Learning to Trust Men

All my life I have been frightened to trust men. I was raised with a father who abused alcohol, which made him feel quite frightening to me a lot of the time. I also watched a few too many episodes of ‘Australia’s Most Wanted,’ where men were portrayed as dangerous and appeared to do terrible things to women and children. This was confirmed when an older man tried to kiss me and flashed at me when I was about ten years old.

From all these events I carried a level of fear in my body for nearly all of my adult life. This fear impacted all my encounters with men and I expected them to prove to me they were worthy of being trusted.

In recent years, through attending some Universal Medicine events, I have met some lovely gentle men and this has allowed me to consider that maybe labelling most men as untrustworthy is a little extreme. From these connections I have slowly felt more comfortable to talk, and even be friends, with men who are not my partner.

Being open to trust these men has extended and allowed me to be more open with other men in my life, although I still felt there was no way I would be open to trust men who I considered strangers.

Well, let me tell you, history can be proven wrong in a moment if we are willing to trust ourselves and what we feel again.

For the last 6 years I have been redeveloping my ability to trust what I feel with the support of the Universal Medicine teachings and healing modalities. I have realised that this innate ability was something I had when I was little, but over time I had turned it off due to not knowing how to handle scary encounters with men.

I am happy to say I have now turned my ability to feel what is true back on and it played out recently when I gave a lift to a stranger who happened to be a man. Yep, you read correctly – a man – and one I didn’t know.

This unbelievable event occurred after I had been to a Sacred Movement women’s group where the focus was on connecting to what we feel in our bodies and, after this, I was feeling very lovely. As I left I met an older man (just to clarify, maybe 10 or so years older than me) who asked for directions as he had got off at the wrong bus stop. I happily used my phone to give him directions and, after realising it was a 20 minute walk and it was quite cold, I simply offered him a lift.

Yes, I offered him a lift without hesitation as I could feel I could trust this man and that he was just another person who needed a little support that day. Needless to say we had a lovely exchange and, as he got out of the car, I realised that I had let go of my lifelong mistrust of men.