The Truth, or Not the Truth, That Is the Question: Teri’s Response

Is it okay to be dishonest with your significant other?

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This is an interactive publication hosted by Ciaran Callam and yours truly, where we give our unfiltered and unabashed male and female perspectives on relationships and dating.

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1. You send us a burning and pressing question, either as a comment or via email to [email protected]
2. I write and post a blog with my feminine opinion on the topic
3. Ciaran writes and publishes a blog with his masculine opinion on it
4. We collaborate on a joint post where we debate our opinions to get to the bottom of the issue

Today’s Question Comes From MJ, Who Says:

I just had a convo with a family member (man) and he believes that lying or not disclosing the truth or “full truth” to his wife is the way to go. His opinion is that the truth would destroy bonds and ruin trust. But in my head, I would rather know from him being honest than from finding out by other means. However, I can understand the argument that he made.

MJ,

Frankly, someone can tell you everything about them — from childhood to their current phase of adulthood — and I can guarantee that you won’t know every crevice of their life. And you know what?

Everything doesn’t need to be shared. And it’s not because you are trying to hide anything, but most people aren’t open books.

I share information when it’s appropriate to share it. I don’t just volunteer to share traumatic experiences, mistakes I made, or dumb choices unless:

1. It aligns with a current situation, question, or topic at hand.
2. It’s part of the current version of myself.

For example, in my past relationship, my ex had created a rule:

If I was hanging with friends, and one friend was a male, he didn’t want to ever know about that guy friend or what we did with one another.

Ironically, this rule was only for me. He didn’t like the fact that I had not only female friends but also male friends when I was in college. But my friends respected my relationship until they realized how much the relationship was changing me — for the worse.

But I am getting off track, but for a specific reason. See, by this time in the relationship, I stopped trusting him.

So, to make sure that his conscience was clear of what he was doing on his end — because this was a long-distance relationship — he placed dumb rules that, in a way, were telling me exactly what he was doing but flipping the script on me as if me just being around the opposite sex was the issue.

My ex was trying to play the victim even though he was far from innocent. But choosing to be with him already made me the dumb one.

But my point is that even if you aren’t honest about something you did or said, it always finds a way to get back to the person who should have known before anyone — especially if the dirt is part of the current version of you.

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To continue my story, my ex would take a couple of months and not speak to me. But I wasn’t stupid.

I could only imagine what he could have been doing during those months when he thought he was punishing me or taking a break from my verbal abuse. But I hated the fact that I still didn’t have the self-respect to just shut off all communication and emotions when more of the truth about my ex came to the surface.

But when one of his sex buddies decided to contact me and told me that she knew that I was my ex’s girlfriend, I should have known that I was dealing with someone who stopped giving a damn about me or never gave a damn in the first place. Because I appreciate someone telling me what’s going on — even if they are being messy, but then it makes you look even more foolish when they have pictures to prove that they are screwing your boyfriend, and you still decide to entertain the relationship.

This is what happens when you have one person who does their dirt, and they don’t give a damn if you find out because when I confronted my ex about the woman who sent the photos, he just laughed.

But remember, I don’t think my ex felt he had anything to lose because I didn’t care for him anymore. So, I feel like he was acting out because he couldn’t get the old Teri back. So, he became a new version of himself.

Now, the million-dollar question is that if a man’s wife truly trusts him, why would he want to hide something even if he could lose her?

Any man who has been brutally honest with me has gained more of my respect than men who tell me what I want to hear.

I had a man tell me one time that even though he liked me and enjoyed us getting to know each other, he had just had sex with another woman the night before because he knew I wasn’t going to have sex with him.

All I could do was respect his honesty because we weren’t exclusive, and I figured that if he was extremely sexually active before me, he wasn’t going to change his ways because of me.

It sounds like your family member doesn’t respect his marriage because a man who has done something wrong won’t be able to just walk around like everything is perfectly fine. He will eventually tell on himself — or someone else will be the messenger for him.

Men aren’t anything like women when it comes to being discreet.

It’s like men want to get caught or want proof to show to their friends that they can still get a woman. And if it’s not about cheating, it’s about men proving that they have control over their relationships by doing things behind their significant other’s back because they don’t have to ask for permission.

When a man thinks he is being sneaky or hiding something, either there will be a paper trail or a change in a man’s schedule.

For instance, a YouTuber named That Chick Angel shared a story on her podcast about the first time her husband lied to her.

Angel stated that she and her husband discussed having guns in the house. She didn’t want a shotgun in the house. So, she and her husband compromised and decided not to bring a shotgun into their home.

She was coming home one day and noticed that her husband was taking something out of his truck that was shaped like a shotgun.

He must have come home earlier than usual to get the item into the house before his wife arrived.

When he realized that his wife was coming down the street, he quickly put the item back into his truck, but she had already caught what he was hiding. Angel stated that her husband hiding something of this nature created tension in the house for a while, making her wonder what else he could be hiding from her. Overall, that situation tainted the trust in their marriage for a certain period of time — but it didn’t break them apart.

But when it comes to women? Whew! I hate to say it because I’m not trying to brag, but we are cold with it!

A man would never know what a woman is up to — good or bad.

And it’s not because we tell our friends to lie for us — like men tend to do. It’s because nothing changes.

A woman’s daily routine will look like what she typically does, except rather than her going to the store on her way home, she may stop by someone’s house who may have the grocery items that she needs so that she doesn’t even have to interrupt her schedule or routine. And you know what?

She will return on time as usual with everything she needs to satisfy her man’s appetite and prepare the kids for school the next day.

Part of this example is to make you chuckle, but there is some underlying truth with every humorous thing.

And no. I’m not telling you how clever women can be so that you think your family member is right about being untruthful to his wife. I want you to consider what you wouldn’t accept — while taking your family member out of the equation. What are your expectations when it comes to honesty with your significant other?

Again, he apparently doesn’t respect the marriage if he thinks something he recently did shouldn’t be shared. But if it doesn’t interfere with the man he is now, why stir up unnecessary confusion, questions, and tension in his marriage?

If he slept with 50 women before his wife, but he is faithful in his marriage, does it matter now how many women he had prior to his wife?

But if he is married and has a love child with one of those 50 women that he just found out about but hasn’t told his wife, then that’s another story. That means that not only will this information change his life but the dynamic of his marriage and family.

What I’ve learned about telling partial truths or not telling the truth at all is that if you don’t tell your side, someone else will make you look worse than what really is true, and that may be the version of the story that everyone believes even if it’s not factual.

So, I say, be honest even when it makes you look bad. I respect an honest man who’s imperfect over a liar any day.

— Teri Nickels

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