The Three Dangers the Power of Honesty Creates

It should come as no surprise to you that the number one rule to effective communication is honesty. If you aren’t going to be honest with your partner, then there is little reason to engage in the conversation at all. However, complete honesty is not as easy as it might seem. Indeed, conversations after affairs tend to be filled with tension, can become very heated very quickly, and often aren’t particularly comfortable.

In this conversational environment it is all too easy to tell “little white lies,” tell your partner what you think they want to hear, or completely “shut down” if you feel like they are treating you unfairly or being inconsiderate. Your goal is to converse without engaging in these behaviors. At times, lying can be very tempting. When you are having a particularly difficult conversation with your partner, or they are asking you a question you know they won’t like the answer to, the tendency is to tell a “half-truth” in order to keep from offending their sensibilities. This may serve your personal interests in the short-run, in that it gives you a reprieve from what could be extreme and difficult emotions.

In the long run, however, these lies do not serve your relationship in any way whatsoever. In the first place, even these “white lies” or “half-truths” add to the worry, distrust, and suspicion that are lurking around your relationship after the affair. There is no reason to give these ugly beasts any more power than they already have.

Secondly, lies keep important issues from being discussed. If you are lying about something because you are worried about your partner’s emotional response, that is because it is a hot button issue for them. These kinds of difficult issues are exactly the things you should be talking about and trying to work out in your relationship, particularly right now. Getting it out in the open, airing it out, and talking about it is in the best interest of the relationship even when it is difficult to do.

Your relationship is either going to survive these difficult times or it won’t. You will want your relationship from here on out to be fresh and new and based on complete honesty. If your marriage cannot survive honesty, then maybe it is better to lay it to rest.

What’s more, lying always builds a pattern of more lying, creating the slippery slope that I mentioned earlier. If you are trying to dampen the emotional affects of something you are worried about telling your partner and succeed in doing so by lying to them, you inevitably encourage yourself to lie again. You can tell yourself all you want that it won’t happen, but it will. Basic behavioral conditioning tells us why. When we get short-term positive results out of an action we engage in, we make it more likely that we will engage in that action again and again.

In the service of honesty and transparency, when your partner asks a question or brings up an issue that you aren’t completely comfortable with, look for ways to be honest with them. I can’t tell you how to be honest exactly.

You should have some sense of that already. But I can give you the following tips, which might help:

• Remember that you and your partner are one entity inside your relationship. Hiding from them is like hiding from yourself, which some people manage to do. If you manage this, it usually comes back to bite you in the end.

• Think about how you can honestly communicate without tromping on your partner’s feelings. For example, if they ask a question you don’t think they want an answer to, you could tell them that before answering the question. You might say, “Are you certain you want to ask that question?” or “I don’t think you really want an answer to that question, do you?” or “The answer to that question might hurt your feelings and I’d don’t want to do that. Are you certain you want to ask it?” or even “I don’t want to answer that question.”

On the other hand, if an issue is brought up that you are uncomfortable with you might address that as well. For example, you could tell your partner, “I want to be honest with you, but I can’t comfortably answer that question.” Or you could say, “I am nervous just thinking about that topic, and I’d rather not answer it now.” Neither of these solutions means that you will “get off the hook,” but they might give you a way to move forward honestly.

• In the end, you are better off refusing to answer a question than lying. If you feel you simply cannot answer the question, then you shouldn’t. But make sure you aren’t using this as an excuse to get out of answering difficult questions. If you do refuse to answer a question, you might offer a similar, difficult question in its place and offer to answer that one truthfully instead.

The Three Dangers the Power of Honesty Creates

Though honesty is critical to a healthy relationship, there are a few potential dangers built into it as well. In fact, it is because honesty is such a powerful force that it can be dangerous. Don’t let this scare you. You simply need to be aware of these dangers so you can avoid them when possible.

When you are being completely honest, there is a risk that a conversation can become too heated to do any good. If you are in the midst of a conversation and become too agitated or truly feel that your partner is being unfair or inconsiderate to you, you might need to step away from the discussion at hand. I will address this in Step 7 of the program.

In addition, honesty can be used as a weapon. You could slam your partner with criticism, particularly criticism about things that he or she can’t change, and then say, “I was just being honest.”

This is clearly unfair and you should make a conscientious effort to avoid this.

In fact, in general, I urge you to stay away from any criticism of your partner about aspects of them that can’t be changed. Nose size or shape, height, eye color, lisp, etc. are the kinds of physical attributes that cannot be changed. Thus any criticism you make about them can only be a hurtful.

The final danger that honesty presents is something we touched on in the section above. When you expect true honesty and ask a difficult question, you should be prepared for the possibility that you won’t get the answer you are expecting. This doesn’t mean that you have a faulty relationship or that your partner doesn’t care for you, it simply means that you and your partner are different people with different wants and needs.

After you read the rest of the steps in this section, you can have your first conversation under these guidelines. Focus on the subject of honesty. Do not start by talking about who has been honest and who hasn’t. Accusations invite the other person to be defensive, and defensiveness invites accusation. Neither of these will get you anywhere except into an argument.

Rather, make an agreement that from here onward you will be completely honest with each other. You can discuss what you hope to get out of being honest, and you might even discuss the potential dangers of complete honesty. Whatever form the conversation takes, make sure that by the end of it you both agree that total honesty is the only effective way to move forward in your relationship.