I’m a very honest person. I don’t steal and cheat people, because that goes without saying. It also means that I always tell the truth, however unpalatable. It means that I often hurt people’s feelings. Never deliberately. But sometimes, I wish I could tell that little lie, to ease the passage of social intercourse*.
I think I hurt The Lover’s feelings this week, by telling the whole of blogland that I didn’t enjoy the scene we did last week. But to be fair to me, we had discussed it and talked about where it went wrong, so he was aware of my feelings. That didn’t stop me wanting to write it up here though, because the blog is about my play life, my thoughts and feelings and I don’t want to sanitise it and only ever write about nice things. Not that I will bore you all to tears with endless misery as well, I hope!
I often put my foot in it with people, because I tend to say what I think. I am almost obsessed with honesty – I think because He Who Must Be Obeyed and I have an open relationship, we have to be honest with each other about who we are seeing, what we are doing – not in anatomical detail, but so we know. And this spills through to other parts of life.
In return, I prefer people to be totally straightforward with me. I’d rather they just came right out and said it, whatever the consequences. Because at least then, I understand and can deal with it, even if it’s personally hurtful and upsetting. It doesn’t leave me guessing. For the same reason, I get annoyed when people set out to hide things from me. Because what flourishes in the dark? Weeds, not flowers. Weeds that will take a personal relationship and warp and choke it. It’s always better to fight the fiend in the light than the darkness.
I also don’t hide things from myself. I am my own harshest critic and will sometimes self-flagellate myself** with an unwarranted viciousness when I need to understand something about myself and deal with it. Because if you lie to yourself, who have you got to be honest with you? Facing unpalatable truth is not something we do terribly well in modern society. So when I look in a mirror, I want to see myself clearly. I owe it to myself to be honest. As the Bible puts it in St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, much better than I can.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even as also I am known.
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*Fnarr Fnarrr!!!
**Not literally. Mentally!
I think that honestly is a super underrated quality, maybe because we live in a world where teachers now aren’t supposed to tell students they’ve got something wrong in case it damages their self esteem. I think people assume that they’re going to be told what they want to hear which in the long run is pretty counterproductive. I’d much rather hear something I didn’t want to and then be able to trust someone fully to tell me the truth.
Jess, I do see where you’re coming from, but I also understand The Lover’s issue. My take on it is that while honesty is a highly laudable trait, it’s one thing for someone to tell me an unpalatable truth to my face, but another for them to then tell everyone they and I know. (And how I feel about them telling everyone will probably depend on quite how unpalatable that truth was!) I guess I think there is a line between honesty between individuals and washing one’s dirty linen in public, and probably different people will see that line as being in slightly different places along the spectrum. Does that make sense? Big hugs xxx
Fraid I am also at odds with you over this one. m’dear, and I’m sure you know why. Honesty, imo, is *not* always the best policy, when all that results is hurt. But then I am an old git, and have learnt those lessons the hard way. Everyone, in the end, must tread their own path and live by the consequences.
This really struck a chord with me Jessica. It’s an interesting topic and one I’ve been thinking about myself a lot lately. I started my blog to allow me ramble about my kink, yet already I find myself censoring it. There are things I’ve thought but not written because I’m concerned about upsetting others either directly or indirectly. And that makes me feel restricted.
On the other hand there are things I would be very uncomfortable about other people writing about me and have made this known to my play partners. The here are the details I’ll share in person but not online because I don’t want people who don’t know me getting the wrong idea.
That said I’ve still been surprised and slightly unhappy by something that appeared on someone else’s blog about me.
So I can understand where it gets complicated. If we all lived our lives fully online, completely anonymous and never met, it wouldn’t be a problem. But since many of us cross paths frequently we’re not so happy to have information shared we didn’t like.