A compulsion to honesty

You’re confronted about something and you know if you say the truth, you’d get into trouble, but then you say it anyways. You feel something inside of you eating you up when you didn’t completely answer a question, or feel guilty when you’ve sanitized or filtered your response just to avoid: a confrontation, an awkward situation, or the prospect of displeasing others. The thought of having to make a white lie—either for yourself or someone else, and even when it seems quite necessitous that you do—bothers and consumes you. You just find it so difficult to not say the truth.

For some people such is the case. And I’m no different. I’m not saying I’ve never lied in my life, but that it’s usually terribly upsetting and unsettling during the times that I have (or I’m forced to). It’s a compulsion to honesty. And it’s practically a disease.

Many of the challenges my previous relationship faced had much to do with this addiction to telling the truth, probably even when it was totally unnecessary. Things I’m guilty of? The complete and utter absurdity of telling my partner who my crushes are even when such information was never asked of me (volunteering information, in other words); answering questions with utmost precision and detail; saying and showing what I really feel almost every given time.

Honesty may be the best policy, but it isn’t always the most strategic. Perhaps the way to approach it is to mitigate one’s urges and evaluate each situation and see if it either calls for the truth or requires shutting up and keeping one’s mouth zipped tight.

Sometimes we think we’re doing the right thing by exposing the truth to our loved ones in an effort to live up to the standards of honesty we are familiar with (those taught to us at home, at school, and at church). In some situations, the honesty becomes a self-interested exercise better relinquished than pursued.We try to get away with it by rationalizing and giving excuses like ‘I’m just being honest’ or ‘at least I was honest’ or ‘but I was asked, at least I didn’t lie.’ But then, what good would a clear conscience do if we hurt the ones we love along the way?

I’ve never fully figured out how to control this bizarre urge. The only rule of thumb I have for times when I am in a quandary whether to tell the truth or not is to first appraise whether the matter/question involves someone else (meaning if it’s a secret that’s shared by more than one person). Good when it does because then it isn’t only mine to tell, and so I can prevail upon myself to not have to say anything at all.

But if it’s just me, solely my issue, then it’s another round of battling with my stubborn conscience that just won’t budge. And my gosh, what a diva my conscience surely is.

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