Trust isn’t just good manners or playing nice. It’s something we live on, whether we realize it or not. We use it every time we open up to someone, every time we take a chance that they’ll show up, follow through, or just treat us right. When we trust, we’re offering our time, safety, and hearts laid a little bare. And all we’re really hoping for in return is something equally real. A little honesty. A little care. Maybe just to be treated fairly.

But more and more, those trades feel one-sided. We give, but what we get back feels thinner, emptier. And when that happens enough times, it does not just damage one connection. It erodes everything. The relationships. The systems. The belief that people still have good intentions.

To understand why trust feels so fragile now, we have to go back to the beginning. Trust was never a luxury. It was a survival strategy. Before governments and contracts, humans had only each other. We survived in groups, and survival depended on knowing who you could count on and being someone others could count on, too. Evolution favored the trustworthy, the dependable, the ones who looked out for the group. Trust was not a bonus. It was the reason we made it this far.

Leda Cosmides and John Tooby explored this in their work on evolutionary psychology. They found that humans developed cognitive tools just to handle trust. We became experts at reading fairness, spotting cheaters, deciding when to give and when to pull back. That ability to navigate social exchanges helped our ancestors make better choices and stay alive (Cosmides and Tooby 1992).

Paul Zak added something else to the picture. He discovered that when we are trusted, our brains release

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