Building Relationships On Trust

Building Relationships On Trust

Aside from love which is an inevitable ingredient of a successful marriage, trust is another factor required for a peaceful and lasting relationship. No matter the love between a couple, if both of them do not trust each other, the relationship is heading for the rocks. For, situations will arise that will threaten the marriage or proposed marriage, which they will only scale through if trust exists between them. Many couples erroneously believe that all they need to succeed in their marital relationships is love. But they soon discover that trust, besides love, is the foundation on which a successful marriage is built.

A lot of people are excessively jealous, or rather possessive in nature as far as their relationships are concerned. They just cannot bear to see the opposite sex around their partners. Even if there is nothing intimate between their spouses or fiancées and the opposite sex, they immediately conclude that their partners are cheating on them. Such excessively jealous or possessive people do not remember to give their partners the benefit of the doubt. They don’t even care to investigate what they saw before concluding that their partners are unfaithful to them.

Both men and women are guilty of this unreasonable jealousy. Some guys would just start battering their girlfriends/fiancées/wives the minute they see them with other guys, even if not in any compromising state. In their minds, all manner of romantic adventures are going on between the ladies and the other guys. And some just go ahead to call off the relationships. Same goes for ladies who can’t stand seeing their men with other women. They could create a scene in workplaces and other locations where such scenes are extremely embarrassing to the men, especially when the men are not romantically involved with the ladies in question.

Many women have got their husbands sacked from their jobs as a result of such mad jealousy. After creating scenes in the men’s offices over allegations of unfaithfulness, or making their homes hell for the men to the extent that it begins to affect their productivity at work, their employers would have no choice than to let them go. Some of such men have ended up with hypertension or stroke, leading to their untimely death, while some have committed suicide when they could no longer bear the situation.

The most unfortunate thing about this kind of saga is that some of those men were wrongly accused. Many of such allegations are mostly figments of the women’s imagination, which was prompted by their excessively jealous and possessive nature. Some of the stories are also based on hearsay. There is an ugly habit in women circles which every lady must beware of if they must experience happy and successful relationships. Some women enjoy breaking relationships either out of jealousy or plain wickedness. They are often not happy to see their friends or female neighbours enjoying their relationships because they have not been lucky enough to have such a happy marriage or courtship. So, they decide to ruin their friends’ or neighbours’ happiness by going to them with unfounded stories of their partners’ infidelity.

Some of the women who engage in peddling such rumours are actually interested in the men, so they feed their women with the lies to arouse jealousy in them and spur them to over-react. Their ultimate aim is to ruin the relationship so they can easily take over. But the women are so gullible and unsuspecting that they easily fall into the traps set for them. The minute they hear such unpleasant stories, something stirs inside of them and their tempers just flare. If only they could trust their men a little and watch silently before venting their anger, they would be able to see through those women and discover them for who they are.

Some women are so insecure in their marriage or relationships that they live their lives suspecting that their men are cheating on them. Because they’ve seen or heard such things happen in other people’s relationships, they just assume that every man cheats and their own cannot be an exception. So, they look out for any occasion when they would ‘catch’ the man in company of a lady. The lady they eventually see with their men may be a professional colleague, an old school mate or just a lady known to them with whom there is nothing romantic, but their wives/partners are not interested in knowing who the unfamiliar ladies are. They just conclude that their worst fears have been confirmed. And they go ahead to let all hell loose as they shout at their men and provoke him to anger after embarrassing him in front of his colleagues or whoever is around at the time.

Some would even walk out of the relationships or pack out of their matrimonial homes. And then those who brought the evil reports to them about their partners would immediately take over and move in with the men. Some women have taken that drastic step and discovered that they were fooled out of their marriage or relationship. Women who are too jealous and possessive over their spouses often end up losing those men. Because they would so harass their men over time that the men would eventually feel pushed to the wall and send them packing or vacate the home for them.

Women must realise the importance of trust in marital unions and make conscious efforts to build their relationships on it. It is not fair to accuse a man of infidelity and crucify him based on what people say, your imagination or what you saw which you cannot tell whether your deduction is right or wrong. That a man or woman is married does not mean he or she cannot relate with the opposite sex without having to look over their shoulder to ensure that their partners are not looking. Married people must be able to stop and exchange pleasantries with their old school mates or colleagues anywhere they come across them without fearing what their partners would say. A woman must be able to trust and vouch for her man behind him even when she is told stories that tend to portray him in bad light. She must cultivate the habit of talking things over with the man and believing her husband’s side of the stories unless the man has proven to be unfaithful to her before.

Marriage should not be made a prison experience for people because of excessive jealousy and lack of trust of a partner. It gives peace of mind to know that your partner trusts you and knows that you wouldn’t do anything you shouldn’t do behind him or her. And both parties involved would enjoy their relationship as against the stress partners suffer when they don’t trust each other.

By Nike Oluwole.