Most people call love the game that people play, but it is more than that. It is the strength of all relationships and the weakness too. What do you want it to be, seeing yourself rising or falling in love, depends on your ability to maintain the relationship. Besides love in the relationship the two pillars that hold them together are ‘TRUST’ and ‘HONESTY’.

How much do you trust your partner? How can you forgive and forget? How much can you let go in the relationship? There is always a doubt about how much is more or less. As one gets into the relationship, there are a lot of things that you begin to discover about your partner and at the same time disclose yourself to him / her. This is the most crucial stage as acceptance of who you are as well as your partner, happens in this stage. Once the relationship gets stronger, it become easier to bond and your love becomes the strength of the relationship.

Since it’s the initial stage of love and most of us have the urge to work things out and not loose them, we get easily tempted to compromise and to hide the flaws and focus only on the rosy picture. At this time, there comes the tendency of one partner to either become a ‘settler’ or a ‘reacher’.

Settlers are those who will be clear at what they want from their partner and will only settle at that as comparatively reachers are those who will go a little beyond to reach out to their partners happiness or other pay offs in relationship. Each one of them will perceive the situation differently and will react differently. Hence how much you want to disclose and trust depends on how your partners is.

Relationships have to be built on trust for love to ever be a part of it. Trust is an action of love. When you love someone you are willing to trust them with small things and little things. It is necessary as it helps maintain the relation in the long-term. There are certain behaviors that one can look up for in their partners that will help you to build up trust like:

1. If he / she say what they are going to do or where they are going to go and keeps up to that
2. Someone who does what the say and keeps up with certain commitments or responsibilities that fits into their role
3. Living in the present
4. And most importantly, they believe and show traits of self-acceptance
5. Make you feel valued and involved in the relationship
6. Shares his dreams and future visions with you

These are mainly pertaining to building trust, however one can give the benefit of the doubt, depending on the situation and its frequency. Also, it’s important to forgive and let go at times when you empathise with your partner and understand why he / she did what they did. Setting your priorities straight and having realistic expectations will help you grow in the right direction, in finding the relationship you have always wanted and that you need not be paranoid unnecessarily.

While the above if about the role of partner in the relationship, it takes two to tango. Hence taking your role into account is also crucial. If you wonder how you keep your partner’s trust, the answer is simple, ‘be honest’. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. This is something that we all hesitate about, ‘how much to tell?’ There are people who feel guiltily and would feel at ease only when they go tell all to their partners. Generally, their partners trust them a lot as they come across as a very honest person. This is good if your partner has the understanding of where you’re coming from when you confess to them. One also needs to be careful that this does not backfire.

This does not mean that you deliberately withhold information in your relationship, but taking into account the timing and the circumstance, there are times when ‘complete’ honesty is overrated. Of course, one person’s version of how much honesty they need in their relationship does not always match up with their partner’s honesty requirements, but there are still certain guidelines that can help you decide what information needs to be revealed and when it needs to be revealed.

Seek honesty: to develop the habit of honesty one needs to set in honesty as the priority, if simple honesty is not adopted, there are other factors that need to be taken into consideration. Deciding that you want to have open but kind communication is an incredibly important step in establishing honesty ground rules:

Talk about what you need, not what your partner needs to do: if you what to be honest about something that your partner does or about your experiences take the approach that focuses at you. For instances using a soften tone you can say, “I am feeling worried about what happen and I don’t want to do anything like this in the future. Would you help me identify some ways in which I can get some more support?

Be mature: No name-calling, derisive remarks, or belittling contemptuous comments should be allowed when carrying on an honest conversation with a loved one.

Identify topics that are off-limits: Even after you've decided to be honest, some topics are too difficult to tackle, especially if they've been problematic historically in your relationship. Setting some ground rules about what issues shouldn't be talked about at first is probably a good idea.

Too much, too soon can hamper your relation: Certain things about you can be very personal that are difficult to share with others. Something, which you are comfortable with, you can share slowly as your relationship progresses from casual to serious. During the discovery stage of your relationship, you should avoid sharing things that you are uncomfortable about because they are likely to overwhelm the person that is trying to get to know you. You may also feel embarrassed about revealing these things if this revelation does drive the other person away. For instances if you have been in any abusive relationship before, you need not discuss it when you start dating someone, though it is an important part of your history. Your partner can know about it when you are more serious about him.

The amount of information shared also depends on how your partners going to react. Look at their warning signs like, if the person has a past where they are betrayed they would tend to be more suspicious of you then normally. If in the beginning they need to be supportive off it, it is okay if they need justification and help them to build the trust back.

So yes, honesty is vital to any relationship, but also knowing when to keep quiet. Knowing the proper timing to reveal sensitive information about yourself and making sure that your ‘honesty’ is not just criticism, are two important considerations before you proceed with what you are about to share. And of course, sometimes the best way to avoid the topics that are irrelevant and potentially hurtful to your relationship is to be proactive by not asking any of the questions that you don’t really want answered.

Pic: Moi Cody