The question no man ever wants to hear. Truth is there are many questions we don't ever want to answer honestly. If you think about it there are many questions, asked or unasked, that we don’t want the honest answer to as well.
PS: Does this outfit make me look fat?
As friends, we want to be supportive. From our friends we want the same. If we are contemplating an unwise purchase we might want our friends to be honest if they think it's a bad idea. If we have made up our mind or have already made the purchase we want friends to agree with us that it was an awesome buy. Stronger than that as the friend in the former scenario we are compelled to be supportive. After all, the damage is done. What will honesty serve now? Who wants to say “I told you so” anyway?
Scenario number two: Your friend tells you the guy you are dating (or girl in the case of people who date girls) is not right for you, nasty, gross, smelly, too rich, too poor, too educated, uneducated or for whatever reason inappropriate. You are pretty likely to dismiss this opinion, after all, you know yourself better. Depending on your friend’s conviction you may well estrange yourself from them. Why would you want an unsupportive friend?
Sometimes I think I am a bad friend. I haven’t told anyone their boyfriend was a jerk. I didn’t tell someone they were being unreasonable when they clearly thought they were not and I clearly thought they were. I may have told someone that colour doesn’t suit them while it was on the rack but held my tongue when it was in the bag. I just want everyone to be happy and I seem to think agreeing with someone makes them happy. In the short term it probably does. In the long term; you might be looking at a huge bite in the ass.
So I have not answered any deep, philosophical question here. I still don’t know what the answer is. Honesty is important and I think most of us strive for that. On a friendship level can we be brutally honest and still have friends? I’m not sure we could. It is a social experiment I don’t think I could try given the risk.
PS: Does this outfit make me look fat?
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2 comments:
Great new header. LOL.
Oh, they did something like this on Steven and Chris, with a psychologist guest...a true or false game the audience participated in.
Most of the questions boiled down to keeping your mouth shut and being supportive when the friend's poor choice came back to, as you say, bite them on the ass.
What's that old expression? If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. :-D
Oh, duh, I'm signed in under the cats' account. I finally succumbed and started blogging with their account. How crazy is that? Brutal honesty NOT required in response. Ha!
-Kim
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