Trusting other people too much?

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Recently I experienced something very special and beautiful (it had with spiritual things to do, but that is not the thing I wanted to write about) and I was very happy and I wanted to tell everyone. Though, I still tried to ease down a bit and not throw my experiences around me, beacuse of other peoples ideas of that being inappropriate. Still, I chose to tell some people. One of them was a man who is much older than me and who I consider somewhat a role model (in a social, and political, and spiritual way, and even more). His answer made me sad, because he was very skeptical and sounded a bit as if I was stupid-religious (with emphasis on stupid, even though he didn't say it, his answer really made me feel weird) and he meant that this thing I told him not always, in his opinion, was healthy and holy (or how he expressed it).

Now this is difficult. In a way, I feel my experience (don't you have any synonyms in English? ) declared invalid. In another way I feel him being somewhat... irritated (?) of me telling him this - may I have misunderstood how close we are to each other? Did he feel his integrity was violated by me telling him somtehing in confidence? Has he met complicated evangelical christians (disclaimer, I am not especially evangelical, in the way the word normally is used, I am though a christian, and that is btw how I know this guy, because we work with vegan activism together, often from a christian perspective - that's how I got into the workgroup we deal with right now) before, who has given him a picture of some particular kinds of spirituality as dangeorus? Should I not have told him this? What other thing should I not tell him?

The thing I wanted to ask you here is; do you recognise the feeling of not understanding how close you can go other people? I consider myself a rather open and trusting person, who is not afraid to entrust others things that bother me or pleases me. I have thought this to be a maybe naïve, but still functional way to live, and it makes me feel good to not have some paranoid suspicions against others all the time. But what does the neurotypical average (haha, it's quite nice to throw prejudices around, nah) think of me if I trust them? Should I not do that? Explain to me!

/Katarina

It sounds to me like he could have been playing devil's advocate, and giving you an example of the worst cast scenario (my Dad's friends do this all the time)

It's difficult for me to comment as obviously I don't know you or the person involved. I have had comparable experiences - i.e. people have not understood things that I thought it would be okay for me to tell them, or they have used the information against me (when I thought I could trust them) or they just seemed to humiliate me and taking advantage of the fact that I had confided in them.

I have always struggled to understand this behaviour - and I think that different people behave like this for different reasons.

All I can say is that you have to be very careful who you trust and who you choose to confide in. It is difficult because there are times when I really want to confide in people and I decide not to because I am scared to trust them. It is difficult as it means that I often have to keep things to myself that I would really like to tell another person, but it is the safer option unless you have known someone for a long time, and they have confided in you too, so you can be confident that they won't misunderstand or misuse what you tell them.

I'm sorry to sound so negative and cynical, and I really think that it is this person who has the problem and not you. But can be hard to tell who is trustworthy and who isn't, so if there is any doubt, it's probably safer to keep the information to yourself.

I wish you well.

I am a firm believer of giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Tim

Yeah, I was also thinking about that. But still, why should he have the responsibility for my critical upbringing? I feel a bit insulted, if that is the case.