Faith Gives Permission to Love.

Faith gives us permission to love. As it takes the sun to open the petals of the flower, so it takes faith to open the human heart. Like religion, love requires a leap of faith. To love another, we have to risk believing and trusting in that person, which means to risk becoming vulnerable to sorrow as well as joy. By so doing, we let the other into our hearts, in order for the fragile, living connection of caring to grow between us.

Faith has two interwoven components, belief and trust. Belief is the objective component, and trust the subjective. Thus, I believe certain things about my loved ones, things concerning their character and behavior. Based partly on these convictions, I also risk trusting them. I let them into my heart; I disclose myself to them; I render myself vulnerable to them.

Erik Erikson says we largely determine whether to trust on the basis of our family of origin experience in our first year or so of life. That determination establishes for us the trustworthiness of other persons and life itself. While we can still learn to trust after these first years, trusting gets more difficult as we age, and the longer we go without a successful love relationship.

We enter into new love relationships already with a history and attitude toward trust. For some trusting comes easy; for others, it seems well-nigh impossible. Due both to our history and personality, our nurture and nature, we trust others in differing degrees and rates of speed. Being either too trusting or too cynical, however, will eventually get us into trouble.

Trust is the last thing to be developed in a love relationship, and the first thing to be lost when the relationship goes awry. This is as true for men as for women, for there are no significant differences between the sexes regarding the capacity to trust. Yet it is more difficult for men to permit themselves to become vulnerable to other men, than for women to open themselves to other women. This does not hold true between men and women, perhaps due in part to men not seeing themselves in competition with women.

When I counselled a couple, I would tell them that if they are going to succeed at reconstructing their relationship, they have to rebuild their faith in one another. This must be done in stages. It is almost like beginning over again, only with the major difference that they have some pain between them to resolve.

I would tell them that if they say they will do something, or be somewhere at a certain time, they had better be true to their word. Their marriage has entered a probationary period, wherein they will have to prove themselves to one another—maybe even to themselves.

When you have faith in another, you believe that they truly care for you and strive not to hurt you; that they are loyal, honest, consistent, confidential, committed, understanding of and sensitive to, you. You trust that this person is there for and with you, and will not easily reject or abandon you. You choose to risk a heart-to-heart openness and mutual connection.