Psychology Truths in Life: Part II

This is the second psychology truth. Part I was posted previously.

There are ten powerful psychology truths in life.

1. Silence is more powerful than trying to prove a point.
2. When trust is broken, sorry means nothing
3. Control your actions, learn to react less
4. When you are honest, you lose people who don’t deserve you.
5. One beautiful heart is worth more than 1000 beautiful faces
6. Small circle, private life, clear mind, and happy heart
7. Never go back to someone who has already broken you
8. Stop overthinking, you can’t control everything. Just let it be.
9. If somebody is stupid enough to walk away from you, be smart enough to let them go.
10. True friends are very rare, if you have one, you are very lucky.

Some of these I have been living by for a while, some I have known I should be living by, and some are new that I hope to put into practice.

When trust is broken, sorry means nothing.

We see it all the time on the news, some celebrity or politician says or does something that offends a person or group, and an apology is demanded. The apology comes and it is not accepted as sincere, or the apology is not for the offense, but for offending. We like to pick those we want to believe are sincere or who we believe deserves another chance. When it is a celebrity or a public figure, it is easy to get angry, add the offender to our list of people we dislike, and move on, but when someone hurts us personally, it isn’t that easy.

It is usually easy to tell when someone we care about is remorseful. To me it is easier to forgive someone who is visibly remorseful. I can usually tell they are pained that they have hurt me. The irony is that I usually end up feeling sorry for them also. I know when I hurt someone I care about, I hurt emotionally and sometimes physically, depending on the extent of the offense. If I know someone else feels the same pain, I can usually see trust being repairable, or possibly not broken, just fractured.

There are a few universal causes of broken trust that are near impossible to recover from completely: lying, betrayal, disloyalty, and causing pain to someone’s loved one. I’m sure there are others, but these are the ones that I think most will agree with.

I used to lie a lot as a child. It was never with ill intent or to get anyone else in trouble. It was mostly for self-preservation. When my sister was little, all she had to do was cry and my mom would yell at me. She could have been in a totally separate room than me and tripped over her own feet and started to cry, and a parent would yell at me. I’m sure I did my share of making my little sister cry, but it sure did bother me to get yelled at when I did nothing wrong. I quickly learned that she was too little and wasn’t going to get into trouble. If I could convince my parents that she did something instead of me, neither of us would get into trouble. The one incident I can remember was when I accidentally broke the window in the door with a broom handle. In retrospect, I probably wouldn’t have gotten more than a little disappointed raised voice, after all, accidents happen, but at the time, I expected to be killed, or much worse, spanked within an inch of my life. So, the easiest way out was to hand the broom to my little toddler sister and go to the other side of the room and be busy, so Mom would know it couldn’t have been me. It took some convincing, but neither of us got in trouble. I felt bad for that lie, I guess that is why I still remember it. I confessed years ago, of course after I moved out of the house.

I learned young not to lie, as I was convinced that I would get into much more trouble for lying than if I just tell the truth. As I have matured, it has become one of my codes to live by. Though not lying has gotten me into as much trouble as telling untruths, so don’t let anyone tell you different. However, I don’t get that guilty conscience being honest. The little angel on my shoulder tends to kick pretty hard. I got paddled in second grade because I was the only one who confessed when the teacher asked who all was standing on their desk when she saw another girl standing on hers. All the girls were doing what I was doing. Little did I know at the time, the girl that the teacher saw was standing on top of her desk, I was only standing on the bar across the legs of the desk. So, I got punished on a technicality. I will say, I was soured by that for many years. Nowadays, if by chance I do lie, I usually have to fix it very quickly, unless it is to a telemarketer. I’m not real worried about lying to them. I did learn the art of ‘not exactly lying’ from the master though. In case you don’t know what that is, it is talking all around a lie without actually saying it. Kinda like saying “it depends on what your definition of the word ‘is’ is.” People who know how to do this tend to call you out on it very quickly though. They know you are dancing around something, so you might as well tell them what it is you don’t really want to say.

Building trust starts early. There are those who never learn to just be honest. They cannot have a true relationship because relationships are built on trust and no intelligent person can trust a liar. It is like that old saying: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Eventually they lie enough that all their friends and family leave them or just tolerate them without faith. Many times, people start out honest but get into a hole and instead of seeking help, they continue to claw deeper and deeper until they are telling lies to cover up lies and when friends and family start comparing notes, it all comes out, whether it is an addiction, an affair, or some other big embarrassing secret. By the time everything is out in the open or the person has hit rock bottom and asked for help, it is too late. They have lost the trust of their once loyal loved ones.

Unfortunately, because of lost trust, I have very few true friends. I choose for it to be that way. I vet my friends before I allow myself to get close because I have been stabbed in the back or have been taken advantage of one too many times. I do believe in second chances in most cases, I’m not much on thirds though. There are friendships I lost years ago that I still mourn to this day. Some are high school friends, college friends, old flames, relatives, those who just happened into my life. There is a poem entitled, Reason, Season, or Lifetime by an unknown author. It states that each person comes into our lives for a reason, or to fill a need we have at the moment. Some come for a season, and they are a joy to us, and they teach us something. Then there are those who come for a lifetime. They teach us life lessons and the things we need to build an emotional foundation. It is up to us where which of these people we choose to be to others and which others are to us. Maybe we need to have someone to break our trust to teach us something important. Maybe our person is here for a season because they broke our trust and that is the hard lesson we learned. Possibly we can be foolish to allow the toxic person to be a lifetime person to continue to hurt us over and over.

I believe most would agree, when their trust is broken, no matter what happens after and how strong the relationship becomes in the future, the one who was hurt will always remember those hurt feelings and fear the day they will come again. No amount of apologizing and making up will erase those memories and emotions. I have known people whose spouses have cheated on them and who have reconciled, say that their relationship is stronger now than it ever was, but that they always have that paranoia in the back of their mind wondering if and when their spouse will cheat again. I have found that in many cases it is fairly easy to forgive, but forgetting is another thing, and not one that comes easy. It is like muscle memory for the brain. We remember the emotional turmoil that comes with being stabbed in the back, and that makes us involuntarily flinch when our subconscious starts to see familiar signs. That is what brings on the paranoia and uneasiness around those we love, but who have hurt us in the past. It may be that no matter how hard someone tries to make up for hurting a loved one, the loved one may never be able find the same level of trust, whether they want to or not. Emotions are persnickety and are not things easily controlled. Though our mind may tell us things are all good now and we can feel better about things and go on with life as before the hurt, there is often a disconnect between the brain and the heart and the heart goes rogue.

I’ve been hurt, and I have hurt others. In most cases there have been apologies and forgiveness, but also in most cases, the relationships are not the same as they were before the hurt. In some cases, there is no longer a relationship to speak of. A hurt heart can sometimes have a very long and difficult recovery Sometimes there is no cure, the pain just is and always will be. If you are the one who inflicted the pain, you may have to just walk away with the burden of knowing your loved one will forever hurt because of your action. It will be your life sentence to bear, which can often hurt as badly as the original offense. So, I believe this psychology truth stands, when trust is broken, sorry means nothing. It takes remorse, hard work and much time, to hopefully repair what was broken, often making this an unobtainable goal.