"Honesty is the Foundation to a Health Relationship"

"Honesty is the Foundation to a Health Relationship"

An old adage. I find myself thinking of this on this Easter Sunday Afternoon. Obviously, honesty facilitate happiness and operational cohesion inside a family.  But somebody says, trust is more important. It's okay to allow leeways for small white lies, but not okay if there is no trust.

This is stating an obvious effect caused by complete honest is that the couple trust each other both in what is communicated and in the the intentions and the actions of the other. But the observation is indeed correct that even if a couple is completely honest to each other but lack in trust, then the couple still cannot be happy.

Honesty in it's more general sense insist that we do not make inferences and decisions based on premises that are known to be untrue or ignoring information available to us just because it forces inferences and decisions in an undesirable direction.

However trust, in it's more general sense addresses our believes about the world. My trusting my wife means I believe what she says. My trusting my wife means I believe she has my, or our, rather, best interest at heart. Furthermore, I believe that her actions are to the best of our interest--that is to say, I trust not only in her intention but her ability.

Human faculties of observation and reasoning obviously play a very large role in both of these aspects of our relationship, however we should assume these to be god given and all well and sound enough.

Then it would appear that we have been missing an important aspect of relationship, which is that in addition to being honest, we must as well be trusting. Trust might mitigate our human frailties in earnestness. Honesty can help to moderate the negative effect of trust:

"Honey, I lost our retirement savings from last week's market crash."

"Oh, that's okay, dear, I'm glad you told me, because we can work on earning it all back. oh and also, let's take away your e*Trade account for now..." (because we have now adjusted both of our believes in "our" ability to make money in the stock market and also acted to the best of our interest.)


Humor aside, the new slogan will be:

"Trust and Honesty are the Foundation to a

Lasting Healthy Relationship"