What is the difference between trust and caution?

Trust and caution have different meaning and they don’t overlap with each others.

A wife cautions her husband before he goes out with his female friend “You know what will happen, right? If you go out with that women” (said with announcing tone, implying that the husband will be in trouble if he does unacceptable thing with another woman). For the husband this can be seen as lack of trust, as for the wife, she does trust him but only cautioning him, as a precaution. Just like how a lender trust to lend you money but need caution you what will happen if you did not return the money.

Um, I can’t even imagine a scenario where a man would go out with female friends and exclude his wife.
I can’t imagine a scenario where a woman would go out with guy friends and exclude her husband.
Why would either one do that?

I’d rather ignore the scenario and address the awkward difficulty resulting from the assumption that the 2 words might be compared or contrasted.

It’s not a must to always include your spouse whenever your’re out with your friends, regarless of their gender. Refusing your spouse to go out with friends of opposite gender without you coming along will indicate possessivenes and lack of trust. Your own personal life is not necessarily link with your spouse.

It seems you mean, “What is the difference between mistrust and caution?”

Scenario: A married grad student wants to share a hotel room with a single colleague of the opposite sex when they both go to a conference (in order to save money), and the grad student’s spouse objects.

Scenario: a person in a small town offers a handshake deal on a financial transaction to a new neighbor who has moved there from a big city. The city person is uncomfortable with this.

And why, so far, it is it the men going to hang out with women, or going to a hotel with a woman, and it’s the wife who gets jealous?
How many men do you think would stand for either one of those scenarios?

In the second scenario, life just doesn’t work like that any more. People have to report to people above them, and they need to provide proof of the reasoning behind why they made that decision.
In the old days, maybe you shook hands with the owner of the bank. But today, you can’t just shake a loan officer’s hand, and expect them to explain their reasoning to their bosses and the government.

Wait..I had to look at your second scenario closer @Zissou. We’re not talking about a bank, or financial institution. You’re referring to a loan between two individuals.

It would depend on the people involved, not on whether they’re from a small town or a city.

A guy is from a small town where he has a great reputation for integrity and honesty and paying bills. He’s gotten loans on a handshake from people who know him, or know of him.

He goes to the city where he is not known and asks for a loan. The city guy, who doesn’t know him from Adam, has every right to be cautious because he doesn’t know him. That’s only logical. It would be foolishness to simply trust him for no reason.

Trust but always discretely verify. there is no such thing as trust

Scenario:

Question: Did you wire the thingamajigger this way so it won’t explode and kill a few hundred people?
Answer: Yep
Ok I trust you but just so we are on the same page let me double check. finds thingamajigger wired incorrectly

Ahem! D3, read what I actually wrote for the first scenario. I used gender-neutral terms. If you assumed that grad student = male, that’s on you.

I had to stop writing before I finished fleshing out the details of the second scenario, and so left it abstract, but you correctly discerned that “small town” was shorthand for the characteristics you associated with it. However, the scenario you go on to shoot down is not the scenario I described. In my scenario the city person is the newcomer, not the small town guy, which I believe makes a difference.

The point is that they would have different perspectives on the situation, and, given their experience and the information they have available, each would be justified in calling it mistrust or caution.

But it is easier to imagine scenarios where mistrust and caution simply overlap. There is also distinction to be drawn between a simple lack of trust and active suspicion.

Seems to me that the difference between distrust and caution is one of identification, and/or boundaries.

If I am talking about my responsibility to protect my own interests, I am talking about caution.

If I am talking about the possibility of someone else doing something against my interests, I am talking about (dis)trust.

I hypothesize that in any situation, whether the people involved talk about trust or caution is really about whether they are placing responsibility on themselves or on someone else.

And so for people who have unclear boundaries and/or unclear language around such situations, those words can become loaded with unpleasant or unfair connotations, at the same time that they may likely be being used to move responsibility and control back and forth, and probably unconsciously framing it in terms of these labels. But it’s really about assigning responsibilities and contracts, and agreeing to them. Misuse of the words by turning it instead into something like “no it’s an issue of trust!” is an (often mistaken) attempt to assert that one perspective is just right, usually because sloppy thinking is resulting in looking like a justification for a position that puts responsibility on the other person, and/or puts one person in control, or shames the other person while avoid shaming the speaker, or whatever.