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| Ms_Valentine |
Recently several threads and blogs have had at their heart a theme connected to concepts of trust.
Dictionary.Com has the following to say about the words, trust, confidence and assurance.
Trust implies instinctive unquestioning belief in and reliance upon something: to have trust in one's parents.
Confidence implies conscious trust because of good reasons, definite evidence, or past experience: to have confidence in the outcome of events.
Assurance implies absolute confidence and certainty: to feel an assurance of victory.
I as struck by how the subtle differences in meaning make a lot of difference when you think what that means when you ascribe them to a person you know.
Trust seems to imply a potentially very tenuous link to the truth of what you want. You trust someone but that is just your unquestioning belief in them. To trust, it seems does not require any action to have been taken to inspire trust. It may be that you feel trust has been 'earned' by previous behaviour but to trust, one doesn't need that. It can be blind faith.
To have confidence in, does seem to need past evidence to create that conscious trust.
Assurance seems to be something which implies a degree of certainty which I am not sure anyone could really say they felt about a person. It might be something you strive toward or hope for but does one ever feel certain about anything, given one could drop dead any second or get hit by a bus.
This makes me think when we talk of trust in someone in bdsm, again we may all be talking about something very different.
My trust in paul is at a level where I would say trust and confidence in him are highly established and I sometimes although fleetingly could almost believe in assurances about him.
What level of trust is required for play to occur between strangers. In public, if you don't know someone, the very fact of having others around may create confidence in the situation even if you do not have confidence in the person playing with you. So, with a safeword, in public, you might feel you can trust a stranger.
What about in private. If you do not trust them, either because you are not a trusting person or you have no evidence on which to base a trust, do you play? What protection does a safeword give if you do not trust that person? How would they be able to earn your trust either there and then or in subsequent meetings until play could safely take place.
I was thinking on the rare time I play with a stranger I rely upon the safeword we have agreed, as I have nothing else about them on which to put trust in. No previous behaviour in play can inspire confidence in them to make me feel comfortable to play with them.
On the whole, I think having confidence in a person is a better state to reach than trust as it does imply something they have done prompts your feeling, not just a belief from within you.
How good are our instincts? I watch 'Deal or No Deal' every day and watch people throw away guaranteed money based on what they 'believe' or 'feel'.
My point is if a person desperately wants to play, if they 'feel' a trust for that unknown person, can it be said the trust arises from prudent motivations or can one convince oneself it is okay and you trust enough because you are driven by a huge desire to play. Can we be deceived by ourselves or knowingly mislead ourselves to attain the pleasure we seek.
Interestingly, if it goes wrong people often plaintively cry 'How could you, I trusted you', as if their trust in the other person was a kind of magic force which actually meant something outside of the wronged persons consciousness. It does sound a weak accusation if thought of like that.
Now, if you say 'How could you, all my confidence in you has gone' it does make it seem as though both parties played some part in the building of the confidence and hence the greater upset when one proves to be not deserving of that confidence.
| 20 Jan 12, 3:07 PM bidetuser UK, 23 mths |
That was beautifully written. Thank you! | |
| 21 Jan 12, 4:18 PM Ms_Valentine UK, 9 yrs |
Thank you Dominant partner in an FLR with @paulss |
