TRANSPARENCY: THE ULTIMATE TRUST BUILDER

A lot of people think transparency means being blunt and brutally honest about how you feel. While honesty is very important, considering your partners' feelings when you engage them is crucial.

There is so much more to being transparent with your partner than giving them the cold, blunt, hard truth or telling them every gruelling detail of your endeavors. Being transparent with your partner is a way to relate with your partner in such a way that you reveal your inner self. It’s the #1 intimacy and trust builder in healthy relationships. 

Revealing your inner self means exposing your vulnerabilities, your fears, your desires and your points of view about the issues that you're discussing. Transparency is being open to revealing your true self to your partner. It’s the complete opposite of “don’t ask, don't tell”. 

Being transparent with your partner includes letting go of defensive feelings that you might have been harboring about the things that you have not yet revealed. Transparency helps you to be open and receptive to your partner’s reality; their feelings, wishes, desires, fears and how they differ from you. 

Being transparent with your partner encourages them to express themselves to you. Transparency in a relationship means that partners don't hide aspects of themselves from each other and acknowledge when they are reluctant to do so. They do not hide their emotions or feelings and when it comes to the good and the bad, they are honest with everything. Healthy transparency between a couple entails avoiding being blunt and being brutal. You should never use harsh words in any attempt to be honest. 

There are some cons to being transparent in relationships. While it may seem prudent to keep some secrets from your partner, it will be even more detrimental if your partner finds out about the act later. This will create trust issues and we all know trust is easier destroyed than repaired. For example, your ex contacts you for some reason and you make the conscious decision to attend to them. You decide to hide this information from your partner because you know it may lead to suspicion and a lack of trust between you two. 

But what if your partner finds out what you’ve done later on. Not only will suspicion be at its peak but the trust will be completely or nearly destroyed. You actually stood a better chance divulging that information when this situation transpired. Yeah, it would have raised suspicion and may have even chipped away at the level of trust you’ve two built, but it wouldn’t completely destroy it. 

It’s true that you may encounter particular situations in which the absolute truth might hurt the other person and/or cause conflict. Telling the truth is an especially difficult thing to do when you know that it may break your relationship. However, while being transparent in relationships may have its cons, transparency is one of the keys to making a relationship work. If you want a fruitful relationship transparency is actually necessary.