be honest

Today I had to reply to an email from a girl I’d dated a few times, and tell her I wanted only friendship going forward, and why. My first instinct was to gloss things over, tell her the least hurtful thing possible…but I reminded myself of how I prefer to be told the brutal truth, rather than a gentle lie, because that way I can actually understand what happened. So, I did the same for her, and told her what things about her had made me uncomfortable, etc., though I tried to be tactful about it. I haven’t heard back yet, but I feel good having shown her enough respect to be up-front and honest.

I have this long-distance friend, V. I met her through the first girl I was ever romantically involved with, MJ. V and I have become best friends. MJ and I have had a few falling-outs, but are now friends again. During the last falling-out, V told me that MJ had asked her not to talk to me anymore. V did continue to talk to me, without letting MJ know. Out of respect for her, I haven’t told MJ about our continuing friendship either. However, I’m now planning to fly out and visit V within the next month or so, meet her for the first time in person, and I feel extremely conflicted about what to tell MJ. I know that if I tell her, she’ll feel really bad…she’s not the most secure person with friends, and will most likely feel that I’m “stealing her friend” or something along those lines. It doesn’t help that before the falling-out, MJ and I were planning a road-trip together to visit V, and I know MJ wouldn’t be able to afford to go now. But if I hide it from her, and tell her I’m going to visit someone else, I’ll feel awful about lying to her and being a hypocrite, and if she ever found out about it she’d probably never trust me again. V thinks we shouldn’t tell her. I don’t want to violate her trust either. Ugh.

...over the weekend about my thoughts and emotions with the girl I’m seeing. I told her there are times I really like being with her, and there’ve been a couple times when I was pretty sure I didn’t want to see her anymore. I also told her that she scares me, due to the potential for becoming attached and getting hurt. It was really hard to say these things, and she could see how uncomfortable I was, but it was good to talk about them. It also turned out she felt the same way, about almost everything.