Is honesty necessary in relationships? Definitely! Trustworthiness manufactures trust, which is the most part of any relationship from Victoria hearts. Realizing that you can believe an individual implies that you can act naturally around the person in question. You need not pretend to be someone else because he or she accepts you for who you really are. You can share your most private privileged insights and not fear being judged or of your insider facts being uncovered.
In order to create a lasting relationship, a strong foundation built on trust, love, and respect is needed. Without trust, there can never be genuine love and respect. However, building trust also takes time. It won’t happen overnight. Therefore, you must work at it by always being honest about what you feel and think.
Just how important is honesty?
Honesty in a relationship context means sharing everything you feel and think with your loved one. It is no-holds-barred communication wherein you are completely free to express yourself.
Once you are in a relationship, you can (and should) never assume that you “just know” what your partner thinks and feels. No two people are alike, and it simply isn’t possible to know someone completely. For example, I cannot assume that my wife will feel happy about me surprising her with a new car. Even though I want to surprise her, I should discuss this with her beforehand, because it is a big purchase which affects us both financially. The same goes for smaller things like making plans to spend a weekend with my friends instead of staying at home with her.
Honesty is also needed when expressing your emotions. My wife knows if I am getting mad. According to her, my eyes change. I don’t know what actually happens, but she has never missed interpreting the change in my eyes if I am getting mad. Sometimes she’ll say she knows I’m angry about something and I will still deny it, just to avoid a “discussion”. But it’s the wrong thing to do because the more I deny it, the angrier she gets because she knows that I am not being honest about what I feel.
If your partner really loves you, it matters to him or her you actually feel. Honesty leads to vulnerability, but also to mutual understanding. When you begin revealing your true self to your partner from charmerly, he or she will start to be able to predict in advance what will irk you or make you happy; you’ll be able to head off arguments and avoid frustrating questioning and discussion.
Honesty also leads to intimacy. Intimacy comes from a deeper knowledge of each other. You cannot be intimate with a person you just met an hour or a day ago. If you are completely honest with your partner about your past and still receive acceptance and forgiveness, intimacy will be built. And from intimacy come to trust, love, and respect.
Isn’t complete honesty often hurtful?
Complete honesty is a great foundation for any relationship. But complete honesty doesn’t mean that you will simply blurt out anything that comes to mind. You don’t just say “I hate it when you do that.” That is transforming honesty into rudeness. You also must learn how to communicate what you feel and think without rudeness or tactlessness. Sure, you were being completely honest with what you said when you blurted out that hurtful statement, but put yourself in the shoes of your partner–how would you feel? Certainly deeply hurt, disappointed, or disrespected by the way in which the truthful message was conveyed, right?
People frequently equate complete honesty with rudeness. Remember that honesty should be expressed with love. Honest feelings communicated without love are rudeness. For example, in the last paragraph, you could have said, “I think it’d be better if we did it this way.”—still conveying the same message but packaged in a loving way, right?
When I was just newly married, I thought that complete honesty meant speaking my thoughts without filtering them. I thought that I must not screen what I think or feel to be completely honest with my wife. But I took the wrong approach; instead of building intimacy, I was hurting my wife with my words. Of course, I meant well by “being honest” with her, but I took the wrong approach to communicate honestly.
Keep in mind the familiar maxim: “Sticks and stones may break the bones. Be that as it may, words can break a heart.” Be totally legitimate with your loved one, yet dependably talk your fact with adoration.
