Last week I posed a few questions. When you are with someone or just getting to know them, how do you know to trust them? If you are already with someone, how do you keep the trust, and what are the deal breakers?

Trust is defined, by Webster’s Dictionary as follows:

Reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.

With all of the words that describe trust, the one thing that seems to be missing from the definition is time. With time two people learn to rely on one another. Their strengths are tested in various ways and making the choice to stay instead of run, shows a sign of trust.

Confidence is a word amongst all the rest that stands out to me. To trust someone you must be confident enough in yourself to know that you are enough for them. This is a tricky place to be seeing as how it usually takes time to get that comfortable with someone. You must also have the confidence in yourself that if something doesn’t work out the way that it seemed, that you will turn away and still be whole with or without the other person.

Trust is what keeps people together, it is earned and built, and it does not happen overnight. The more that you let someone into your world, your mind, and your heart, then the more pieces of your trust they earn. Once you hit your mid-twenties, most people have accumulated some baggage from previous relationships and at times it’s hard to let someone new in.

I seem to have met my current love affair at an interesting time in both of our lives. We both walked into this with some baggage and a few pieces of broken hearts. Sometimes, it is not may not feel like the ideal time to meet someone, but it can be impossible to walk away if they capture your attention.

That is when you have to decide if it is worth more it to stay and see what happens, work out the quirks, and clean up the past messes. Stay confident in yourself, and trust the other person until there is a reason not to.

Lucy Lipstick blogs about her experiences from a lesbian perspective every Friday on GayRVA.

Lucy Lipstick was once a single girl, living in Richmond. She found love, and could no longer write about the meeting and greeting of prospective dates. Now she is living life, and writing about the everyday things that occur in the life of a lipstick lady living in the RIC. E-mail Lucy at lipsticklucy11@gmail.com.