Honesty (noun): the quality of being fair and truthful, not lying, stealing, or cheating.

It’s true when they say honesty is the best policy. I’m going to tell you the truth, in my speech class, we had to do a virtue speech. Luckily I got to pick honesty and I decided to cite it here because it meant so much to me.

I’ve always considered myself a little too honest, in other words, I like to tell it how it is (I’m sure my friends can attest to that). I’d much rather someone tell me the truth and it hurt me than have it withheld from me just to protect me only to find out later and be upset. If anyone watches Vampire Diaries you know how their lies always come back to bite them in the butt... And frankly, if you’re just honest then you can avoid that whole mess.

I’ve had experiences in my life where the truth was held from me and besides the feeling of betrayal you get from the person who lied, you also feel really stupid that something happened without you knowing or you believed a lie for so long without it being true. In my previous relationship. I found out a lot of things later on that ended up crushing me because it was going on without my knowledge. A lot of heartache could’ve been avoided if honesty was taken more into consideration. It’s happened with friends, family, and other relationships as well, and I just can’t understand it because the repercussions that can come with lying are so much worse most of the time than they would be to initially tell the truth.

To me, withholding the truth and lying are basically the same. If there’s a reason you aren’t telling someone the truth, then that means you feel guilty telling them the information, you think you’re protecting them, or you’re being selfish and are looking out for your best interest and not the other person. The truth always comes out at some point or another, so it makes no sense to lie or hide things. It may hurt to be honest sometimes, but in the long run, it’s always the way to go.

I always consider honesty as one of my top priorities in friendships and especially relationships. If your significant other lies to you or withholds the truth from you, how could you possibly trust them? If they are hiding something from you how is that a healthy relationship? I feel like some girls don’t care because they think it makes a guy mysterious or they blame it on the way guys are... But that’s just BS. You should never feel like that and I’m happy to say that I never feel like that with my boyfriend.

I can understand if people need some time to think about how they want to tell someone something if it’s a big deal. I know I’ve done that before, but after a little time, the truth has to be told. I always try my very best to be honest because I know that if the roles were reversed I’d want someone to be honest with me.

So the next time you cheat on your significant other, just remember that hiding it and lying about it is just going to make it worse when he/she finds out... Or, you know, the whole situation could have been avoided in the first place if you were just honest and told the person you liked someone else. But, for some reason, people tend to like the former, more painful, method these days.