Hope vs. Trust?

[Tangled Web]

WOW MDs. That is an amazing conversation to have and makes so much sense to me. Thank you for sharing that.
I also have mistaken hope for trust and have been disillusioned too many times to count.

How can I continue to hope when I repeatedly experience a lack of trust?
Hope is that little ray of sunshine you look for when you surrounded by darkness to help show you the way out. It is one of the MOST important things you NEED to have. I agree with your T....hope just is......TRUST needs to be earned now as adults.

Am I indeed naïve to keep hoping? Am I hurting myself by hoping? Am I hurting the others with me?
I believe you would be hurting yourselves if you didn't have hope.
I would like to share one of my experiences with you.......before I got married (now divorced) we used to be a person who always tried to see the good in people. We were a giver.......if we had it to give. We had HOPE in humankind that everyone wasn't bad or evil. Xmas was our favourite time of the year and we would get so excited in trying to find that perfect gift for someone, you know the one gift that when they opened it up, they would light up like a xmas tree. That was what xmas was for us. After I got married my ex-husband changed all of that. He was more worried about the cost and the money wasted on other people and we would fight every single year at xmas. I tried so hard to hold onto that for myself but I lost it. Everything was about the price tag and money. Even at the grocery store one time while we were waiting to check out, this mother with a baby in arms that was screaming was short 3 dollars and she was trying to find something to put back because she didn't have enough money and I pulled out a 5 dollar bill and gave it the lady and my ex flipped out on me. I knew it was the right thing to do but it was situations like that where I lost my hope. It has been a few years now since I have left him, and I am still NOT the person I used to be before him. When you lose that hope it is so hard to get back. So NO I don't think you are hurting the others or yourself and I don't think you are naïve either. I believe you would hurting yourself and the others if you lost that hope.
I know we have been hurt tremendously because we lost that hope.
TW