Learning to trust yourself again

I used to think I was a pretty good judge of people. That I could get a sense of what they were about within 10 - 15 minutes of meeting them. I have had to realize that this is not the case. In fact I take a very naive view of people and generally give them more benefit of the doubt than they deserve. Basically, I don't judge them, and try to hold off forming my opinion of them until I get to know them well. In fact, if I manage to think that you are a bad person after 10 - 15 minutes of meeting you, chances are that you are total and complete asshole, because seemingly those are the only people that I can make a fair thumbs down judgement on that quickly.

These total and complete assholes are thankfully not the majority of the population, but that leaves a whole lot of people who are just assholes, that I don't recognize and in fact believe to be generally nice. Sort of the innocent until proven guilty stance.

I suppose I am too trusting and I don't intentionally play political games with people, so I don't expect people to play them with me, and consequentially I get blindsided when they do. I am slowly and sadly learning that I am actually not that great a judge of people. I have made a couple of massive mistakes, most notably with men, or at work. And I have had to reevaluate my abilities.

Since I have now lost trust in my abilities to judge people, I am affraid of trusting people in general, for fear of getting really hurt again. I fear that I will get too deeply involved with someone, to the point that I will loose my ability to step back and objectively evaluate them, then they will hurt me. How does one overcome this? Because really you have to just jump in and allow yourself to get to know someone. How do you do both? get to know someone and maintain a certain objectivity that allows you to judge their character, values, beliefs, morals, etc. so that you can protect yourself if they are not who they first portray? I don't know yet, but working on it....