Noah
Posts: 1660
Joined: 7/5/2005
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DesFIP
The problem here is that a lot of people say they are fine hearing criticisms but in reality they aren't. If your knee jerk response to being told you did something wrong is to demean the person telling you this, then you have set up a situation where it isn't safe to tell you anything and the only safe way is to walk away.
Generic you.
But I know a lot of people who claim they want to hear everything yet turn stuff around and blame their partner if they are told anything negative. They cause the lack of communication in their relationship. They cause the other person to omit telling them things or even to lie to them when they instill fear in the other person.
I'm glad to see you and some others questioning the absolute: "Any omission is a lie" idea.
Look closely and you'll see that it couldn't possibly work that way. In the first, say, month of a relationship, talking around the clock, you still couldn't inform a partner of every possibly-important-to-him event in your life (since you can't know which ones would end up being important to him) as well as your emotional response to those events, what you learned from them, etc, etc.
Even if you could do that impossible trick, that still doesn't take into account relating every single possibly important hope, fear, preference, etc.
Sure there are some *sorts* of things that we might generally agree should be on the table. And I think we all a have a duty to express things things soon and well and appropriately. But even though we'd generally agree, some of us would want to rule more things in; some would want to rule more things out. And this is just talking about past history.
As Celeste notes, another whole category of communication issues falls under the heading of Criticism. The dynamics of revelation here are probably not going to be the same as the dynamics of revealing history. When he asked you how he looked in those pants he was trying on in the men's shop, did you say: "I don't think they flatter you" when you were thinking: "You look so dorky it is all I can do not to laugh."? Are you guilty of a Lie of Omission for not telling him and the clerk how dorky he looked? Is there no room at all for courtesy and graciousness, not to mention healthy psychological boundaries?
Another whole area where the dynamics of revelation may differ from the above has to do with limits, and evolving limits. You can't, possibly, discuss all possibilities in advance. Since there are an infinite range of possibilities, the pre-negotiations would take an infinite amount of time if *everything* had to be discussed in advance.
So let's say the two of you try some(kinky)thing new, or anyway new to you. It really rocks you and you say so, but you don't say anything really specific because so far you don't even know yet how you feel about it. As the next few days go by some emotional reverberations happen, maybe some nice and some really not nice. Do you have to call him immediately at work each time one of these thoughts occurs to you during the day, just to prevents Lies of Omission? I don't think so.
Should you tell him in a quiet moment that evening about your thoughts? That would probably be nice. But if he comes home with some bad news that requires a lot of his attention and energy (think hospitals and court rooms and large sums of money), should you force him to ignore his priorities to tell him your thoughts about last Thursday's night's playtime? just to avoid a Lie of Omission? Maybe not.
Do a few weeks or months go by in which the two of you are faithfully and diligently absorbed in dealing with the bad news? Does your memory of your somewhat conflicted feelings about that new activity fade? Maybe.
So six months later, when things are going smoothly maybe he initiates that "new" kinky activity again. Maybe now, after all those months percolating in your subconscious your response is surprisingly positive or negative. Maybe you seem to be acting out of character. Maybe it freaks him out a little more than it does you, because you can say: "Ahah! Yeah, this is that thing from last Winter. I'm not going nuts, it all makes sense if you take that into account."
So you ask for some quiet time to gather your thoughts and explain your surprising reaction to him, including the bit about the six month old thoughts which you hadn't told him about then.
Should he call you a Liar Of Omission and kick you to the curb because he has an "I Tolerate No Dishonesty Including Lies Of Omission" policy?
Maybe, if that's what his life and your relationship are about, he should. I hope not, though. I hope he can consider the gray areas, the good intentions, the intervening important issues, the passage of time, and just be present and hear you out and go, and grow from there.
In the above example I referred to surprisingly positive *or* negative responses. This brings up another category of issues where the dynamics of revelation may vary. Do you have the same, stronger, or weaker responsibility to express every positive thing as you do with negative things?
Example:
After ten happy years living together in the Yukon he takes you to Acapulco. From a street vendor he buys you some fried plantains, a new treat for you, as far as he knows. To his surprise you positively gush about how great they are and how these are your favorite food from when you took a childhood vacation to the Carribbean but you never mentioned it because they aren't even available at home in the Yukon. Well should he criticise (or abandon) you for "concealing" from him (by a Lie of Omission) your favorite food?
Clearly you deprived him of the opportunity to employ this preference of yours in your D/s dynamic. Is that a Lie of Omission?
Silly example? Sure. But the point is just to highlight an idea. You can apply the idea to things that are less silly. Maybe even important. Let's make it less silly.
(But first let's note that while fried plantain lust may be a silly example to you, it may not be so to your partner. You won't know for sure until it comes up.)
What if instead of fried plantains it is Sex On The Beach that you suddenly rave about as a favorite activity? Maybe a masochistic pleasure from the sand grinding in certain places, I don't know. Was it a Lie of Omission about your sexual preferences when you didn't catalog this for him during all those years in the Yukon?
It doesn't matter so much what your answer is to any of these rhetorical questions, in particular. What matters is to see that the dynamics of revelation will vary from one area of life to another, and indeed from one person to another.
Very importantly it matters that we notice that an absolute rule which says "Reveal everything or you are a Liar of Omission" just can't work unless you and your partner are somehow magically perfectly attuned to exactly where each other's threshold of importance is for this issue and that issue and the other issue and this non-issue, and that non-issue, etc.
I know what it is like to have a seemingly wonderful relationship fall under the weight of unrevealed issues, and the sense of shock and even betrayal that can result. It isn't fun. But here as elsewhere the picture isn't black and white. As Celeste points out, the person who claims to want the information may be consciously or unconsciously inhibiting expression in a partner. If so, then who is to blame for what and to what degree?
Or is blame-assignment and curb-kicking less what's called for here than a chance to clear the air, explore the issues, make room for forgiveness, tweak the rules/procedures/rituals of communication and move forward?
I think it is gonna vary from case to case.
In extreme cases, immediate curb-kicking might be the best, or the only safe thing to do. In other cases a nice quiet chat with a re-commitment to shared goals or clearer rules might do the trick. In other cases maybe relationship counseling might be called for.
The world "out there" isn't black and white. If you want to impose a black and white structure on it and make your partner try to live in your structure even where it conflicts with Nature, I'm not saying that's bad. Maybe that is an aspect of the submission you expect or demand. Maybe that is an aspect your partner will find fulfilling in some way, even if difficult and sometimes really emotionally painful.
I personally doubt that such an approach will work for many of us, and not for long even when it does.
If it works for you and yours, though, rock on. But please don't be surprised or cruelly judgemental if and when the obviously possible (and even highly likely) kind of failure happens.
Say goodbye if you choose but if you were basically asking your partner to spend each day walking a tightrope up a mountainside, don't be surprised if she breaks your hard limit rule against loosing her balance in a storm.
On the other side, if you were going along expecting--in effect silently demanding--a world class mind reading act from your partner, take it from this failed clairvoyant: the future of your relationship was dark from day one.
And one more thing. The person who ends up being described as "expecting a mind reader" may in fact have been doing something else entirely, or trying to, anyway. Maybe he or she was just taking on too much, trying too hard to decide what *did* need to be discussed; what he or she *was* responsible to work out for him or herself. Maybe he or she wasn't expecting too much of a partner but too much or him or herself.
Again, whether you part ways or press on together, recriminations will be less helpful than efforts at empathy and understanding.
Shit's complicated, man.
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RE: lie of omission? - 
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