Honesty and Relationships

[crimson_chess]

Hello everyone, 

 

I recently watched one of Leo's videos (I don't remember which one it was), where he talked about "radical honesty" as a way to self-actualize. I think he also had a similar video about self-deception and self-manipulation where he discusses a similar concept. 

I've been ruminating about being 100% completely honest to yourself and others all the time, and to be honest, it's really difficult to do! In fact, I've been thinking that it's practically impossible to do and simultaneously preserve some of your friendships, and familial and intimate relationships. 

 

To give one example: I've been feeling a little down lately, not for any particular reason, but a lot of the time I choose to conceal my emotions instead of displaying them because they are kind of disruptive, in a sense. If I'm having an otherwise positive interaction with a friend, I don't want to suddenly act sad and introverted a lot of the time, even if I feel like doing so, because it sort of messes with the vibe and makes you not fun to hang around with. Even when I don't feel very good, it's often better for me just to allow everything to sort of flow instead of just displaying all of my emotions and having to respond to "What's wrong?" every 10 minutes. I also don't always like to show my emotions all the time because when I do, I often get into a sort of victim mentality and I know I sometimes am guilty of overreacting to my own emotions and almost subconsciously fish for some kind of attention, which I also feel like is a form of dishonesty. 

Basically showing your heart on your face, at least for me, can be inconvenient during social interactions and lead to even more self-manipulation, at least in my case.

 

 

I can at least begin to see how radical honesty could work in friendships and familial relationships, but it's really difficult for me to see how radical honesty could work within dating and intimate relationships. It feels like in intimate relationships and dating you have to at least put on some sort of facade to be attractive and successful within the relationship. I don't know - maybe that's just me, but it really does seem like through radical honesty one would lose a lot of friends and/or close ties with others and/or potential partners. 

Any thoughts? Thanks 

[universe]

You are not really doing yourself or even your friends a favor by conceiling your emotions.

 

Real friends are interested in how you feel and what you do, they dont leave you because you are down. As long as people dont make it all about themselves in some kind of self-absorbed narcissistic way, I can not think about a time where I would be annoyed or repulsed by someone telling me they are feeling down and miserable.

[drmiller100]

Being honest is indeed very hard.   Few can do it, few like it.

I was gifted by lack of fucks to give. I've been more honest than most for a long time and over the last 10 years I have made a conscious decision to try to be even more honest. 

Impeccable with my word.........

Most people don't like it.   Those who do I tend to like.   There are lots of people in the world, and this is a great filter for me to find others who value honesty and authenticity.