Bluntness and honesty vs. politeness and white lies

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You asked me to be honest with you, and I was honest with you. Frankly, I'm surprised you see it as venom. This proves my point: what seems like honesty to some people seems like venom to others. No rudeness was or is intended. I'm giving you the kind of direct feedback you give to others.

Last edited by Arkadash on 16 Jun 2009, 7:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

Then you've never had a good therapist. Unfortunately, there's a lot of crap therapists out there; it's a talent like any profession and some people have it and many don't.

Can you get something from a therapist you could never get from a friend? Or a pastor? Or some other supportive person? No. But the thing about therapy is there are certain techniques which therapists in the past have tried, succeeded with, and learned from and have taught it to other therapists.

The important part is the human-to-human relationship, but the professional side of it-- the reason you PAY for the therapist-- is the techniques that therapist is also trained in.

My mother's a retired therapist. So, for instance, if I had a friend who was suicidal, would I want to be the one trying to handle this friend's threats of suicide or would I rather my mother (or another experienced therapist) handle the situation? I can tell you assuredly the latter, because 1) there is training that goes into appropriately working with someone who's suicidal, training which I don't have and can only guess at and potentially make the situation worse, and 2) she's dealt with suicide threats before and is well-practiced at handling them and keeping said person from harming him-/herself.

I'll say it again, there's a LOT of bad therapists out there, I won't disagree with that. And there really isn't much you can get from a therapist that you couldn't possibly receive from some other type of supportive relationship. But that doesn't negate some of the usefulness of therapy.

The PROBLEM is that you're not making any decent points, and then you're attacking anyone who attempts to point that out. No that you've seemingly noticed that you don't have a real argument, you're resorting to personal attacks!

For the record, I never said you should have known all about the topic you were teaching; only that you shouldn't have been rude to a student who pointed out the difference between the things you'd confused. And somehow when you don't have anything to say, personal attacks become OK?

I repeat, that's between you and the moderators now.

You shoud listen to yourself. What age was Holden Caulfield again? You'll moan and moan about this type of behavior in other people (who happen to be different from you) but when you do it yourself you're completely righteous aren't you? Bigotry and prejdice are some of the most phony activities to get involved with.

What she explained is one version (a pretty accurate version) of how NT society works. Doesn't work for us but that's not their fault and it's not ours either it just is.

Last edited by Hmmmn on 16 Jun 2009, 8:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

I wasn't rude to him at all. I just swallowed and accepted what he said.



I had plenty to say about what Greentea was asking me. I gave her the example she wanted, only to find it wasn't good enough for her. And she challenges, and she challenges. And when I give her the direct response she keeps demanding, suddenly it's a personal attack?

No matter. You proved Greentea's point very well. I'm bailing on this thread too. Anyone who read it knows what happened.

A point that appears to have been missed is that I'm not sure we really have a conscious choice whether to tell a white lie/blunt truth (or anything else for that matter) at the moment we speak.

Verbalisation happens so fast, in reality, it is virtually automatic. We speak from habit. And then we use after-the-event reasoning to justify our habitual manner of speaking because deep down, we know it too difficult to change ourselves.

For a bit of lighthearted entertainment, next time you feel the urge to deliver some blunt truth, try telling a white lie instead. And then again..and again. Or the reverse if you tend to habitually tell white lies.

Yay!! !! That's very similar to my viewpoint too! A bit more honesty and we'd have less corruption in high places and a much fairer world all round.

Now....refresh my memory....exactly what are NT's here for again? (I'm not even going to risk a smiley on this, I'll state it clearly: ONLY JOKING!! !)

I think, simplistically put, that NTs tend to view any unsugarcoated telling of unpleasant truths as a deliberate, vicious attack, while Aspies tend to view anything other than telling the complete, direct, unadorned truth as hypocrisy of the worst kind. I don't think either view is correct.

Good example of when lies are better than the truth. And I'm sure we can all come up with examples in which telling unpleasant truths is being 'cruel to be kind.' Morally, I don't think you can say that you should never tell unpleasant truths, nor that you should never lie.


Greentea, you're not the only Latin American here that loathes telenovelas (taranovelas? tele no-verlas?)

I didn't know those!

But I used to like telenovelas very much, especially when they had my lifelong favorite Argentinian actors.

Talk about NTs not having obsessions! Just see the addiction to telenovelas...

No, but I'm not going to say it's good either. I'd say something along the lines of 'this part is good, but you need to work on that part', pointing out the best part and how she can improve it.

and later:


Please do not misquote people.

Honesty does not have to be rude!

If a woman asks, "Does this dress look good on me?"
You don't have to say, "It looks absolutely hideous and your choice of fashion is horrible!"
You could, instead, say, "Hmm, the dress does not accentuate your best features. Perhaps you should try on a different style."

Now, both examples are honest. The first example is 'mean' honesty. The second example is 'tactful' honesty. Please note that the second example is not a white lie, but instead it is a more polite way to tell the truth.

A white lie would be, "That dress looks good on you."
Complete dishonesty.

Even here, it's situational. Whether you should use tactful honesty or the dishonest white lie depends on whether she has the option to pick another dress at that time and how much she needs to feel she looks good in that dress at that time. (And I realize that figuring THAT out is something bound to drive AS people bananas.)

When to use the tactful honesty:
You are shopping together- stop her from buying it.

You are getting dressed for an event together-your tactful honesty can get her to change into something else.

You are out together. She's already in the dress with no option to change but looking her absolute best isn't that critical. Maybe you are just getting lunch together. Your tactful honesty could get her to retire the dress from her wardrobe at a later point.

When to use the white lie even though it is completely dishonest:

You are somewhere together where she has no option to change yet it is critical that she feels like she looks good. Perhaps she's just about to give a presentation in front of a bunch of people or go up on stage to perform. If she asks you how her dress looks at that moment, she needs to hear that it looks great regardless of whether it does or not. She has no option to change it and being told that it looks great (even dishonestly) frees her mind from the worry that she looks like crap and allows her to concentrate on her presentation or performance in blissful ignorance that she could have looked better. The (true) information that it was a bad clothing choice would have stuck in her head at a critical time and hampered her presentation or performance.

That is an example from my own life. I had no idea that the dress I'd chosen to give a presentation in was a color choice that looked weird with my skin and I looked pale and unhealthy. (And it was a new dress too! One I'd bought special for the presentation. Damn those fluorescent lights in dressing rooms.) I didn't realize this till I saw photos. Had I been tactfully told this right before the presentation it wouldn't have helped because I couldn't change at that point and it would have stuck in my head and I would have been thinking "I look like crap!" which would have distracted me from giving my best presentation. So the people saw a good presentation from a woman in an ugly dress. Had I been tactfully told, they would have seen a bad presentation from a woman in an ugly dress. Same dress in either scenario. The only thing that would change would be the quality of the presentation.

Hmm, that's a very interesting point that I've never considered. Thank you for clarifying!