There's the odd time where you'll be in a relationship with someone who will honestly tell you how they feel. Yet the emphasis is on odd. Most of the time you will be left guessing, that seems to be the norm is this culture. There are many clues you can pick up on; tone of voice, word choice, body language, facial expressions, energy vibes, and any or all of those combined. Of course there are certain times when 99% of those signs go out the window; texting, for example. I have touched on this issue in another post recently; when you're texting or chatting online you have no body language to go by whatsoever. Even a simple phone call can reveal more information than texting can. When it comes to communication, texting is among the worst for expressing emotions.
Nevertheless, none of these ways would be any better or worse than the other if only people said what they were feeling; what they are really thinking. We all do it, yet I have no clue why that is. You ask your best friend how they are; and you know when they say, "I'm fine", that really they're not. You can tell by the tone of their voice; the look in their eyes. Sometimes you'll have a fight with someone, or even just an emotional talk, and then go over in your head replaying everything they said; trying in vain to bring out the actual meaning behind those words.
What happened to just saying what you mean? The standard question these days, at work with your co workers, at school, with your neighbors, even with strangers; how are you? or how's your day going? When it's someone you don't know the answer always is, "I'm good thanks, how are you?" This just keeps going on in what we recognize as "small talk". I'm not saying when asked how you are, you tell your life story or anything; this post is more focused on those that are your friends, even your family.
When you ask a stranger or even a co worker how they are doing, you don't expect, or even want to hear the truth; you're simply being polite in the way society has defined it. Yet when you ask someone you love, you truly want to know. You're not just trying to be polite or considerate; you really do care about how they are doing. Yet even then, sometimes you'd be hard pressed to get a fully honest answer.
We all have things we keep inside ourselves; whether that is because we don't trust someone else with such delicate emotions, or simply telling just hurts more to hear it out loud, even that we don't want to become an emotional burden on those we love. For some reason or other, we keep it to ourselves. I don't feel that way. While I understand that everyone has secrets, I believe they are for sharing with those we trust more than anyone else. Yes, sometimes you think you can, and do, trust a friend or family member that just ends up hurting you in the end; yet if you always thought that way, you would never be close to anyone. If you know that person loves you for who you are, you should be able to trust them. By withholding your true emotions from them, you're basically sending them the message that you still don't trust them with your heart. To slightly contradict myself here though, of course you're not going to trust a newly made friend right away.
One way I see trust is as a tree; it starts off just one seed. You plant it, water it everyday, and let it grow. Throughout its life, especially when it's new, you have to nurture it; protect it from the elements in the winter, make sure it's fully hydrated in the summer, watch it blossom in the spring. There will always be dangers to it; yet it will grow. Its roots getting deeper and deeper over time. Of course, even with all that strength, it's not invisible; nothing is. If there's no water, it will slowly die of thirst. It could die quickly; fire could consume it to a point beyond repair, lightening could split it down the middle. Yet it is truly strong; not invincible, but with a very high endurance. Then of course, it could be standing for hundreds of years only to be cut down in a minute by the greedy hands of us humans; what has been around and growing for hundreds of years, gone in a blink of the eye. As if it was nothing to grow another that big.
I believe it's exactly the same with relationships. Your love and trust for each other continues to grow everyday; to get stronger. Yet there's always the possibility of the hand to demolish it in the blink of an eye. So choose those you trust carefully, yet when you do choose, trust them completely. Because after a time, when they have already trusted you fully to show you their deepest part of their heart, they will start to wonder why you still keep them in the dark with yours. While you think that everything's OK because they trust you to share their feelings with, you may not realize how much it's hurting them that you won't share yours. So say what you truly mean, talk about your feelings for each other, show them how much you trust them. For if there's little or no trust in a relationship it will slowly die; like the mighty tree slowly dying of thirst.
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