Beginning with Honesty
When my husband and I first met, our initial conversations included utter honesty. You see, we weren’t planning on dating, much less getting married. I remember telling him, that first week, how important honesty was to me; how I felt like lying and pretending during dating led to the downfall of most relationships.
Because of this fact, he and I never fell into that trap. We were honest from the beginning; friends who knew the real story about each other. Then, we fell in love with no misconceptions about each other.
the quality or fact of beinghonest; uprightness and fairness.
Definition of honesty
truthfulness, sincerity, or frankness.
freedom from deceit or fraud.
A Common Fallacy
I realize it’s a ‘normal’ procedure to ‘fudge’ a little about yourself during the dating period. I believe some people call it ‘putting your best foot forward’. The problem with that is that no one can keep that foot out front all the time. People close to you will see your flaws; those pieces of you that you are trying to hide. I fully believe that makes it worse. You think you are getting ‘A’ and you end up with ‘B’. That will leave you wanting to look around for ‘C’. That’s just the way the human mind works.
If you feel like something about yourself is worth hiding, then the better option is to, first, change that thing about yourself; or if it is something in your past, then embrace the fact that it is in the past and take the lessons you learned forward. If you just attempt to hide the bad parts of your life, then you are choosing an ongoing temporary situation, with no good end in sight.
If you are actually looking for a real and lasting relationship, then the best move that you can make is to be honest. No person is perfect and people understand that. People expect others to not be perfect, therefore when we come across someone who contends to have it all together with no ‘skeletons hiding in the closet’, we automatically assume that they are lying to us. Therefore, they are automatically not long-lasting relationship material…even if we want them to be.
Honesty is Important in All Relationships
This idea or policy carries forward to all relationships and friendships. I’ll give you an example. From the time that my first son was born, I swore I’d never lie to my children. They get pure honesty from me… whether or not they like it. (Ok, I made an exception for Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy)
This has always been so important to me. I want my kids to always know that, no matter the circumstances, they would get the truth from mom. In fact, I was so militant about it that I wouldn’t even joke with my kids if it meant telling them a lie. (Something that their father used to get angry with me about) It made the impression that I wanted though, because throughout the years, their father would tell them something, and they would turn to me and ask if it was true. They knew mom wouldn’t lie to them.
Of course, it’s not all rainbows and roses because sometimes kids don’t want to hear the truth (enter the teenage years) but even then, it’s just as crucial that they be able to believe what I am saying…maybe more so. Kids get inundated by new information from all sides. They don’t have enough experience in most cases to be able to delineate between good and bad information so they need to be able to trust what I tell them. If I had a history of being untruthful, how could they trust me?
That fact is the same no matter the relationship. Trust is imperative. Without trust there can not be a solid relationship and without honesty there can be no trust.
Never Miss a Thing
Don’t forget to have a look at some of our other related articles in our Relationships section.
MORE WAYS TO CONNECT
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