Lights on: Let’s be honest here

COURTESY/HALEY ROBINSON

If there’s one thing that’s important in a good relationship, it’s honesty. This may seem like common knowledge, but there is a flip-side to this concept that lately I have seen being neglected. For the most part, people know they should be honest with their significant other, but I think a lot of people forget to be honest with themselves.

Sometimes, and as a matter of fact most times, relationships come to an end. The most frustrating part of these scenarios is when people continue to lie to themselves when the death of the relationship is staring them right in the face. They know it’s not making them happy anymore. They have tried to fix it, but the same problems keep coming up. Yet still, for whatever reason, people feel the need to lie to themselves and their partner, drawing the process out and making it more detrimental to both parties.

It almost seems like a lot of people take their relationships to be permanent by default. They don’t consider the possibility that maybe it’s just not right anymore. And it’s not a bad thing. People grow and change a lot, especially in college. Sometimes people grow together and sometimes people grow apart. If this happens, it’s time to change something instead of lying.

One of the major reasons people have a hard time being honest at the end of a relationship is because they are afraid of looking like the bad guy or being disliked by people. This is an illogical reason to keep things going for unnecessary amounts of time. If one person isn’t happy, the other isn’t going to be either. Most people would rather be aware of this discontent at the beginning instead of learning that they haven’t been loved back for months but they were too afraid to say anything.

Another reason people are deceitful about their feelings is because they fear being alone. If they haven’t been single in a long time, it’s hard to make that transition again. This translates to them dating someone out of convenience instead of love. They are staying with the person they are with because it’s easier than spending time alone, going through the stress of a breakup and experiencing huge struggle that goes with finding someone all over again. This isn’t fair to either party and is completely cowardly.

Lack of honesty with their partner is also intertwined with a lack of honesty with themselves. People staying with someone because it is convenient or fits in with the person’s time-line is a waste of energy. That effort could be spent finding someone that the person truly cares about, but is instead wasted because the relationship is safe and easy. The acceptance of a lack of actual love and desire is something I cannot comprehend.

The ideas of accepting a relationship because it’s effortless, for the fear of looking like a bad person, or for the fear of being alone are not legitimate. People should stop spending time hoping that things will magically change when they realistically just need to look at their situation honestly. It is detrimental to both parties to drag things on unnecessarily long. In the end, it seems to me that honesty really is the best policy.

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