This is the full fifteenth chapter of my book, and first on the subject of relationships, from my book Awesomeness: An Amateur Potpourri of a How-To-Guide.
See part 17: “Thank You,” “You’re Welcome” and “I’m Sorry”, here.
Just like fear is alleviated through honesty, relationships are strengthened from it, within reason of course. This does not mean, say, that it is unwise to say something like, “They both look great, but I think I like the other one a little bit more” instead of “Yeah honey, you know, it’s funny you should ask because you kind of do look fat in that.” What it does mean is that you shouldn’t let grievances fester into a rot.
Sometime back, I had had a large disagreement with my brother and father over the way we were handling our business. We finally sat down and hashed it all out (without arguing, at least as best we could). I remember being rather fired up afterward. But then, it faded. Shortly thereafter, the actual subject matter of a fairly long-standing disagreement was hard to remember. In fact, it was only by recalling the actual steps to alleviate the problem that I could remember exactly what the dispute was over.
Not every disagreement can be fixed so easily, but these issues don’t generally get better by hiding in the shadows. Instead they begin to saw at us and consume more and more mental energy. We begin to perceive the person who is doing whatever displeases us as more and more sinister. Their motives become something close to evil until we actually hear what they are. Then, all of a sudden, they become quite understandable, if not completely justifiable.
We only get our side of the story when these things are left in our own mind.
Brad Blanton recommends what he calls “radical honesty.” He believes we all hide our true selves in “roles” that we pretend to play,
“Coming out from behind our roles permits us to look behind the roles of others. Because we can see more clearly, the threat of other people, posing in their roles, fades. Once we come out from behind our pose, what used to scare us about other people doesn’t scare us anymore… The person capable of intimacy—that is, the person capable of telling the truth—still has roles to play, but is no longer trapped by them. The integrated person behind the role no longer has anything to hide, and can relate freely to the being he knows is hidden behind the roles others are playing.” [1]
Blanton is certainly more extreme than I would be. Indeed, I have work to do to even get to where I believe I should be in this regard. And I would caution more discretion that I’m sure Blanton would. But it’s certainly true that if we aren’t open with others about ourselves, they can never befriend or love or even tolerate us for anything other than what we are trying to project.
Thereby, every relationship we have is, to one degree or another, false. This will lead to nothing more than a bunch of shallow and unsatisfying relationships. Being honest is a prerequisite for any relationship.
[1] Brad Blanton, Radical Honesty, Dell Publishing, Copyright 1975, Pg. 48
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