Honesty in marriage helps to create a satisfying relationship that will last.
Many may justify that, what their partner doesn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. That’s a myth. Lying hurts both you and your partner. Your partner might feel devalued, unimportant and feel hurt. More time that passes, more can be the hurt caused. And even if your partner hasn’t found out about it yet, you would still know that you lied, that could have a impact on your relationship, in terms of your openness and honesty and involvement in the relationship. It impacts your integrity and your sense of self. Credit to innerdawn.in for this paragraph.
The Love Busters, Protecting your Marriage From Habits That Destroy Romantic Love book was written by Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr. (Link to Book at end of post)
Today’s topic for review is from his book- chapter 6: “Dishonesty, Who Wants to Live with a Liar?”
Questions we all might think of right away in response to that question:
- “Are there times when a couple can be too honest with each other?”
- “When would it be better to avoid conflict by keeping a spouse in the dark?”
On the surface it may seem to make sense that a relationship would suffer harm if true feelings are expressed. Why? Because expressing honesty may cause your spouse to feel unhappy and isn’t that a Love Buster?
Honesty itself is not a Love Buster; the Love Buster is the behavior that honesty reveals.
“Confessing an affair will certainly upset your spouse, but it isn’t the confession that’s upsetting. Its the affair! In fact, lying about it makes it even more upsetting.”
Once revealed, the spouse will be upset by both the thoughtless behavior and the dishonesty. Harley believes that dishonesty will usually hurt your spouse more than whatever you were trying to conceal because dishonesty in marriage causes incredible pain. That is why dishonesty-not honesty- is the Love Buster.
Don’t Wrap Your Honesty in Love Busters
Dr. Harley has found that many people express their honest feelings in the poison of Love Busters. He acknowledges that it is not easy to express honest feelings without being demanding, disrespectful, or angry, but if we don’t avoid those Love Busters, we will fail to communicate our needs to each other effectively.
He gives us a couple of examples of Love Buster responses contrasted with expressing feelings without being abusive.
Disrespectful Judgement statements:
“I’m the least important person in your life; you’d rather be with anyone else but me.” This is disrespectful because that is a broad generalization of your spouse’s priorities and opinions.
“I know that you’re uncomfortable being with me right now.” Though this is less judgmental, it’s still not a good way to express yourself as you are telling your spouse how he or she feels.
Selfish Demand statement:
“If you don’t start spending more time with me soon, I’ll find someone else to join me in the evenings,” This comes with a threat of punishment if you don’t obey.
Honest Expression with no Love Buster:
“I become upset when I’m left alone at night.” In this way, you are merely explaining to your spouse how you feel.
or “I’d like to spend more time with you.” Simple statement about how you feel.
We need to learn to express our needs, our honesty in a way that informs without needlessly causing harm.
How Honest Should You Be?
Dr. Harley explains how honest he encourages couples to be by focusing attention on each of the four parts of the POLICY OF RADICAL HONESTY:
- Emotional Honesty: Reveal your thoughts, feelings, likes and dislikes. In other words, reveal your emotional reactions-both positive and negative-to the events of your life, particularly to your spouse’s behavior.
- Historical Honesty: Reveal information about your personal history, particularly events that demonstrate personal weakness or failure.
- Current Honesty: Reveal information about the events of your day. Provide your spouse with a calendar of your activities, with special emphasis on those that may affect your spouse.
- Future Honesty: Reveal your thoughts and plans regarding future activities and objectives.
Emotional Honesty
This is an example where lack of honesty in the relationship keeps the couple from correcting their real problems:
A husband regularly brings flowers home to his wife thinking he is doing a loving act. In reality, she has an allergy to the flowers and experiences bad side effects that make her feel lousy every time she receives them.
Instead of telling him, she continues to endure the lousy way she is feeling and he becomes bored with the marriage because she never has energy to do anything. Neither tells the other how they are feeling until one day she collapses on the couch, gasping for breath surrounded by flowers while he wonders what went wrong. “Of course, this is a preposterous story, but it portrays the way many couples misfire in their attempts to please each other. Their lack of honesty keeps them from correcting their real problems.
In summary, we need to get accurate information from each other. Without this, unhappy situations can go on and on. He also reminds couples not to overlook expressing positive feelings. Don’t miss an opportunity to to deposit love units when your spouse makes you feel good!
Historical Honesty
Dr. Harley believes that your spouse needs to know whatever embarrassing experiences or serious mistakes you have had in your past.
Your spouse has a right to know these details prior to marriage as personal history holds significance about a person’s strengths and weaknesses.
He goes on to say that no area of your life should be kept secret. All questions asked by your spouse should be answered fully and completely. Periods of poor adjustment in your past should be given special attention, because problems of the past are commonly problems of the future.
For further details on this challenging part of marriage, please see the book.
The reason he believes in historical honesty is that “Honesty doesn’t drive a spouse away-dishonesty does.” If you lie to your spouse, you must continually lie to cover your tracks.
“While revealing your past will strengthen your marriage, it’s not necessarily painless…..To control the emotional damage of particularly shocking revelations, it may be helpful to express them to your spouse in the presence of a professional counselor.”
“You may find historical honesty to be frightening, and that’s understandable. But let me reassure you that I’ve never seen a marriage destroyed by truth. When truth is revealed, there are often negative reactions and some shaky times, but ultimately the truth makes marriages stronger. On the other hand, dishonesty destroys intimacy, romantic love, and marriages.”
Current Honesty
“In good marriages couples become so interdependent that sharing a daily schedule is essential to their coordination of activities. “ Dr Harley states that even when activities are innocent, it’s important that your spouse understands what you do with your time; important that you can contact one another 24/7.
He says that honesty is a terrific way to protect your spouse from potentially damaging predispositions and inappropriate activities as when you know that you will be telling your spouse what you’ve been up to, you’re far less likely to do anything that will get you into trouble.
Future Honesty
Dr Harley states that many couples make plans independently of each other because some people believe that communicating future plans just gives a spouse the opportunity to squash them and they don’t want anything to stand in their way.
When those plans eventually get revealed, the spouse will be hurt that his/her feelings were not considered, which withdraws love units.
Encouraging Honesty
You may want your spouse to be honest, but do your own values encourage it? Do your reactions discourage your spouse from revealing the truth, even if it’s pleasant? To see how we rate, Dr. Harley presents these questions:
- If the truth is terribly upsetting to you, do you want your spouse to be honest only at a time when you are emotionally prepared?
- Do you keep some aspects of your life secret and do you encourage your spouse to respect your privacy in those areas?
- Do you have well-defined boundaries that you encourage your spouse not to cross?
- Do you like to create a certain mystery between you and your spouse?
- Are there subjects or situations where you would want to avoid radical honesty?
- Do you ever make selfish demands when your spouse is honest with you?
- Do you ever make disrespectful judgements when your spouse is honest with you?
- Do you ever have angry outbursts when your spouse is honest with you?
Honest Self Reflection
“If you answer ‘yes’ to any of the first five questions, you tend to compromise on the value of honesty. Apparently you feel your marriage is better off with dishonesty in certain situations. That little crack is all dishonesty needs to slip into your marriage and run amok. You see there are always ‘reasons’ to be dishonest. As soon as you allow one to sneak in, it will invite all its friends, and before you know it, you have a dishonest relationship.
If you answered yes to question six, seven, or eight, you are punishing honesty and encouraging dishonesty. The way to help your spouse learn to be truthful is to minimize the negative consequences of his or her truthful revelations. If your spouse is faced with a fight whenever truth is revealed, you invite dishonesty. Your spouse will learn to say anything to avoid arguing-and then do what he or she pleases. But what if there are no fights? No judgements? No demands? If you can eliminate these love busters, you will make it much easier for your spouses to be honest with you.”
I hope this post will encourage you to order this excellent book: Amazon.ca
The next post will discuss how to Overcome Dishonesty.
Further reading on honesty in marriage: How to Practice Total Honesty in Marriage