Love & Honesty

In a relationship, any relationship, complete honesty is always needed. In fact, honesty should be part of the relationship foundation. The principle behind it is that basically, no one likes being lied to, and if a relationship is to flourish, it should not be peppered with lies.

Lying with words is simple enough to pull off but easy enough to detect. No matter how smooth and suave the lie has been delivered, we all have an innate sense of knowing that we were lied to. Just feeling that we have been deceived already hurts, regardless of whether it was done deliberately or not.

But there is another form of lying that is more dangerous than lying with words. It is called emotional dishonesty. There are times that you like the guy so much that you would do anything to keep him with you. You would change your manner of speaking, the way you dress, the way you wear your hair, your personal routine, everything about you, just to please him. In effect, you are lying to yourself by not staying true to your own identity, and you are lying to him as well for showing him a different person than who you really are.

In the end, the truth shall come out. You are not only in danger of losing him when the truth behind the lies is finally revealed, but you would also lose yourself in the process. Losing yourself is one of the worst possible outcomes in the end of a relationship; sometimes, it is hard to regain the sense of who you truly are.

All of us have our own stories to tell, stories of how we have loved someone and did everything we can to keep him with us, to make him stay as long as possible. I was once in love with someone. We were engaged for three years, and my entire world revolved around him. We are both sticklers to schedules, but I always find myself changing my own schedule to work around his, even if it annoyed me so much and it got me working late just to meet deadlines. We didn't live together, so if he had to go on business trips that would take months, I would patiently wait for his return, even if he has this irritating habit of not calling regularly or even sending me email. If he asked me to wear a particular type of skirt, I would gladly comply. I even had my hair cut short when he asked me to, even when I love wearing my hair long. I did that all willingly because I thought I loved him and wanted so much to be with him.

But one day, I looked at myself hard at the mirror and saw a stranger looking back at me. Oh, the person the mirror reflects back at me is me, alright, but she is only a shell of what I used to be. And it made me very unhappy. In the end, I began to realize that this is not what I wanted for myself, and that the person he loved is not really me. So I returned my engagement ring, and we went our separate ways, bringing the farce to a sour end.

As Whitney Houston once sang a long time ago, Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. Love for your own self is something you should never compromise in a relationship. To deny this is to hide your face behind a mask, making the relationship nothing but a charade.