Being Honest – What does it mean?
Being honest with the person you are meeting is important. So what does ‘being honest’ actually mean?
It means not lying or intentionally misleading people.
What it doesn’t mean:
Telling the other person about your past relationships, financial issues, family problems or health issues.
This is not “being honest”. If you feel compelled to tell the other person any of these things you need to examine your motivation in doing so. It is not ‘honesty’. The reasons people do this are:
- Seeking sympathy
- Dumping everything on the person immediately because you can’t be bothered spending time with someone in case they don’t want to continue in the future once they discover more about you.
- You are trying to pressure the other party into deciding immediately to either be with you or not.
If you were really interested in being honest, you’d tell them the regularity of your bowel movements, what age you stopped wetting the bed, how you tormented your siblings as a child and all the other unsavoury things you wouldn’t actually want people to know, rather than just the things that suit your agenda.
People should get to know each other naturally and organically. The other person doesn’t want to know every detail about you the first time you meet. Frankly, none of us would pursue a relationship with anyone at all if we had the intricacies of their lives dumped on us the first time we met.
No one is expecting someone perfect. Everyone has something about them that is not going to be positive. In the normal course of events though, as we get to know someone bit by bit, we find the positives we like and the negatives will be balanced out.
Dumping everything on the person on this first meeting is effectively saying “I’m telling you everything that may be a negative about me and since I’ve told you I don’t have to do anything about it and you just have to accept me as I am”. It’s disrespectful, lazy and shows that you are not willing to compromise or do anything differently in order to please a partner.
There is no easy way out. No dating equivalent of a ‘get rich quick scheme’. If you are not willing to put the effort into getting to know someone no one is going to want to bother getting to know you either. If you are unwilling to alter anything about yourself or your lifestyle in order to make room for and welcome a new partner in your life, you will remain without one.
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