Barriers to Honesty

Note: I am using examples of parent-child relationship and friendship to write this post but the idea is applicable to many other types of human relationships as well.

In my Older post “Honesty is the best policy”.. Really?”, I had written about the price one has to pay if he/she chooses to be honest, i e social rejection. In this post, I am going to highlight the nature of barriers that exist which prevents one to be honest. I will broadly classify the barriers in to 3 sets

1) The barrier that exist because of the intrinsic nature of human relationships: These are the situations where it is even inappropriate to use the word honesty or dishonesty. Suppose a 8 year old kid asks the parents “What did you both do at night?” in the morning, no one would call the parents dishonest if their reply is “We prayed to god and slept” .Of course you can't expect them to say that they had sex (assuming they did). Certain circumstances, just by the nature of it, expects people to be dishonest.

2) The barrier that is created by external forces: Suppose a well meaning, honest 18 year old teenager girl wants to tell her parents that she likes a boy and she needs to explore that relationship. If the parents are matured, objective enough to listen to their daughter without biases, it will comfort the daughter to be open about the relationship. By saying this, I don't intend the parents should give green signal or even accept the relationship. I just mean if the parents listen without biases or judgements and if need be, be an integral part to help the daughter analyze the merits and demerits of the relationship, she will be more honest about things. But this seldom happens and becomes a huge barrier for children to be honest with their parents. But what are the reasons behind this?

• Parents are too used to (from scenario 1) treating children as immatured kids and feel it's their responsibility to take decision on behalf of them. This behavior one can see even if the children are 18, 25 or 30. Or even when the children have children of their own ;-)
• In many cases, the children are very immature and a proper dialogue is not even possible and so parents choose to use force. But one definite outcome is, the dishonesty will only increase.
• In some cases, the situation presented by the child is so atypical that it might appear bizarre for the parents. Such situations will force the child to be dishonest though he/she doesn't want to. Basically it's the fear of “not being understood”

3) The barrier that is created by internal forces: Suppose A and B are acquaintances and they are getting closer to become friends. The reason they are getting close is because there is some intersection of qualities. But it's very rare that intersection is full or near full. Initially we choose to ignore the differences and highlight the intersections and that's probably because we are in need of that relationship. As this grows, it becomes hard to be honest about the differences. So the friendship is now between distorted A and B and not real A and B. With time, the barrier to honesty has only become harder to break.