Is 100% honesty good for your relationship?

how much honesty before it starts damaging

Anna Karenina has one of the most famous opening lines in all of English literature. 

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

I think the same is true of honesty and relationships. All honest relationships are alike. But every dishonest relationship is dishonest in its own way. 

We are dishonest about all kinds of things with our partner. We lie about how we feel, who we text (sext?), who we dream about, who we masturbate to, what we like to eat, why we are thinking of ending things. We lie all the time. 

Lying is not good, especially in a relationship. At least that’s what we are told. Share openly. Your partner deserves to know the truth about everything no matter what. Do unto others as you would have them done unto you. Honesty is the best policy. And other similar-sounding advice.

But is there such a thing as too much honesty? Where is the line? Should there be one?

Before we get too far in, I want to be clear that this is an exploratory post. What that means is that I don’t have a definite viewpoint on any of this relationship stuff because nobody has figured it out, let alone me. You can go to the Gottmans or your local couples counsellor or your friend who just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary, everybody may have a few helpful pointers but nobody has definite answers. There is a lot of trite and obvious stuff that’s a part of many happy relationships - you need trust, fondness, admiration, equality, respect. But nobody definitely knows what a great relationship is made of - no seriously, nobody knows, not even the Gottmans.

I.

While the world harps on about how important honesty is in a relationship, I can think of a few instances where being honest with your partner is not as black and white as we generally make it out to be.

Like when one partner cheats. The advice always is to come clean about it, immediately, asap. When the confession happens, the cheater expects to be forgiven for their misdeed because misdeed notwithstanding, they were at least honest about it. The cheat-ee is heartbroken, furious and is (understandably) hyper focused on the betrayal. They don’t care about their partner’s tardy honesty. 

Am I saying that the cheater should not have fessed up to their crime? No, not at all. But I am trying to understand the role of honesty in this situation. If the cheating partner confessed (as opposed to the affair being discovered), I guess that would win them some brownie points. And maybe the partner who got cheated on might be willing to reconcile more quickly because they were honest after all. Sure.

I still am left wondering if it is a false correlation though. When I see instances of honesty leading to better romantic results, I suspect that there are other lurking variables involved. Like how we communicate.

Communication in my opinion is a major carrier of honesty. Telling your partner whose new haircut looks terrible on them, “I think I prefer what you had going on earlier but I’m glad you finally tried this out; you have been wanting to for a long time, no?” will likely be less disastrous than telling them, “Hahah what happened to your hair?”

Timing is another lurking variable. This is why we scaffold our honesty in romance across time. For example, how we may choose to tell our partner about our addiction only after a few months into the relationship. 

I know people who come back after dates feeling that they have been overshared with. Contrary to what we often preach, when not timed well, many of us find too much honesty off-putting.

II.

Do partners in a relationship have a strong preference for honesty a 100% of the time? You’ll be surprised. What many people really want is to feel good, and too much honesty can get in the way of that. 

Take the idea of settling in a relationship for example. Very often, one or both people in a relationship feel that they are not just settling ‘with’ but also ‘for’ the other. After all, most of life involves tradeoffs and relationships are no exception. A man who might make a good father might not be the best in bed. A woman who is stunningly beautiful might not be as stunning when it comes to thinking logic, or vice versa. And so you choose - a good father over great sex, an attractive woman over a logical one or some other desirable (to you) combination. Now whether you admit it or not, you know which traits of your partner you gave more weight to before saying Yes. If you think you are the one settling in the relationship, does your partner have to know that? More importantly, do you think they would want to know it? How can honesty help here? Can it even?

III.

Here’s an even more interesting question to explore: Why did evolution select for dishonesty if it didn’t very specifically help with romantic survival? Romantic survival is after all what enables genetic proliferation.

If honesty helped relationships survive in any substantial way, then we would have evolved to be a much more truthful species. But our world is far from truthful. And I think the reason that we don’t live in a fanatically truthful world is because it will probably kill love. We need to force ourselves to be a little blind to be able to fall in love. 

For example, do you really think that it is a good idea to tell your boyfriend of 3 weeks that you think he needs to lose some weight? Even if you did muster the courage to tell him because honesty and all, how can you expect him to not be affected by it?

I have friends, both men and women who remember their exes bitterly for perforating their self esteem by saying otherwise warranted stuff like this at the wrong time in the wrong way. Maybe that’s how they became their exes. Break up courtesy: Honesty.

My wondering through all this being - occasionally, when carefully and ethically employed, can dishonesty actually help relationships survive? Like wives who are fully aware of their husband’s affair but choose to not address it because things are comfortable the way they are. From an evolutionary standpoint, this situation is great for all parties involved. The marriage remains stable which means higher chances of their children surviving to become adults who can reproduce. And as for the affair, more sexual relationships translate to better odds for genetic success. 

(This is a fictional show but I know women like this in real life, just like many of you may too.)

Final words

We are multidimensional beings and so are our relationships. But rarely do we acknowledge the sheer complexity that two people are capable of manifesting when they get together.

And yet, for some incomprehensible (to me) reason, everybody including many highly credible relationship experts (though thankfully not all) claim that the quality of your relationship is directly proportional to your honesty levels.

I doubt if honesty can be independently helpful in a relationship without tactfully managing its interactions with time e.g. those photos that you put on dating apps that look nothing like you, cultural factors e.g. where carrying on with the affair in secret is considered more respectful than discussing it, personality traits e.g. how to discuss your desire for polyamory with a partner high on neuroticism, communication skills e.g. “I know you want children but I don’t think I’m ready for it yet” vs “I find your need for kids really stupid and traditional”.

We all lie and whether we acknowledge it or not, we know exactly what we are doing when we lie. Of course the smartest of the dishonest know that the only way to not get caught is to deceive the self too. How else can you stand there in front of the whole world next to your partner, smiling, while they are on their phones texting you-know-who? And who are pop psychologists to ask you or your partner to be more honest with each other when they are not going to be the ones bearing the brunt of your house crumbling down on your family afterwards?

No doubt, there are times when honesty is absolutely critical. And dishonesty can be a particularly damaging tool in the hands of abusive/narcissistic people. But I wonder if it may not be as helpful as we are told it is to constantly employ radical honesty in your relationship. 

One partner may be willing to put up with infidelity as long as it does not disrupt status quo while for another partner, infidelity may be a dealbreaker. For one polyamorous partner, talking about other sexual experiences may be a necessity while another polyamorous partner may be indifferent to how much sharing happens. One partner might genuinely appreciate constructive feedback about their cooking while for another, they just want their partner to have their back no matter what. 

Also honesty by itself is kind of useless if we are poor at communication. In fact, being honest becomes relatively inconsequential as we get more skilled as a communicator. Telling our partner who wants to get married, “I really like you and that’s especially why I want to be sure that we are both ready for this next step” will usually elicit a remarkably different emotion than if we tell them, “I don’t know, I like you and all but I’m feeling unsure”.

Remember True Love is a Nash Equilibrium? It’s not always about having the most perfect, most honest relationship in the world. More often than not, it’s about making sure that both people continue to find value in being with each other and sometimes, that might mean living with small, acceptable (to you) doses of dishonesty every now and then.

Lastly, again, I’m not saying to either be a 100% honest or not to be a 100% honest with your partner because in all honesty, I don't know what might work for your relationship. All I’m saying is don’t buy somebody else’s honesty prescription because your relationship could be a different kind of mess than theirs is.

As for Anna Karenina? There was some dishonesty in her first relationship and lots of honesty in her second relationship but neither did dishonesty kill her first marriage nor did honesty save her second. See what I mean?