Brutally Honest

Can you really be mad at someone for being 100% honest with you?   You know those people who seem to have no filter.  If you ask a question, you will get the truth whether you want to hear it or not:  Are people who are brutally honest just jerks or do they just not care what anyone else thinks about them?  Could it be the person on the receiving end of said honesty?  

Well I live with someone like that and it can be really funny when he’s being brutally honest about something or someone OTHER than you, his wife!  Now let me tell you a little bit about his wife:  I have some pretty thick skin.  I’m not “needy”.  I also have a strange sense of humor and it’s what attracts me most to my husband.  So on the surface, when I told my husband I ran seven miles, and he said that didn’t impress him, it was initially funny....and then I got pissed!  I had to go and get all in my head about it!  “Well your my husband and you SHOULD find that impressive....why doesn’t he support me....why can’t he just like running....he doesn’t like anything I do...wah wah wah!”

This is what us yoga teachers are talking about when we say “get out of your heads....”  I turned that one statement into something much more than it was.....and when I really think about it, he’s always hated running...long before I started!  He thinks it is the most pointless activity there is.  I actually caught him watching a race on tv one day and he was just sitting there shaking his head and said  “It almost angers me how stupid these people are.....look at ‘em, babe.....they’re just running.” So why would I take a statement like that personally?!?!  He was just being honest.  And, to give him credit, right after he said it, he looked me in the eye and said “I’m sorry.”  - like I’m really sorry I feel that way...and I probably should’ve kept my mouth shut!  

Taylor Swift has a song called All Too Well and in it she says “And you call me up again just to break me like a promise, So casually cruel in the name of being honest...”  And we listen to that and think, “What a jerk?!?”  How dare he tell her how he really feels!  We want honesty, but we get our feelings hurt when it’s not sugar coated or given in the way in which we think it should be.

My husband and I got into a “heated discussion” after I stewed a few weeks over his brutal honesty.  I learned that even though he could work on being a little more tactful in his words, that I could work on not taking things so personally.  To get out of my head and if my initial reaction is to laugh, then laugh and move on.  

He isn’t so much working on filtering his thoughts but being really honest in other areas:  like calling me beautiful (which  he says will stop the day I wake up ugly), and telling me how cool I am that I don’t hound him about going hunting.  And after our “discussion” he says, “Babe, we just need to not be so mean to each other....and by “we”, I mean “you” because I’m an ass hole to everyone.”  LOL  Gotta love him.  :)