On Reconstructing Trust: Time, Intention, and Forgiveness

The central focus of this paper is the mechanisms that ordinary people use in their everyday lives to manage relations that have included trust violations. Trust violations provide the impetus for strong emotional experiences. Many relationships recuperate from significant violations of trust, although in a changed form. Our data, gathered from ten in-depth interviews, indicated that on those occasions where individuals deemed the relationship worth salvaging, our respondents and their violators participated in a negotiation process that included the following components: the passing of time, an assessment of the seriousness of the violation and the intent of the other, the offering of an apology, and the rendering of forgiveness. Trust is an orientation to self, other, and relationship whose existence provides the framework for the possibility of intense emotional experiences such as love and hate. These experiences provide a motivating force and goal for the construction, maintenance, and destruction of interpersonal relationships which comprise the fabric of society