Trust is a Confident Engagement with the Unknown

Reflections on a conversation between relationship expert Esther Perel and Oxford University trust expert Rachel Botsman on Entre Nous (Esther Perel's Substack).

One of the most compelling ideas in this conversation is Rachel Botsman's definition of trust:

Trust is a confident engagement with the unknown.

Most of us think of trust as certainty. We imagine trust means knowing what will happen, knowing what another person will do, or feeling completely secure before taking a risk.

Botsman suggests the opposite.

If we already know the outcome, trust is no longer required. Trust becomes necessary precisely when there is uncertainty.

In relationships, this shifts the question from:

"Can I be certain?" to: "Can I remain engaged when I cannot be certain?"

Trust and risk are inseparable. Every meaningful relationship requires moments where we do not know exactly what will happen next. We cannot predict conversations, misunderstandings, disappointments, or responses.

Trust matters because relationships are not built on total knowledge but on repeated experiences of staying engaged, checking, repairing, clarifying, and returning when certainty is not available. The challenge is not eliminating risk, but developing a healthier relationship with it.

Throughout the discussion, Perel and Botsman explore how modern life increasingly encourages certainty, control, prediction, and risk reduction. Yet many of the things that make life meaningful—love, intimacy, creativity, exploration, friendship, and growth—require us to step into uncertainty.

Trust is not the absence of doubt.

Trust is the willingness to remain engaged despite doubt.

A particularly thought-provoking part of the conversation explores reciprocity. Botsman notes that technology and artificial intelligence may increasingly simulate empathy, attention, and care, but they cannot genuinely participate in reciprocity. Trust depends not only on being understood, but on being in relationship with someone who can also be affected, influenced, and changed by the interaction.

The discussion also points toward a deeper question that sits beneath many trust struggles:

"Do I trust myself?"

Often the issue is not simply whether another person can be trusted. The deeper question may be whether we trust ourselves to navigate disappointment, uncertainty, conflict, vulnerability, or loss if they occur.

Perel brings another important dimension to the conversation. Alongside our need for safety, stability, and security, human beings also need exploration, curiosity, imagination, playfulness, and adventure. A life organised entirely around certainty can become constricted. Trust allows us to remain open to possibility.

This has important implications for relationships. Many of us respond to uncertainty by seeking reassurance, withdrawing, controlling, overthinking, or rushing to conclusions.

Yet trust often asks something different:

Don't let uncertainty decide.

Instead, return to your experience.

Return to what has held true.

Return to your capacity.

Trust is not confidence that nothing difficult will happen. Trust is confidence that difficult things can be met.

This resonates strongly with Responsive Relational Practices: Compatibility Practice, Self-Practice and Intimacy Practice - developed clinically by Craig Schorn and explored in two upcoming companion books:

InCompatible: Togetherness in Difference - A Practice for Staying Connected in Any Relationship.

InComplete: Thriving Without Changing - A Practice for Not Getting in Your Own Way. 

These practices do not remove uncertainty, difference, vulnerability, or risk. Over time, repeated experiences of care, responsiveness, repair, consistency, and reciprocity create a foundation from which trust can grow. This is the idea of the Trust Fund.

Trust is not built through certainty. It is built through experience. 

Trust is therefore not a guarantee.

It is a practice.

A willingness to remain engaged with what is available until more becomes possible.

Source: Esther Perel and Rachel Botsman, Entre Nous (February 2026).

© 2026 Esther Perel Global Media