PlanJam!From your screen to the scene

Back when I worked in an office, I used to get included in on all kinds of office chatter and gossip. Besides the number one topic of management misdeeds, what people talked about the most was their relationships and how they were either blissfully perfect or destructively chaotic. As the years and chatter wore on, I came to the realization the compliments and complaints boiled down a simple distinction between trust and jealousy.

You see, my blissfully perfect coworkers of both the male and female persuasion always seemed to go on and on about how their partners had no problem with them hanging out with friends, buying a few unnecessary yet needful things and even going away for a weekend without them. On the other hand, the destructively chaotic coworkers would talk just as much about their partners, but it would be all complaints about the same scenarios. What was the difference? A simple lack of trust.

Trust is such an important aspect of any relationship, and the sooner the boundaries of trust are established, the stronger the relationship will be. While it’s true a couple becomes a whole, each person in the relationship should still be allowed to express and have access to personal needs. If you can trust someone enough to be their own person, he or she will usually extend that same amount of trust to you.

Ladies, not all men are “pigs”. Just because you catch your man browsing unsavory sites on the Internet or noticing a strikingly beautiful woman walking down the street does not necessarily mean he wants to cheat on you. These are just things even the best of guys do, to the point where it seems to be hard wired into their DNA. If these things bother you, go ahead and talk to him about it and let him know you find it hurtful. However, don’t expect the behavior to magically go away, but do extend trust if you know this is as far as the behavior is going to go.

And guys, just because your girl goes out with her single friends to a bar or works late with a male coworker does not mean she intends to cheat on you, either. Communication is key here, so simply ask her how her day went; whether it went well or badly, she’ll probably have lots to talk about either way. Just be sure to really listen to what she has to say, because by being allowed to speak freely, you are in fact extending that trust to her.