Annette Baier (1985, 58) says that “it is fairly obvious that love . . . involves trust,” but this is not obvious at all. Many people have had the doleful experience of deeply loving someone they did not trust. The pattern of “misplaced” love in some cases recalls a spoof of the standard theme of country and western songs: “I can't love you, baby, if you won't leave me.” Even reciprocal love need not require extensive trust. It seems likely that falling in love leads to experience that justifies trust, so that love commonly begets trust rather than the other way around.

XREF: Challenges a widely assumed conceptual link between love and trust, echoing philosophical discussion of the nature of both emotions.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 655