Honesty vs. Openness – Part One

Sane sex, as I’ve said before, happens when put emotional intimacy ahead of physical intimacy. One way to enhance emotional intimacy is through appropriate self disclosure. Opening ourselves up means assuming a certain level of risk. You’ll want to balance your hesitancy to assume risk with the need to be vulnerable to achieve the close, intimate relationship you desire.

Self-disclosure that leads to emotional intimacy involves both honesty and openness. It took me years to understand the difference between these two concepts. Self-disclosure is meaningless if it is not honest. What we say must be true and accurate, as we understand it. To have someone want to share deeply with us, we need to be trustworthy, so honesty is not optional.

But a true statement is not necessarily an open one. I once dated a man in his forties who had never been married. In fact, he’d never had a relationship with a woman that lasted more than seven months. I know this because he told me. He could have just stated that he’d never been married, and that would have been honest. If he had not told me about his relationships never lasting more than seven months, it would not have been dishonest, but it also would not have been open. Honesty is about being truthful, where openness is about being revealing.

Be careful not to assume either of these in your partner. I’m dismayed to find how frequently characters on television lie to one another. I can recall a popular family drama about a minister and his family where even the minister lies to his loved ones! Still more common is the deception portrayed among dating singles in the movies and on television. Lying seems to be almost expected on some level.

So just how open should you be and what can you do to minimize your risk of getting hurt? We’ll look at that next time.