Honesty

This is the third entry in this series describing what having a great relationship means to me: Trust, Honesty, Loyalty, Respect, Transparency, Compassion, Understanding and Love. Please always keep in mind that this series is about your closest, most intimate relationships and the work it takes to build them and keep them.

Honesty. WOW, this is a HARD one, and it takes a lot of work! Honesty is the “refusal to lie, steal or deceive in any way.” In a great relationship, it is all that and more, and it is also all about YOU. You have to be the initiator, the craftsman, the architect. Honesty is about accepting who you are and sharing ALL of who you are with another person. (The ALL part is what makes this so hard!)

We all have “masks” that we wear when we present ourselves to the world. I have a quite a selection to chose from: “Work Mask,” “Church Mask,” “School Mask,” “In-Laws Mask,” etc. These “masks” hide the parts of myself that I don’t want to share with certain people. The challenge of being Honest is to not wear any masks.

I am reminded of a story I heard a long time ago about a woman whose husband died young and unexpectedly. She was devastated, of course, but she said that the worst part was that she had found out so many things about him after he died that she had never known. It made her feel as if she never really knew him at all.

To have a great relationship, you have to let someone know you. The good, the bad and the ugly. You have to be real with them. You have to give your honest opinions, say the thoughts that run through your mind, express the feelings you are having at the moment, admit you don’t want to do something, reveal your hopes and dreams for the future, tell the secrets you’ve been keeping, tell the catty gossip, have the nerdy hobby, read the trashy book, be goofy, be silly, be sad. When you do, some really great things start to happen: You learn to accept yourself more because someone you love accepts you. You also open the door for them to feel more at ease with being themselves and in turn, sharing more of themselves with you. Being Honest in your relationship actually builds upon itself creating a truthful, real, unbreakable bond.