Pathological Honester

It amazes me the things I'm still learning. I guess I must have thought that everything there was to learn, I would know by now. Here's one of a number of things I've come to learn in the past few days, for instance:

Being completely honest can be very selfish.

I think I can easily generalize about We McVicks, but I'll only speak for myself now, when I say that I often feel like I don't just want to be completely honest with folks, but I have an almost physiological need to be honest with them, as in, I would have a physically uncomfortable reaction to holding back from something I'm thinking.

Needless to say, that gets me in trouble sometimes, especially when what I have to say isn't what the person hearing it wants to hear.

And I should also add that I have gotten much, much better over time at not saying everything I'm thinking. Honesty is not always the best policy for that obvious reason.

But what I've come to realize recently is that anytime I feel a need to tell someone something, I need to stop first and determine if I am saying it for my benefit or theirs.

What made me realize it so particularly this time goes back to my post on January 4th, when I wrote of my conversation with Cheryl about my crush.  In looking back at why I talked with her about it, I think there were 3 reasons, in no particular order, why I spilled:

1 - To impress her...and me probably, with how honest and open I could be with her, and to show she could trust me to always tell her about even the most uncomfortable things to talk about.

2 - Probably out of some measure of guilt, feeling like I was obliged to tell her.

3 - I really did want to know her thoughts on it and to better understand how I could be experiencing the feelings I was when I was already deeply, madly in love with her (but that's another blog entry yet to come).

But in retrospect, even though I have a feeling Cheryl would say that she is glad I told her, I don't think it was a good idea. The only person who could benefit from a discussion like that one was me and I realize that now.