“Some people will not tolerate such emotional honesty in communication. They would rather defend their dishonesty on the grounds that it might hurt others. Therefore, having rationalized their phoniness into nobility, they settle for superficial relationships.”
I have always been a firm believer in honesty. Sometimes I am brutally honest and it does tend to get me into trouble. There are times when I have lied by omission when I think that telling someone something might be hurtful, but more often than not, I have ended up telling people exactly what I am thinking or feeling, and unfortunately this hasn’t gone down well.
Yesterday, a special friend was honest with me, and instead of worrying about hurting my feelings, she told me exactly what she was thinking. This friend had previously told me what she thought I wanted to hear rather than the actual truth and when the truth eventually did come out, it hurt much more. I called this friend to thank her for telling me the truth this time.
“Cherish the friend who tells you a harsh truth, wanting ten times more to tell you a loving lie. ~Robert Brault”
This friend then texted me today, apologetically. I was actually being very sincere with this friend when I thanked her for telling me the truth.
It isn’t that I didn’t trust this friend, it was that I couldn’t trust that what she was telling me was the truth and not what she thought I wanted to hear.
I have always told my kids that if they do something wrong, they should tell the truth. That if they lied about it, they would get into a lot more trouble than they would by telling the truth. This applies to all my dealings with people. Once you find out someone lies, no matter how good the intention is for lying, it is very hard to believe the person again.
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you” -Friedrich Nietzsche
Regarding lies I see two major inter-related issues that makes this behaviour worse.
1. Lies are difficult to remember because their is no experience to draw from and in turn creates more lying to continue the fabrication of events.
2. Once lied to, the process of re- trusting is long and arduous and that by now means the liar regains the recipients trust!
A simple apology of lying behaviour holds little to no weight because the hurt associated with it has often wounded if not scarred the soul! Words need to be followed by actions that reinforce those words. The liar then is required to be absolutely transparent so the victim is able to see for them delve the magnitude of seniority, remorse & repairation! Not many liars survive the scrutiny let alone feel they should be subject to such!