Sociology

Having trust in a person is the basis to any well balanced relationship. Whether it is a relationship with a significant other, family member, or close friend trusting them is extremely important. Around this time last year, I thought I had found a trustworthy, amazing friend that was going to be in my life for many years. We shared all of our deepest secrets and thoughts about all topics of life. It was so refreshing to finally have someone that I trusted enough to talk to about my past and even the very touchy subject of my mother passing away a couple years ago. Although in the end I was wrong and he betrayed me in every way possible. Besides breaking my trust, he said many hurtful and unnecessary things to me for almost two weeks after the initial ending of our friendship. I didn’t understand how someone I loved so much could hurt me so malicious. At the time, I thought my life was over and I would never be happy again.

C. Wright Mills writes that “the first fruit of this imagination is the idea that the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only be locating himself within his period, that he can know his own chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances.” My personal trouble can be seen as a public issue by understanding that it did not just affect my friend and me, it affected all of our other friends too. For example, if our group of friends were all hanging out, I would leave if I found out he was coming and vice versa. In a sense it made it very difficult to be friends with both of us at the same time.

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