In Partnership With Relate

When you’re 3 to 5 dates in with someone from a dating app, questions about trust always come up faster. It feels like you’ve committed to trusting them by agreeing to meet in the first place, let alone start thinking about feelings, emotions and stuff.

You’ve gone out of your way to hang with someone you know very little about, at a location you trust will be safe…  You’ve basically left your life in their hands (well…ish) so why not just commit to them? Um… needless to say, there may be a lot of reasons why not!

The question is – how important is trust, and when should I be worried?

For a start, never trust someone who says this:

It goes without saying that trust is subjective. For some, it takes months and for others just a couple of dates. As a way to properly assess how important trust is to you, Relate have a quiz specifically built for that, which you can take here. 

Relate Counsellor Gurpreet Singh believes:

“Trust tends to be a key ingredient in a healthy relationship but it’s likely there will be other elements such as humour, attraction and kindness which are also important.

At the beginning of relationships and even further down the line, we tend to be implicit rather than explicit about what trust means to us and where our boundaries lie. For example, when you’re dating, you may assume a partner isn’t sleeping with other people and then feel hurt when you find out they are. That’s why it can sometimes help to be open about these things from the beginning. As things get more serious, you may want to keep revisiting what trust means to you both.”

Having considered how important trust is to you, it’s time to see how that plays into the stage of the *braces self* “relationship” that you’re in at the minute.

This isn’t your first date, but the relationship is still new. You aren’t ready to be exclusive with them, but you’d be upset if you found out they were seeing other people.

Here are 5 questions to ask yourself to see how much you trust the other person:

1) Have you shared social media details with each other?

Welcome to the 21st century…the Land of Now… the roaring twenties…where social media is a defining feature of the majority of our lives.

Whether you love it or hate it, social media has become a massive part of life. Swapping social media details with your date is a good indicator of whether you trust them. If you aren’t prepared to do this, maybe you don’t trust this person that much.

2) Have you introduced them to any of your friends?

Picture the scene: You’re out for drinks with the person you’re dating and get a text from your friend inviting you to a house party around the corner… 

There are two outcomes:

1)    The person you’re dating gets an early night, as you head off to meet your friends on your own… OR

2)    You bring your date along

Obviously, there may be outside factors that affect your decision making here, i.e. whether these particular friends are the right friends to introduce to the person you’re dating at this time. Or you may, in fact, just want an early night. Regardless, your decision at this point can become a pretty interesting signifier of how much you trust this person.

3) Have you taken them to your local area?

So far, you may have only gone out with the person you’re dating in neutral areas just because it’s easier for you both. However, it may be Winter and you can’t be bothered going too far from home or you may just be running out of venues you like!

How do you feel about inviting the person to your local area for a couple of cold ones? Bear in mind, this means that this person will roughly know where you live, so that takes a fair amount of trust. However, what matters more to you? Someone you don’t know especially well knowing where you live or getting cold wet toes waiting for the train home from central?

4) Have you got intimate with them? 

Depending on how you feel about intimacy, this may be the perfect signifier of how much you trust (and are comfortable with) the other person. For example, if usually, it takes you a bit more time to find yourself comfortable being intimate with someone, but this time around you’ve felt fine moving faster than usual, maybe you do have quite a bit of trust in this person.

5) Have you booked something with them?

At this point in your dating journey, you’ve started putting your money where your mouth is. Rather than a casual drink, you’re now considering spending more on dates. This may be going to an exhibition,  getting tickets for a gig or a theatre show you know will sell out instantly *cough* Hamilton *cough*.

If you aren’t comfortable spending money, it may be a moment of clarity that suggests you need more time to trust them. 

Relate Counsellor Gurpreet Singh says:

“If you trust somebody, you’re more likely to let them see parts of your life that are more intimate and personal to you. Showing more vulnerability to the person you’re dating can be scary but by doing so you’re likely to increase the connection between you. You will probably need a minimum level of trust before you share your social media details or introduce them to your friends but as you gradually allow them into your life, your desire to engage at a deeper level will increase. Equally, if they let you down and give you reason not to trust them it is likely to make you withdraw.”

Remember, take care of yourself and take steps at your own pace.

If you have any further enquiries or need any advice or help with your relationships check out Relate’s website and sign up to their monthly newsletter.