Alright G@Gers it’s Friday, hurray! And if any of you noticed I finally posted a mytake after a long hiatus just the other day that sparked a lot of controversy, which truthfully wasn’t my intention, but I often spark it. Now, while I feel I presented my feelings pretty well, the limit of text really does make it difficult to explain everything I wanted to say in that article alone, so I wanted to take this opportunity to explain things better without the frills and fluff, without the drawn out examples and titles, and just tell you my personal thoughts and feelings.
If you haven’t read that mytake, I suggest you do by clicking here.
In that mytake I attacked (or rather challenged) the age old concept of “honesty is the best policy”, by pointing out the flaws in the concept that we are all 100% honest and should be in our relationships.
Though I explained it in the beginning of the mytake, people were under the impression that I was saying that people SHOULD/it was okay to lie in their relationship, which was only further fueled by the examples I provided. However, ironically enough, that isn’t what I was trying to say, not at all. My opinion, and what I was truly trying to get across, was that we are all human; we all tell tiny fibs or little white lies, and sometimes we have genuine reasons for why we do these things, and doing so is not inherently evil or arguably even wrong in some cases. Sometimes, we put on a smile when we’re sad, we say it’s okay when it isn’t – these are things we are all guilty of, and it doesn’t make us bad people.
Even the people who claimed that they wanted a totally honest relationship, and that they were totally honest, later admitted that either no one was totally honest, that sometimes you do have to lie, or that it wasn’t realistic to think that people never did. For those who did claim to be totally honest, I’ll be brutally honest in saying: I don’t buy it.
That’s not intended to be accusatory or rude which is why I am not talking about anybody specifically. But I don’t believe there is a totally clean-slated individual on this planet who has never changed their words around so not to offend someone; or who hasn’t said “everything is going to be okay” when in reality, they either knew it wasn’t going to be, or they didn’t know at all. We’ve all either heard that, or have told someone that, with nothing but good intentions. But still, we all desperately cling to the concept that we are all honest, and we all want honesty, unfiltered, 100% of the time.
Which I don’t believe.
I don’t believe it because I think that the reason why we reject the concept I presented is NOT because we think it’s immoral. It isn’t because we’re “too honest” (though it could be the case for some), but because we are afraid of being lied TO.
People truly do fear the unknown, and we fear the idea that the person we trust may not always be being truthful with us. So we promise ourselves that we will always be transparent, honest, and never tell a single lie – because otherwise that opens up the floodgates for bigger problems such as infidelity, a novella of fabrication, and in turn cause the paranoia of wondering: if I lie this much, how much do they?
It isn’t that we ourselves are too high and mighty, but we simply don’t want to be presented with any falsehoods. Mind you, I completely understand. We don’t want to lie or have someone lie if that means it could prohibit progress in our relationship, which is why I DO NOT suggest that you use blatant fallacy tactics in place of proper communication and relationship maintenance skills. That isn’t what I was trying to get across in my previous article at all. I was merely pointing out that sometimes, we tell small superficial white lies to spare the feelings of the people we love, and that’s not EVIL.
99.99% of the time you should be being upfront and honest in your relationship. You should be being honest from the very beginning, and as time goes on. But all the same, I consider myself a very honest and upfront person, but I would be lying (ha) if I sat here, mounted a high horse and claimed I never told a lie, white or large, in my life. The key is not to accept lying as completely acceptable, but accept that it’s human, that it isn’t always ill intended, and the smaller ones you tell with softened truths are not really that bad.
All in all, I encourage people to be unapologetically honest, true and up front individuals, especially with their partners. Like I said, I am very, very blessed to be with a man who I started out being totally honest with and have continued to be honest with, because I can be completely upfront with him without him having a meltdown like some people would. Building a relationship on a foundation of truth and trust is absolutely what I encourage people to do, my only point was to show everyone that we are imperfect, we all do “bad” things occasionally for the right reasons, and that we all should strive to do the best we can without beating ourselves down for our short comings.
I hope you all enjoyed this, I know it was a little more serious and ranty than what I normally post but I hope that cleared things up for everyone nonetheless. If it didn’t, well y’all have the right to disagree, while I openly debate with you guys please know that I don’t ever mean to belittle or discredit your opinions. I just stand by what I say and try to help people understand my point of view. If I’ve ever come across overbearing or rude, I apologize.
Just so you guys know FYI, I will be following up with a mytake on how to be completely honest in relationships - I know, that seems ironic but as I said, I really do support the concept that people be honest, especially with the ones they love. That will appear either following this article or sometime next week so look out.
Have a good weekend everyone.
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