I’ve been reading Daring Greatly, by Brené Brown for the second time. I love her example about the marble jar. She describes the idea on page 48:
Whenever someone supports you, or is kind to you, or honors what you share with them as private, you put marbles in the jar. When people are mean, or disrespectful, or share your secrets, marbles come out.
The condition of the jar tells you how much you can trust that person. Trust is built one marble at a time.
This is true for romantic relationships just as much as it is for friendships. We can’t be close to someone, we can’t tell them certain things, when we don’t trust them, and it’s often the little things that build or destroy trust. Thinking about this led to one of the incidents in the latest chapter, Totem, of my serialized novel: Golden Threads. Enjoy!