Are you encouraging your loved ones to lie?

We are often taught that honesty is the best policy but what happens when we are honest and we are not heard?

Failing to hear your loved one’s honest thoughts, ideas, plans, attitudes promotes silence. This is where the lying begins & a relationship with guilt is encouraged. It’s an adult’s way of saying ‘if you don’t do it my way we cannot be friends.’ It is ridiculous.

Loved ones need to be a place where we go to and talk about our plans, dreams, mistakes, struggles, our most painful experiences. We cannot do this if our honesty isn’t respected. We have all had that moment in time where we shared with our parents at high school what we wanted to do when we finished our formal years of school (many students are doing it now...have been doing it for 2years at least) unfortunately many of us would have been told

‘that’s unrealistic’
‘You should consider a real job’
‘Get your head out of the clouds and start being responsible’

Parents, teachers & role models might think they are doing a service to their child but in reality, they are setting them up to lie.

To lie to themselves about what they want.
To lie to society about who they are.
And more often than not lie to their parents themselves about what it is they are doing in their life.
Not choosing to listen when someone is talking about their dreams is demonstrating that you won’t listen when you are needed most- it’s certainly how every child hears it.

The sad thing is this leads to tragedy. Broken families, broken relationships, incomplete individuals who constantly feel guilty for being who they are (and why should they!)

Let me tell you about Stacy*. Stacy was an awesomely flamboyant chick I went to university with. She was incredibly unapologetic for who she was & it was infectious. She was told by her parents when she asked if she could study art at university that should get a real degree and do education. She tried. She hated it. I semester in she changed to a Bachelor of Arts, her supportive sibling new she was hiding her secret from her parents and because they supported her went along with hiding the reality from her parents. On Stacy’s graduation day her parents expected her to get a bachelor of education, she accepted a Bachelor of Arts. I remember thinking what a rockstar she was to really tell her parents that it was her life and she was living it. Needless to say, her choice to be true to herself caused problems and removed precious moments she could have had with her family sharing how insanely talented she was with art and how passionate she was to succeed. Not long after she graduated she died in a car crash.

Many parents aren’t trying to be disrespectful, often they are trying to do the best for their kids but their concern manifests itself in control. We often hear this statement people say to each other: ‘you deliberately did this to upset me, you are damaging the relationship’.

We only damage relationships by refusing to allow people to be who they want to be. We damage them bypassing our own fears and insecurities, often those that others don’t even feel, onto those we care for. If we find ourselves in relationships where others are lying ask yourself have you allowed them to be honest without judgment? Have you listened and not pushed your fears on others or have you arrived with an agenda and a constant end goal of making someone the way you see them instead of being the way they are. Not everyone dies in a car crash but often relationship break downs resemble car crashes for this very reason and it starts with the simple inability to respect and accept honesty.