“Why won’t you just tell me the truth?”
“Baby, you know you can tell me the truth…”
“I can handle the truth…”
Most men have heard those statements before. And because they often sound so earnest and so convincing, many men have gone down that scary road of telling the truth just to find out that it leads into a trap. Ladies, you love to say these things to try to get us to express how we truly feel about your new outfit, your cousin Jessica, [insert whatever]. Unfortunately, many times you are only looking for affirmation. Or you just want us to have feelings about issues when they are convenient for you. Yeah, I know many of you will get upset about that statement, but I wouldn’t be writing it if it wasn’t something I’ve heard from many, many men from all walks of life. I know you think it should be easy to always just tell you how we really feel, but here are a few reasons why we DON’T.
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We will feel your passive-aggressive wrath
Ladies, sometimes when we get the courage to tell you the truth about how we really feel about something, we slowly realize that, though you were cool with the truth at the time, an attitude inevitably comes out of nowhere. You become short with us, you become irritable, you start making smart, little, passive-aggressive remarks. As we normally do when we’ve sensed we’ve messed up, we begin to think what could I have done or said to make her mad. Once we connect the dots, we eventually find the path leads back to when we told the truth about something. Maybe it was about how you looked, or how we felt about a situation in your life or with your family, or how you’ve been acting, our love life or whatever. But we realize real fast not to touch that hot stove again.
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We know it will be thrown in our faces
Okay, so maybe you didn’t say anything right at that moment, but around one month later, that “truth” I told you somehow seems to come back up when we are in the middle of another discussion. It usually starts with “well, you said….” And often what we said has nothing to do with the current scenario. Yeah, you said you were cool with the truth, but you were just cool with that truth—in that moment.
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You will tell family and friends
Okay, so we had that private discussion, and I told you how I truly felt. Yet, the next time I’m around your family, my true feelings become the topic of discussion. What’s up with that? Maybe it hurt your feelings at the time, but now it makes me look like the bad guy because the people you told have no real PERSPECTIVE; they instead just know your side of the story. You probably said something like “I can’t believe he said…..” and then proceeded to tell all of the reasons why my (his) opinion was wrong. Ladies, we don’t need your friends or family judging us because you don’t like the truth you heard.
Don’t always take our honesty so personal—after all, you asked for it.
Okay, ladies, I know many of you will say we don’t tell the truth because we are just liars. Well that’s not the guy I’m talking about in this blog. My point is simple and bigger than that: if you truly want us to be able to always be open and honest with you, then stop allowing our honesty to result in consequences. Don’t always take our honesty so personal—after all, you asked for it. And, ladies, please don’t just ask for it when you’re really only just looking for affirmations. You have to create an environment, in which we can be vulnerable and at ease to expose how we truly feel without fear of judgment or repercussion. After a few times of receiving backlash for our truths, don’t be surprised if we clam up and never share our true feelings again. If you want to foster a culture of openness and 100 percent honesty, then you have to be willing to receive that honesty. And if you already know you can’t handle the truth, then don’t ask, and we won’t tell.