Honesty Versus Being Open

Who ever said that being Honest meant you had to share every detail of you or your life to everyone that walks into your life and asks a question? 

I have always prided myself in being Honest. I believe that being honest will help you in the long run to attract people into your life that can appreciate who you are and what you believe in. So what is the difference of being open versus being honest? 

Honesty

Honesty is having the ability to not lie about anything to anyone. I will always promise to be honest, I can't promise to always be open. What about if someone asks you a question that you don’t feel comfortable answering, such as your sexual orientation if that is something you aren’t open about? Or what about if you are on a first date and someone asks if you have cheated before… and you don’t want to ruin the date and be perceived as a cheater; there is always proper ways to answer a question without being completely open or lying.  You can always answer the question strategically such as “I am someone looking for someone to respect and love and I would never cheat on them.” If that is truly how you feel of course (because you learned your lesson), but you are not getting into details about past infidelities or whatever the topic of conversation might be.

We can be 100% open without being 100% Open. ~Naiah Young

Sure, you aren’t answering the question with a yes or a no, since that will take some explaining to do but you aren't lying. People make mistakes and getting into how or why you cheated and how you learned and would never do it again would take time and trust. There is no need to sit down on a first date and share that with someone, or share anything by that means with someone you just met. By experience, one of the things that make me uncomfortable is to explain to people why I separated from my husband only one month after our marriage. I tend to be completely honest by telling everyone that it just didn’t work. That him and I made mistakes that we couldn’t move past. What those mistakes were in detail I will never tell. They are private details I wish to not share. But I have been completely honest by answering the question. The thing about Honesty is that if practiced by everyone, then lying will become a thing of the past and we as a society will begin to build trust.

Being Open

Being open is being fully transparent in detail, sharing everything with someone that you trust. Keyword “Trust”; Trust is not something that is earned in one day. Trust is a process that requires time and confidence. Giving people time to be open about anything that they might want to share is extremely important. Can we be honest without being open? Of course we can be 100% honest without being 100% open. You don’t have to feel like you have to tell the world everything about you and your life just because they ask. Example in something that most men have trouble sharing with us females is their sexual fantasies in bed, this has nothing to do with being in the lgbt community or anything in specific, some of it might have to do with other fetishes such as feet, rough, toys... or just personal details idk the list goes on and on. I experience on a daily the outcry of men who share the crazy wild things they think about that they feel they can't be open with their girlfriends or wives because they think they will get judged by them, creating a barrier between them two. I guess I come off as someone that is easy to talk to and very accepting and open about anything. I love psychology and learning about people and how they live and their mental processes.

In every relationship, whether it is a business, romantic or friendship we have to create a trust circle where we position both the other person and us inside, creating trust between the two. The importance of creating this bond will be the determinator of how long the relationship will last and how close of a bond you will create with your partner. If you ever feel like you can't tell your partner something, that is the moment you should walk away. You are wasting their time and your time as well.

What do you think?