Trust and the game of seesaw

Trust, it is the single most misunderstood, misused and overvalued word in the relationship dictionary.

No, this is not a click-bait opening statement. Having been in a committed relationship for over two decades and having been through all the ups and downs it had to offer, this is something that I have arrived at. No, I don’t put this as a forced counter-view to the popular advice meted out by the majority of relationship experts either. What follows is simply a heartfelt confession and a genuine appeal to all those holding on to their relationships. Doubt is a normal emotion, trust on the other hand is unnatural. If you are in love and fighting to preserve it, embrace your doubt and speak about it with honesty.

When you are in love, the need to be together supersedes everything else, hunger included. During college, there were days when I left home early before breakfast and went home late in the evening for supper having had no food during the day. Of course love kept the hunger at bay.

It was one such hot summer day, we used to attend our respective morning classes and then skip the afternoon lectures to meet at the youth club. I was waiting in the parking lot looking out for her. She used to ride a small automatic scooter, a red one. Few minutes of waiting in the dry heat felt like hours. Finally, I saw her, she made the left turn from the main street and as I stood there, she swooshed past me. I was left nonplussed; why did she do that? I was right there, didn’t she see me, how could she not? I was puzzled and angry and unable to make sense of what just happened.

This was pre-cellphone era, few minutes of brisk walk took me to the nearest public phone and I called her home number. Her mom answered and told me that she was sitting right next to her. She was not feeling well and had skipped lectures altogether. That didn’t make sense, why were they lying to me? I just saw her ride past me with my own freaking eyes! Her mom passed the phone to her and then we spoke. She sounded low, she told me she was not feeling well, had mild fever. But all of it seemed nonsensical, I just saw her…!

I was too angry and puzzled to realize that, at that moment she needed a comforting friend not an idiot who doubted her. Eventually her loving, patient voice calmed me down and I accepted the minor possibility that I saw someone else. Girls riding red automatic scooters were not a rarity in the city after all. Before I closed the call, she asked me to eat.

Back then, she did not see me as a person doubting her, she saw a young man consumed by love and the eagerness to spend as much time together as possible. My doubt was valid and so was her predicament. We loved each other and understood the underlying emotions. Naturally, there was no question of me not trusting her. But that was to change in the years that followed.

We don’t lose trust, we lose innocence and the purity that binds us. Artificial notions of liberty and individuality and equality poison our minds. In an effort to establish these positions we nurture our ego and in doing so, sacrifice the transparency that sustains a relationship. There is no such thing as equality, it is an impractical, impossible value fed by people hell bent on destroying harmony.

Remember the game of seesaw? Imagine two equals sitting at either end, the shaft perfectly parallel to the ground. What will happen? Nothing! Nothing will happen. It will soon become boring to sit there. The fun lies in the rhythmic rise and fall of the partners. Relationships are no different, idea is to seek harmony, not equilibrium.

I was working overtime. I used to leave for work before seven in the morning and returned after ten at night. The daily commute, the engagement at my work place and the management training later in the day used to leave me exhausted. I felt entitled to demand that she gave me undivided attention on the weekends. When that did not happen, it resulted in unpleasant situations.

I woke up on a Sunday, feeling well rested and in a cheerful mood. I climbed out of the bed, went to the kitchen, to the living room, to the balcony, she was nowhere to be seen. I called her on her cell phone, she did not answer. I scratched my beard and kept calling. The longer she took to answer, the angrier I got. Finally, after an hour she called back and told me she was in her office. I overheard someone speaking and had a hunch that she was somewhere else.

She returned a few hours later and confrontation was surely on the cards. After a spirited argument about giving each other time, individual needs, etc. she confessed that she was not in her office but at her mother’s place. I asked her why she lied? She said, she didn’t know. Just that I didn’t deserve the truth. That Sunday she did not ask me to eat! Something had changed.

I was still the emotional man yearning for her love. But I was also an entitled man demanding my ego be fed. I wanted my ego to stay higher and for that to happen she had to remain down. Just like the flat seesaw, this tilted but static state was equally boring. The only way to change the state was for her to bring in her own ego, with twice the intensity. That brought a much needed oscillation to our relationship but we ended up hurting our backs whenever one of us landed the ground hard.

Because I worked hard and bought food to the table, I felt entitled to be cared for. Because she sacrificed, she felt entitled to be cared for. Both of us needed care and comfort and companionship but neither of us was willing to offer it. It was easier to seek it elsewhere, be it friends or parents or colleagues. With these people the engagement was optional, the benefits were immediate and the commitment was limited. Between us it was just the opposite and it was exhausting.

Soon our time apart was exclusive and our time together was forced. More I tried to bridge the gap, the further we drifted. We became increasingly secretive and that is when the ugly version of doubt popped up. She was everything for me and everything I did was for her. So when she looked for comfort elsewhere, I was devastated. I was everything for her and everything she did was for me. So when I took her for granted she was disillusioned. I was heartbroken because she broke my trust. She was heartbroken because I didn’t trust her.

The reason I keep saying that trust was not the issue is because it wasn’t. You see, trust is a misunderstood, misused and overvalued word. It is not a virtue, it is a tool to further our version, force our perspective and fuel our ego. Fact is, our smartphones are password protected and so are our lives these days and since we have consciously chosen to be secretive, trust goes down as collateral damage.

We still loved each other, but we lacked the drive to understand and accept the needs and the emotions that we embraced so easily before. We were unable to enjoy the seesaw game that we so effortlessly did before. We chased equilibrium when the game was about maintaining the harmony.

Now, I am out of the game, now a mere spectator.

If you really are in love and truly wish to nurture the relationship, then the way forward is to surrender your ego and strive to rebuild the innocence and it has to happen from both sides. Reciprocity is the key to a fun seesaw game. If the innocence remains a unidirectional force, it will be crushed by the opposing force of a hyper inflated ego, needless to say it will not be fun. If you are lucky to be in a relationship where there is still scope for innocence, then trust me, there is no need to worry about trust.