Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Better than trust?
A friend is doing a bunch of work on my house, has been over the past couple of months as time permits. When he wants me to sign off on some new facet of the work, he gives me a vaguely excessive explanation, which I've been gently rounding up by saying something like "It's fine, I trust you." Everyone wants to be trusted, right, so telling him I trust him and don't need all this justification is the way to go... right? Wrong, apparently. He tends to be polite and reserved to the point of not saying what he feels, but when he's stressed, or, like today, has a headache, stuff will slip out, and he astounded me by blurting out that he doesn't want me to say I trust him, but to say instead that whatever he has described to me is logical or makes sense. Er, excuse me, WHAT?!! The best I can figure is that he prefers direct approval of whatever he's come up with to being trusted. Approval vs trust? Trust would seem the clear winner to ME, but then I don't care about anyone's approval, so... And yes, trust is more an emotional thing and so maybe not as appealing to men, but then again all the so-called experts say that men want to hear that women trust them to do the right thing... sigh... in any case, now that I know that approval is better than trust for him, I'll play it that way. It's an interesting lesson in human behavior, that's for sure.
