Consent

It depends largely on the jurisdiction, but there is certainly a bit of a sticky pickle here. That is to say that we can’t judge a book by its cover necessarily- a “monster” may not be a praetor or even “bad,” but at the same time a predator or “bad” actor won’t necessarily tell you they are so. In point of fact, it is generally to their benefit to have you lower your guard. How does a person protect themselves without exercising undo bigotry or closing themselves off to genuine connections with others? The first is to maintain a healthy level of skepticism regardless of whom you are dealing with. It isn’t “prejudice” to treat one with caution if you treat all with caution. The second is to “trust but verify-“ that is to say, we can trust without trusting blindly or placing ourselves naively in the path of potential harm. I may “trust” my coworkers, but if they are coming to my home I might not leave cash or valuables about carelessly. You may trust that a person will keep their word,

but arrange an alternate plan for if they don’t. That’s healthy skepticism. To trust but verify we need to give a person chances to break our trust. This is the only true source of non blind trust. If someone has had the opportunity to betray us many times and has not, if all other factors are equal we may generally assume they are trustworthy. So if you were to leave small valuables out and observe wether they are stolen, items you can afford to sacrifice to verify a trust for example, the consequence of betrayal is insignificant but you now know this person may be trustworthy. Through increasing gambles or trust we can find how far we are comfortable trusting a person. If they keep small secrets a few times, give them some bigger secrets and if the trust hold you may proceed until at a point you feel you can trust them with any secret, or secrets up to a certain level.

If you only place yourself in a position where betrayal results in no substantial consequences that can be argued to not be “true trust,” but it is an option to have some level of “trust” Without ranger- jumping straight to trusting a person with mortal danger is perhaps foolish, but it is true that if a person is trustworthy, putting yourselves in greater potential disadvantage to each other earlier on in a relationship can actually build trust between you. Simply the act of being in a position to take advantage will often cause responsible or moral people to be trustworthy to you because of the gravity of your faith in them. Big potential risk but big potential reward. With the monster, I might ease in to a relationship of trust through small steps and better personal understanding before placing my limbs and possibly life in their care. Of course… it is worth noting that if you are aware the monster exists, unless some literal barrier like a rule prevents it from attacking you…

.. unless you expose a limb, or it cannot remove its body from under the bed etc. then with secrecy removed from the equation the monster has no reason it can’t simply devour you any time if it wishes.
If we can discover or infer what criteria allow us to be in danger, we can make an educated guess on trust. If the monster comes out and talks to me, I know it can leave the bed, so in theory it could attack me regardless of wether I hang my limbs. If it has t attacked me, it likely isn’t hostile or there is nothing I can do if it were. If I have some action of defense if it is hostile, that same action could apply if I hang my limbs. Therefore in such a case I may as well trust the monster so long as I trust myself.