What is it and how much does it matter?
I love the woodland garden plant called honesty, the seed heads of which are above illustrated. I love their transparency in winter and their bright purple flowers in spring. They are called honesty for that transparency and that is also important for me.
Something happened recently which threw me badly once more. Two people I deeply value and care about had been keeping some information from me that affected me directly, but for some reason they had deemed it necessary to lie by omission, i.e. by not telling me and concealing this piece of information. What they were omitting to tell me was not that important, and only slightly hurtful, but the lack of trust in me has left me reeling. I will get over it but I wanted to think about this more deeply myself and thought ‘writing it out’ is one way I make sense of things for myself and hopefully for others.
As far as my friends are concerned — I shall let it settle for a while and not allow it to spoil the rest of the relationship, but I will have to let them know how badly it affected me. Maybe they can read this without the need to say anything further.
Kinds of dishonesty
Being ‘not told’ is only one form of dishonesty, lying by omission. There are many other kinds of lying, direct mistruth, distorted truths, partial truth, lying by omission are the main ones, but there are many smaller forms of dishonesty, like social niceties, protective untruth to protect another, to avoid conflict, and probably a few more I haven’t thought of. As can be seen by this list, lying can be seen as essential life skill to facilitate social conventions and peace. BUT there are consequences to all these that may not be helpful in the longer run.
The real meaning of the behaviour
Lying is a form of betrayal on any level. If nothing else – looking at our list it might represent the following motivations behind it: you can’t be trusted with the truth, you won’t cope emotionally, I don’t want to be the one to tell you, I am too cowardly to be honest, I am afraid of your reactions, I resent something and am doing it anyway and hiding it from you, I am afraid of you, I fear the consequences of my own actions so am lying about them.
In some real life scenarios it may be legitimate, like those who lied to the Nazis by hiding Jewish families, as an example. That kind of lying can be seen as heroic, or dying rather than give your comrades away in some other crisis situation.
Lying and dishonesty thus has not got a right and wrong nature to it, there are many grey areas too. And this is part of the problem. As children we are even taught to lie to Aunty Agnes about the jumper she gave us for Christmas which we cannot wear, ever.
I remember I knitted two jumpers for my mother in law, both at her request, and neither of which she ever wore, though she lied to me often to tell me she had worn it, but I knew otherwise. You can tell what an unused jumper or cardigan looks like, compared to a well worn one. Once I challenged her when she said she had thought of wearing said jumper to our house but decided not to. I replied that I knew she had never worn it and that was fine. She just blinked and looked at me, with nothing to say. If she had told me why, I might have reused the yarn for something else, or adjusted it to make it right for her, but her inability to tell me the truth for social oiling reasons left us unable to communicate and I can honestly say in twenty five years I never knew what she really felt about anything at all ever. Neither did my husband, her son, and I doubt that even she knew how she really felt either. She was so used to saying what she thought people wanted to hear she had lost touch with the truth, even her own. So was that lying, was that dishonesty? Difficult one? And she lost out most of all because people thought they knew her but it was always one big act which convinced those not close to her, but try and have an actual relationship with her and it was impossible. Did she distrust everyone or was she brought up to please everyone? And when she died there they both were in pristine condition.
It is starting to get more and more complicated now.
If someone lies by omission are they afraid of your responses if they told you the truth, or are they just afraid of their own duplicity and shallowness? Or perhaps a bit of both? Why did my friends hide something from me that could easily have been shared or reorganised to prevent this hurt. Now my faith in both those relationships is deeply shaken.
Possibly I am more vulnerable to honesty / dishonesty / betrayal issues because of my past of living with parents and siblings who gaslighted me constantly, and a mother who was a psychopathic narcissist, but I am also very grounded in mindfulness and emotional literacy, so I can sit with my feelings of betrayal and let them subside before I take it any further.
It would be too easy to take this out on my friends and want to hurt them for hurting me, and this is how we commonly treat others when we ourselves are hurt. By adding more hurt to the fire we do not put it out for ourselves or for others though.
I think it is necessary to let them know how it made me feel, not that they went behind my back but that they didn’t give me the chance to show my other side, my magnanimous and generosity of nature. They assumed my worst and did not allow me to be my best. That really really hurt the most.
These are valuable and finely tuned lessons for me too, not to take my old stories into the future, not to allow my programmed reactions to overspill into my preferred present. So if I need to let them know I need to do so without any blame or guilt, just to let them understand their own choices and motivations, so we can all learn from such situations. I need to have compassion for their struggles in life as much as my own. This is the better way to move forwards. I have not always been able to do this but I can do it this way now.
Compassion for the dishonest
Dishonesty is a weakness and it comes from vulnerability, from fear of consequences, and this may affect one person more than another. For instance in my family we all have variations of ADHD and other neuro-diversities. One of those traits which we tend to have quite strongly, is impulsiveness, acting without being able to think through consequences, no matter how much we have been told not to. It is not stupidity or dis-obedience but one of the most commonly identifiable traits of this particular disability.
Should someone who behaves impulsively and then tried to protect themselves from yet more of the enormous levels of judgment and criticism they have already endured in their lifetime be made to feel even more guilt, or should we have compassion for their suffering and likewise allow them to understand how their behaviour affects others without being another layer of rejection on top of their already enormous heap.
I have never known guilt and shame or verbal violence help someone to actively and positively change in their life, but neither have I know people to change without some large motivation. We all need a kick up the jacksy to make us move and change in life. But that boot needs to come from a place of compassion and understanding. Too much burden of failure or guilt can make someone sink further into dishonesty, an avoidance rather than a growth option.
If someone lies to you or is dishonest in some way, perhaps let it settle with you and look at your own emotional history with such behaviours, and then consider are you always honest, are you perfect and not prone to many many faults yourself. Do you always get it right? Yes honesty is crucial to good relationships, and it should be promoted as best as possible. It can make or break a relationship, destroy trust and faith in another, and that is very hard to win back again once lost, especially if it was given willingly to begin with. Loss of trust in someone is what broke my first marriage on both sides and for different reasons. It worked out for the best for us both and perhaps was ‘meant’ to happen, but it wasn’t a pretty path to take for either of us.
Developing honesty and trust approaches to life
Trust and honesty is absolutely the lynchpin of my second marriage, which comes from our deep practice of mindfulness, and we are completely aware that total transparency is essential for us both. But we came to that wisdom and understanding by getting it wrong with other people first, and by being unmindful ourselves. We learned our lessons and did it differently by making it safe to be honest in the first place. That is the crux of it. People are honest when they feel safe enough to be. If you want your children or friends and partners to be honest with you then make it safe for them to be so. Hold them to account in constructive way, not using emotional heavies and destructive emotions like shame, guilt and emotional blackmail / pressure. If you just remember dishonesty is defensive first and foremost then it is easier to not judge and blame but to instead encourage the confidence and freedom to be honest.
If you like my writing please also do look at the writing of David Hughes and follow him please- he needs a few more followers to enrol for the medium programme and I think his articles are great. We will soon be putting together a collection of our best articles into a volume. This one on responsibility is very good.
and this one fits with my article above very well too
Don’t be Fooled by Historic Feelings | by David Hughes | Mindfully Speaking | Medium