If you have been following this series from the opening, or have seen the Introduction to this part already, I am sure the idea of this particular part will not be strange to you. I am not saying any new thing, instead, I am repeating the same old stuff just in a different way. In a way that is channeled towards a better relationship with peers, romantic partners and other forms of human relationships with the aim of helping you manage, if not completely prevent/remove, the psychological stress that these relationships pose.
It is often said that having a successful relationship is work. More like, “you got to make it work” idea. Well, I do not have any problem with the combination of words, so far the idea of “making it work” does not involve doing things that hurt you physically, emotionally and other forms of “-ally”. This is what I will be talking about in the next couple of paragraphs. I encourage you to stay close to the end. And please note that the usage of “partner” in this post is not restricted to romantic but also platonic—context please. Follow very closely.
I met my friend, Faith, in high school. Or let me put it in a better way: he met me, since I was there first. He joined us in the second term of our first year in our senior class. He was such a quiet guy—too quiet for my liking. My class captain knew him before he joined us, so, he introduced us to each other. I extended my hand for a warm greeting. Oops! The handshake was awkward. And I felt like, man, I doubt if we will ever get along in this life. I like my stuff hot, bumpy and you know, a little bit of rough play. But he seemed to be just the opposite of these things. Seemed? No. He actually was. Long story short, he would soon become an intimate friend of mine. We talk to each other almost every day. We attend the same university, in the same department and level, do almost everything together (except cooking… Haha) and we have been roommates in school for 5 years now. Being friends for nearly 9 years, I can say with all confidence that we have never, at any point, had that kind of useless friends-fight that you would refrain from talking to each other for days—never. And I hope we will not come to that.
Well, I would not ask for a better friendship relationship than what we currently share, unless someone else makes me feel differently. However, since we have become friends, have we had misunderstandings? Yes. Have we had different opinions on things? Yes. As a matter of fact, I doubt if you have the right to call me “a friend” or “a family member” if there is absolutely nothing we view differently. Not as if I like to argue. No, just that, oft times, I see things differently and I do not hesitate to talk. A lot of things that have broken other people’s relationships never printed a dent on us. He was too detailed about money. Maybe because he is smart or something, but I did not like it. Dude, stop asking me for ₦10 change!
So, talking about regular friendship clashes, we had a lot of them—we still do. But the thing I would soon realise that made us stick together was that WE TALKED ABOUT EVERYTHING. Note, I did not say “almost everything”. I mean “We talked about everything”. I realised this when I read Dr. Brad Blanton’s 1994 book, Radical Honesty, in 2020. But prior to this time, we did it unconsciously. We left nothing out. If he did anything I did not like, I would call him, “Faith, you know you really fucked up the other time, right? You were not making as much sense as you sensed you were making.” Also, I cannot count the number of times I have asked him this question: “What do you not like about me?” I have listened to him express all his exasperation towards me. Honestly, never at anytime have I ever felt embarrassed or sad after he was done talking. But oft times, I would be mad at him for the simple reason: “So if I did not ask you, you would not tell me, right?”
Anyway, if you ever meet him, you may interview him for his own version of that part of the post. But what I am saying is that EXPRESSING WHAT WE WERE THINKING HONESTY AND STRAIGHTFORWARDLY AT ALL TIMES kept us together regardless of our different personalities. We, often, did personality tests according to Meyer-Briggs; we learned our weaknesses and our strengths. Read some books and shared our views on them. These were not conscious acts at that time. It was later that I found out, as I have mentioned before, that those things helped and more reason I believed in Radical Honesty—I have seen it work very beautifully in my life.
Many relationships today crumble because either of the partners involved refused—ignorantly or intentionally—to tell the other, in an upfront and straightforward manner, how he or she desires/intends to be treated in the relationship. Many are in the habit of just keeping quiet and expecting their partner to pick a clue. In the previous part of this series, Radical Honesty 4, I mentioned that this attitude is an art of witchcraft—manipulation. When you expect people/partners to treat you in a way that you cannot communicate to them directly, you are being a manipulator. And trust me, no relationship—friendship, dating, or marriage—based on this will ever last. Ultimately, it becomes sour and they go separate ways.
Straightforwardness was loud in the relationship my friend and I had: we studied ourselves; that is, we put in effort to get to know ourselves for ourselves. Many just do not know themselves, they do not know what they really want. This is the backbone of the problem they are faced with in every relationship they find themselves. They do not know what they desire. They do not know what turns them on. They do not know what makes them angry, sad and feel unloved. Not to talk of communicating them at all. You break the bone; you cripple the devil and win some peace coins for yourself. Figure yourself. Read books. It is one of the favours you have to do your poor health.
Related: How to Know When You are Ready for a Relationship
On the contrary, some even know what they want but for whatever reason(s) they tell themselves—shy, conservative, silly theories of “let him work for me; let her figure me”, etc.—they refuse to let their partner(s) know what it is exactly they want in a relationship and how they want it. If you do not tell me how to treat you rightly, how do you expect me to know the exact way to make you happy? Nobody knows you better than you can know yourself. If your relationship collapses because you refused to communicate your desire(s) to your partner in an honest and straightforward manner, then that is on you. But if, as the other party in the relationship, you have been informed in an upfront and straightforward manner about how your partner wants to be treated but you refuse to comply or come to a common term with them and the relationship—which most certainly will—crumbles, then this is on you. You should cover your face.
See, it is not new that couples divorce yearly based on different reasons that they have refused to address from the very beginning of the relationship. They often blame it on love. “Blinded by love”, they say. Excuse me, what is love without honesty? What is love without trust? Vanity! Trust is established when your honesty has reached a level that is able to convince the person you are relating with that you are capable of being trusted, hence, true love can then surface. This level, however, is abstract—it has no physical gauge, instrument of measurement. It is peculiar to an individual based on their experience and values they hold. In a nutshell, it must be noted that, from start, any love that is void of genuine expression of character/identity, wants and intentions is not love—infatuation, manipulation/deceit, maybe—and must be avoided. Yes.
It is true that you feel loved when you are incessantly affirmed—always told how awesome you are; when you are gifted; when you are assisted with a task; when you are touched rightly; when your partner spends quality time with you. It is true that you want to be touched in a certain way in bed. You love oral sex, and it would cost you filing for a divorce to get your penis/vagina sucked/licked—that important to you. Fucking state it upfront! You see, to be brutally honest from the beginning of the relationship or even before the start of the relationship would save you a lot of headache that is common to relationships today. And if the two of you can come to an understanding and are able to relax your walls—fine. Otherwise, it would be unwise, very disastrous to continue with the process in the hope that they will change if you keep doing other things for them—like sex, financial favours, etc.
Okay, Akins! What about Unconditional Love?—Loving them regardless of them.
Loving someone unconditionally means acknowledging the person’s flaws (which sometimes/always hurt you) and choosing to love them regardless, choosing to see past all of their inadequacies. This, too, is hard, almost unreal and unattainable, but it is possible. This is the purest form of love.
However, loving unconditionally is a great deal, but it is delusional to think that your friend, or romantic partner, who loves you unconditionally, does not have feelings/emotions that can be bruised by your ill attitudes towards him if they persist. Like every human package, something makes him angry; something makes him sad; something makes him feel unloved. He has boundaries, a threshold (maximum bullshit he can take). Except he is a monk. Oh man, those guys. He can get angry, frustrated from being treated poorly; he can act out based on these factors—his tolerance level. It is only fair and humane of you to you reciprocate this love to him by honestly telling him how exactly to love you—making loving you easier for him and loving him easier for you. Even though he is a monk, or as meek as Moses or Jesus Christ.
Listen, if you truly seek friends that would love you the way you are (unconditionally), then you have to become upfront and straightforwardly honest with every potential partner about your needs, wants, dark sides, holy sides etc.; not just playing mind games with them, expecting them to pick a clue as the relationship advances. Give everybody a Get-Out-of-Jail free card as soon as you meet them. It’s their choice, whether or not, to stay. Let them off your hook by being genuine. Trust me, people who really want you around will stay regardless of anything you are or have been. But to act contrary is to complicate a relationship that has not started, invest in stress, plot a future heartbreak and, maybe, suicide.
Express Disapproval Honestly And Straightforwardly
Express your annoyance freely to your partners. Tell them what you do not like about how they are treating you, just like my friend and I did. It is very attractive. Recently, I was with a female friend of mine and we discussed about the relationships we have had in the past. So, she mentioned a particular boyfriend she had, who would keep quiet about the bad things she intentionally did. This made her see him as weak, who would not correct her whenever she was wrong. She also felt he was keeping mute, perhaps, because he has an ulterior motive and would soon bring out his real identity after he is satisfied. That was not attractive to her—it is not attractive to most ladies. When you are really pissed, call her on it; let her know. Being straightforward in your relationships builds trust. That trust is the foundation of true love. There is no such thing as true love when the partners involved do not trust each other. There is no trust without honesty.
It Is Okay To Be Vulnerable
Radical honesty is equally as difficult as easy to do. Difficult in that your mind feels you are letting go of your power over the other person or you are giving them control over you—becoming vulnerable. But in the actual sense, this vulnerability is how to evade heartbreaks and other future losses. Freeing them is freeing yourself. This is also beneficial to you because this is how you get to know whom to keep, give attention to, eventually saving your time. Because, not just the leaving that hurts but the time wasted and the opportunities that were sacrificed for the relationship that did not work eventually. It differs from neediness. Mark Manson explained this in his book, Models: Attract Women Through Honesty. The quality of being needy balls around intention. It is not neediness when your intentions are pure—that is, to make the relationship work and not just for some self-serving purposes. On the contrary, you become NEEDY AND UNATTRACTIVE when the real reason behind what you are saying is self-gratification and not for the relationship really.
Dear reader, it is not about how many friends you have in the end; not how large your company is. No, it is about how committed the few you have are to you. Quality over quantity. This is all that matters. For me, this is all I care for in a relationship—friendship, dating and marriage. There is no true commitment without honesty—yes, radical honesty. Being blunt, straightforwardly honest, seeing nothing difficult/improper to say (discuss) at any point in the relationship has a way of increasing the bond between two people really—this, particularly, turns me on.
Somewhere Deep Down We Crave For Truth
Look, we fundamentally desire the truth, all of us—to hear and speak it. Just that we frown at it because it often appears scary. We dread it because it reveals our insecurities and makes us feel unsafe/vulnerable. Our mind won this debate a long time ago, when we told someone a secret and they leveraged on it, and then made life miserable for us. So, we concluded that hiding our insecurities from our partner(s) is the safest way to go about it—the only way we can truly keep our high-esteem, moral uprightness in their mind. Hence, we remain on the surface; we retouch our mascara; we keep the lies on. Like a ripple effect, the wave continues, wider and wider. We infect the next man. The cycle continues. Lying/hiding, therefore, becomes a norm. However, this quality is the reason why many failed and successful suicidal attempts often come from people you least expect. Everyone masks their identity. Just imagine how many would have lived only if they told someone—a relative, friend, or loved one—honestly, what they were really thinking—like, suicide. Well, I am of the opinion that certain types of slap can actually reset your brain, and make you see life differently, cherish it, even, not just the stars in the cosmos. In fact, the stars are too far.
Back to where I was please, this fundamental desire for truth is what makes us attracted to someone, who, selflessly, can reach beyond our superficial expression, touch us fundamentally, see and feel our ugly scars, and still desire us regardless. This is how attraction works and differs from manipulation. Manipulation always misses the selfless-factor. Hence, when you always speak the truth in your relationships about what you are thinking—a selfless act—you become more attractive and irresistible to your partner who already loves you. Trust me, an average lover wants an honest partner. Anyway, if this does not make them love you [more], nine out of ten times, they are not the one for you. Let them go. You cannot be happy with them anyway. You cannot keep them forever by lying to them. Listen, friend, if you truly desire real friends/partners in your life, you have to start living honestly—leading an honest life. Be honest and straightforward always with everyone about what you are thinking regarding the current situation of things; how you are feeling at the moment; and what your identity really is.
In conclusion, nothing is more relaxing, freeing, than living with people whom you do not have to be phony around before they accept you; people with whom you do not feel ugly around when your mascara is wiped off; people with whom you feel comfortable being you; people who would help you become a better version of yourself. Is this not what living happily in a relationship is? That kind of life is what I choose. That is what the title is really about.
Hope you enjoyed reading? Use the comments box, tell me your thoughts. Subscribe to my blog, too, for more post like this.
Yours sincerely,
Hagios A. Akins
Recommended Books:
- Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman (Singles/Married edition)
- Radical Honesty: Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth by Dr. Brad Blanton
- Models: Attracting Women Through Honesty by Mark Manson
Earlier Posts in the series:
Radical Honesty 1: The Opening
Radical Honesty 2: Expressing Anger and Disapproval
Radical Honesty 3: Extricate the Hypothetical you from the Real you
Radical Honesty 4: Disarm the manipulative game player by telling the truth
Dedication
I dedicate this article to my friend, Faith Bamgboye, for being friends with me for such a long time, giving me the confidence to write this part of the series based on a real-time friendship experience. Thank you, Faith. I love you!
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