Truth and Lies

A couple of days ago I posted about what women say and what they mean regarding descriptions of men. I’ve been thinking further about what we say and what we mean and why we do that.

Sometimes we say what we believe to be the kindest thing to prevent someone from having their feelings hurt – “Yes, I still love you” or, “No, you haven’t put on weight” or, “That was great, I really enjoyed myself” Very few of us actually want to hurt someone’s feelings willingly, so we lie, either by omission, avoidance or sometimes just a bare faced untruth. Would the world be a better place if we all told the truth? Even if we could couch the truth in niceness and gentle tones, would we rather hear – “You’ve put on weight, but I still love you.” Or how about, “I just don’t fancy you, but it would be nice to be friends because you make me laugh, but I really don’t want to kiss you anymore”

What about when you have a relationship that you think is one thing – friendship perhaps, yet your partner believes it to be more, or less….And then when the truth emerges, as it always does because none of us can keep our mouths shut, someone gets hurt….

Is it better to just stop contacting each other? Just go ‘cold turkey’ and walk away until some day in the future when you bump into each other and can be polite. Listening to the stories of my single girl friends sometimes it would appear that just cutting all ties is often the kindest way forward – and they were talking about being on the receiving end not doing the cutting themselves. It’s a common topic of conversation – Why didn’t he call? Whole books are published on the subject – one that springs to mind (even though I’ve not read it, but seen the reviews) is “He’s Just Not That into You!” Sometimes it would seem that rather than being lied to we are complicent in this and we lie to ourselves. I’d guess that men as much as women tell themselves that the Object of their desire really does like them – they’re being a little offhand because they’re tired/stressed/hungry but deep down they like you, a lot. So when the moment comes that the reality of the situation is uncovered, one and possibly both partners are left hurt.

I’m not sure what the answer is here – whether we should all be more up front and just say what we feel but then running the risk that the Object of our desire doesn’t feel the same way and the result is hurt feelings and looking foolish. Or alternatively we keep our feelings to ourselves, drop little hints and generally play hard-to-get.

One of the inherent problems with telling all – aside from the obvious rejection problem – is that some people, women certainly, think through all relationships to the logical conclusion…Even if you’ve only had one date…..The Natasha Beddingfield song about Wanting His Babies is very, very true….not that we do want every man’s babies, but rather that we’ve considered it and if we don’t have a problem with the idea of it then he’s safe to date….