You don’t have trust issues!

…Or maybe you do. Who knows? But before you wallow in the belief that the way you trust or distrust is a real issue, let’s try dissecting what the term “trust issues” actually means and how it’s used.

Trust, or the lack there of, begins affecting most of us at an early age. I can remember the moment where trust no longer seemed like such an easy concept. I was around 6 years old and I had asked a friend to hold the money my mom had given me. We were on our summer camp trip and I had no pockets. Surely, I could trust her with my soggy 10$ bill.  We went our separate ways and when we met back on the bus at the end of the day, I learned that she had spent my money. Not some of it. All of it. She spent it on cotton candy, a Slurpee and a stuffed animal. I was as astonished as a 6-year-old could be.

Almost 18 years later, 2001’s second most requested song is still being played and still being chanted word for word whenever the opportunity grants itself. “What would you do if your son was at home, crying all alone on the bedroom floor cause he’s hungry! and the only way to feed him is to sleep with a man for a little bit of money? And his daddys gone…..”  With this type of influence, one would think that everything the unseasoned group hailing from Willingboro, NJ wanted was as easily attainable as they sang it to be in their following single “Brown eyes.”

“Cause everything I want I got it and everywhere I go I’m spotted..”

However, their story turned out a lot different than what most projected.

Healthy relationships are highly strived for but are simultaneously hard to come by. Find someone, build with them and then settle down. It sounds easy but the time intervals between each step and the plethora of factors that disrupt what seems to be such a simple equation has proven itself to be more difficult than assumed.

Amongst the pile of possibilities that make it difficult to obtain one of the most sought out things of our generation, of our life, there is one that has been vaguely explored and maybe not even thought of. What if there were cultural impositions that made building a romantic connection even more difficult based on the color of your skin and the culture you’ve derived from? Even made more difficult based on the stereotypes placed upon you built on those key factors.