me to the High Dependency Unit when my heart reacted badly to the level of pain.

Between that and other personal experiences and moreover those I’ve witnessed happening to others, I have limited trust in medical teams to carry out the right steps in important situations where one is not fully able to self-advocate.

Personally, I’m highly sceptical about charities. I know there are great ones out there, and some thoroughly genuine people who founded them, but there are too many overlapping, and we’ve been hoodwinked once too often. I’m recently the beneficiary of a solid and well governed charity, but I imagine we will be seeing more outrageous scandals in this sector in future. Also too many charities are doing work that should be done by our government.

Hyperbollix

I'd say the only two people in the world you can really place any trust in at all, are your parents. They brought you into the world and for as long as they're around, you'll always be their baby.

After that?........

Spouse? Your own kids? Old buddies from school? Lads from the local Gah club?

The wife could boot you out and clean you out after 20 years of marriage just because she feels like a change. Your kids will dump you in a home as soon as its feasible and visit you once a fortnight to get a photo to stick up on social media to prove what attentive kids they are. Your buddies? Most if not all will be good time buddies. Don't come to them with any real problems. They have their own sh1t to deal with.

Trust yourself.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120651862#Comment_120651862

Yes mostly parents are the people you can trust most, but there are occasional exceptions when one person leaves the family home and in doing so also abandons their family, and sometimes the remaining parent, rightly or wrongly, sort of poisons their children against the parent who left or was virtually forced to leave the home situation.

Tavrin Callas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120651946#Comment_120651946

It doesn't even have to be that extreme. Both parents could remain and bring up a child and to all outward appearances look like the perfect family, but still aren't people their child can or should trust.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120651958#Comment_120651958

Very true. A friend who took her own life essentially did so as an indirect consequence of having been raped by her father as a child. Again this is an extreme example, but there is also such as thing as emotional abandonment or neglect as a result of a parent having serious personal issues such as addiction, which is not that uncommon.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120650334#Comment_120650334

Lord . I don't know why but I feel the urge to apologise for that horrific event even though , and I promise , I had nothing to do with it !

You are right , not only was the doctor careless but the nurses not noticing the lack of appropriate analgesia is not excusable .

I trust my close family, oh and children and some very close friends for years and years .

But not too many others and definitely only a few from work . Work is not the same as real life I like to think . Its dog eat dog these days .

Most people will shaft you when the going gets tough for them but generally are ok when everything going well . If that is good enough accept it or you will drive yourself crazy expecting too much from others.

People are selfish creatures with the occasional welcome aberration .

I am sorry about your diagnosis. I had a close relative with the same a long time ago .

You don't need anybody around you who isn't on your side now .