People today mistakenly believe that it is possible to identify those who are worth opening up to before opening up to them. Under this approach, the only way you will get to know others or others will get to know you is if they open themselves to you before you open yourself to them. This only works when they are more willing to open themselves to you than you are to them.
A person can’t show their trustworthiness to you without being given trust. They can’t show you that they are worthy of what you haven’t yet revealed; they can only show you if they are worthy of what you have already revealed. In order to see what more they are worthy of, you must first lend them greater trust by revealing more of yourself than what they already deserve.
If you are honest, you will show others the next increment of who you are as soon as they prove themselves worthy of what they already know about you. You will reveal yourself to others on a different pace and to a different degree depending on the differences in their worthiness. You will reveal large chunks of yourself quickly to a person who demonstrates themselves to be benevolent and trustworthy, far less in smaller chunks to someone who is guarded, and little at all to a person who clearly intends to use whatever you give them for personal gain or malevolence.
All people should have full access to you on a path comprised of steps of the next reasonable increment. Anyone who meets you should come into contact with the essence of the depth of your heart and mind. When the degree to which a person knows you depends only on the amount of time they have spent with you, and not the amount of trust you have in them, you will know you have removed these barriers.
Revealing the minimal next increment of yourself to others protects you from many of the examples of betrayed trust, which tends to come through revealing much more of yourself to a person than they have proven themselves worthy of.
Revealing the next increment is not negotiable in the path to more honest and meaningful relationships with better people. Those who wait for others to prove themselves worthy of their trust before they lend any trust to them will never find the people they seek—not because they don’t exist, but because they will never recognize them nor be recognized by them.