Truth and Honesty

Trust and Honesty...The Pillars That Hold All Relationships Together
 
 
They say that two of the strongest pillars within any relationship are trust and honesty. Without them, we have nothing. When polling my friends on what they considered to be relationship deal breakers - you guessed it - lack of trust and honesty were at the top of all issues. Unfortunately many of us have lost our ability to fully trust others.
 
Remember when we were young, we trusted everything. For some of us, the worst lie ever told was about Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. For years we were taught to trust our families and the only people we were taught not to trust were strangers. However some of us lost our ability to trust from those who were supposed to be the most trustworthy people in our lives. Mothers have sold children for drugs. Fathers, uncles, and brothers have taken the innocence from so many. Now we trust no one!
 
Time and time again we managed to drop our guards just long enough for someone to ruin our trust that much more. Before we know it, we are suspicious of everything that comes out of someone else's mouth. We begin to enter relationships from a “guilty until proven innocent” stance instead of “innocent until proven guilty”. Our tolerance levels are now becoming smaller and smaller. It sometimes seems to others that we are looking to catch them up in a lie, but to us it is all about protection. We are just waiting for you to show who you really are.
 
Some relationships get past this initial weeding out of untrustworthy people. We are able to survive and suppress our lack of trust yet the truth is that it has not fully gone away. To me this is the saddest thing about relationships because we have to pay and are making others pay for mistakes we/they did not make. We even get married to people we do not fully trust.
 
I guess that is why I am so honest and blunt about things and that is why I hate being lied to. My friends tell me that I am too honest but I see it as if other people are not honest enough. Over time we have been taught that lying is okay, depending on the reason for the lie. We’ve even named them “ little white lies” . Some of us think that we are not lying because we don't say certain things, but lying by omission can hurt in the same manner as a blatant lie.
 
People sometimes think that they are lying to protect you but in the end, no one is protected from the sting of a lie. Most of the time the reality is that people lie mostly to protect themselves. They are afraid of what you may say or what you may think of them. Too bad the world is small. You can only hold on to a lie for so long. When you least expect the truth to surface and in the most unlikely of places, the truth usually does appear. At that moment the relationship has taken a hit from which it may never recover. For others, that healing can take years.
 
The best relationships are the ones where people know just about everything about their partners. Some things are embarrassing and unflattering however because of your honesty, they don't seem as bad. We all come into relationships with stains on our lives - no one is perfect. Some people come into relationships with larger stains than others and are afraid to let them be seen but that is not fair to your mate. You can hold on to that notion that your past is just your past all you want, however I have seen it come back to haunt people time and time again.. It's better that you tell me the flattering with the unflattering things so that I can make the decision of whether or not I want to be with you. When you take that away from me, you show what I consider a lack of untrustworthy behavior and you seem as if you are trying to paint a different picture of yourself.
 
People think that it is the big lies that ruin relationships, however to me it's the little lies that add up. When you can't or don't tell the truth on things that are so small, you make your mate believe that you will lie on the bigger things. It's better you tell the truth and say something that I don't want to hear than to lie to me. Dishonesty is disrespectful and will never help a relationship grow. If you want to keep your mate, be sure to make trust and honesty priorities in your life!