I used to believe everything my family told me.
Why wouldn’t I? They were the people who claimed to love me unconditionally, the ones who were supposed to protect me, support me, and show up when the world didn’t. But somewhere along the way, the words and actions stopped aligning. And that’s when I began to see the cracks, not in them, but in the trust I had built so faithfully.
When “Care” Starts to Hurt
It started during some of the darkest years of my life. I was struggling, financially drowning, mentally exhausted, and dealing with health issues that seemed to pile on endlessly. During this time, my brother would constantly remind me how much he “cared” about family, how we should always be there for each other. His version of caring, though, looked nothing like what I desperately needed.
Instead of listening when I tried to share what I was going through, he’d plan things behind my back thinking somehow his wonderful ideas were for my own good. He’d dismiss my struggles as if they weren’t real, then imply that I should have lived my life differently. When I was barely keeping my head above water, he’d belittle my choices and make me feel even smaller than I already did. His ‘care’ felt more like judgement, a constant reminder that I was falling short. And somehow, in all of it, I was made to feel like I was the one failing the family.
The cruellest part? When I finally reached my breaking point and responded with frustration or hurt, he’d flip the script entirely. Suddenly, I became the problem. “You are too judgemental”, “You should be the one giving care instead of always expecting it,” he’d say, as if my years of silent suffering were somehow selfish. As if asking for basic empathy from family was too much to ask.
Then came the betrayal that cut deepest of all. I discovered he’d been talking about my struggles behind my back, sharing my private pain with others, turning my vulnerabilities into gossip. When I confronted him about it, he had the audacity to ask, “Why don’t you trust me?” The question hung in the air like a cruel joke. How do you explain to someone that trust isn’t built on claims of caring, but on actually showing up when it matters?
This pattern of claiming to care whilst causing harm isn’t uncommon in families. It’s a toxic dynamic where love becomes a weapon used to justify hurtful behaviour.
The Performance of Compassion
But not all trust breaks with such obvious cruelty. Sometimes it dies quietly, through well-meaning gestures that reveal how shallow our connections really are.
My brother-in-law was a master of such silence. Through years of pain, illness, and survival, not once did he ask how I was doing. Not once did he check in. But after a particularly vulnerable email I sent, one of many that had previously gone unanswered, he replied: “Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings. I appreciate it very much.” I stared at those words for a long time. Not because they offered comfort, but because they felt like a performance. A rehearsed line with no soul behind it. How am I supposed to trust that this was his genuine response?
For many years I had noticed his opportunistic nature, doing things for a purpose. He’d call just to borrow money, visit to show closeness when he needed something, take my father out for lunch every weekend to gain favours and possibly future benefits. He even brought his family overseas once and intended to live at his father’s house after his father passed away, all with obvious motives. But he always talks about compassion, about the righteousness in everything he does. And now he talks about family, about how he cares, about how we should open up to each other.
What does he expect me to react or even trust based on what my intuition tells me and the hurt I was going through over the years? I couldn’t help but think “What’s he up to this time?”, “What hidden agenda does he have?”. Ten years of struggling through pain is a long time, enough to carve away all trust, enough to form hard protective layers around a heart, enough to numb any feeling. How many decades does each of us have in our lifetime?
This is how trust dies in the modern world, not through dramatic betrayals, but through patterns of self-serving behaviour disguised as care. It’s a show of care and love that lacks real connectivity and genuine concern. Instead of trying to show care, we should let care show itself through our actions, our presence, our willingness to truly see and understand each other. Real love and care are organic, they emerge naturally when we truly connect with and understand someone, rather than being something we have to consciously display or prove.
The Politeness That Distances
What I learned through these experiences is that trust isn’t just about the big moments, it’s built and destroyed in the everyday choices we make, even the ones that seem harmless. Take my aunt, for example. Whenever I called her, she would always greet me with the same response: “Oh, I was just thinking of you and wanted to call you BUT…” followed by some excuses about why she hadn’t actually reached out. This happened so consistently that I eventually realised it was her polite way of appearing caring without ever having to take the initiative herself.
These seemed like innocent white lies, small social lubricants meant to smooth over awkward moments. But over the years, they chipped away at my trust in anything she said. If she could lie so casually about something as simple as thinking of me, what else wasn’t quite true?
My uncle did something similar with my cooking. After I’d spend hours preparing a meal for him, he’d rave to everyone about how “delicious” and “epic” it was. But I noticed how he barely touched the food, how his eyes would scan the kitchen looking for something else to fill his stomach. He’d sing my praises to others whilst the evidence of his real opinion sat untouched on his plate.
I often wondered why he couldn’t just be honest with me. If my food was bad or didn’t match his taste, I would have completely understood. I would have preferred his honesty to his performance. Instead, his false praise meant that now when he compliments my cooking, I take it with a grain of salt. His words have lost their weight because I’ve learned they don’t reflect his genuine experience.
The tragedy is that the people making these withdrawals often don’t even realise they’re doing it. They see their words as kindness, but what they don’t understand is that patterns of small deceptions teach us their words can’t be trusted.
The Echo of Broken Trust
Here’s the hardest part that no one talks about: broken trust doesn’t stay in one place.
It spreads. It moves through relationships like a shadow, casting doubt on even the sincerest gestures. After being let down so many times, I started second-guessing everything, when friends made plans, when colleagues made promises, even when someone said, “I love you.”
You learn to build backup plans not out of strength, but out of exhaustion. You carry emotional armour not to fight, but to brace. And whilst it may protect you from more pain, it also keeps out joy. Vulnerability becomes a threat, and sincerity feels like a risk you can’t afford.
What hurts even more is watching this pattern repeat itself in others. People swinging between total suspicion and blind trust, never quite finding a balance. One betrayal leads to another, in a domino of disconnection.
The child who grew up learning that words meant little becomes the adult who questions every “I’ll be there.”
Can Trust Be Rebuilt?
I’ve asked myself this question more times than I can count.
I want to believe the answer is yes. But rebuilding trust isn’t a matter of words, it’s a matter of time. Of action. Of choosing consistency over performance, even when it’s inconvenient.
Apologies are easy. Explanations are easier. But trust doesn’t return because someone said they’re sorry, it returns when they stop giving you reasons to question them.
To rebuild trust is to commit to showing up again and again without the need for recognition or immediate forgiveness. It means letting your actions speak and letting them speak loudly enough to be heard over past hurts.
What I Know Now
The people I trust most these days don’t make big promises. They don’t advertise their virtues or announce their intentions. They just do what they say they’ll do, over and over again.
They show up quietly. Consistently. Authentically.
And I’ve learned to be one of those people too. I choose my words carefully now. I’d rather under-promise and over-deliver than create one more reason for someone to doubt the sincerity of human connection.
Because trust isn’t built in grand gestures, it’s built in the repetition of care.
Moving Forward with Intention
I still struggle. Some days, I hold myself back out of fear. Other days, I extend trust and hope it won’t be broken again. But I’ve come to understand that trust is not just something we give or receive, it’s something we create together, through our daily choices, our small consistencies, and our willingness to honour the faith others place in us. Every time we do what we say we’ll do, we make the world a little more trustworthy. Every time we fail to follow through, we make it a little less so.
The choice is ours, in every interaction, every promise, every small moment where we decide whether our words will have weight or drift away like smoke. In a world where trust feels increasingly rare, perhaps the most radical act is simply being someone whose word means something, say what we mean and mean what we say.
Because in the end, trust isn’t just about what we receive from others, it’s about what we choose to offer to the world.
