Little white lies are for you, not me

I recently had a guy say to me, “I told you a lie because you can’t handle the truth.” And I want to talk a little about that.

It’s not that I can’t handle the truth, but if I don’t like it, I am going to say something. And the little white lie? That was because you didn’t want to live in your own shame and deal with the fact that you weren’t being so great to me. Not because I couldn’t handle it.

And that’s the thing about friendships, situationships, relationships, and all the in between… we are all living in self preservation mode. Trying to keep ourselves from getting hurt, and just trying to find our joy. But for some reason, we have trouble saying what it is we want out loud.

Don’t want to keep hanging out? Say that. Be ready for me to have something to say in response, but put on your big boy underwear and say it. Annoyed with something I said or did? Let’s hear it. Don’t keep it to yourself because you don’t want me to come back with why I did it or said it.

Look, quiet girls don’t get strangled. I am sure they do… but for the most part, getting strangled by an abusive man is going to happen because he’s done listening to the words that came out of my mouth.

This is something I’ve spent the better part of the last decade trying to come to terms with. Being a loud, opinionated woman with a lot to say. It’s something that men have, frankly, been trying to beat out of me since I was six years old. I never got in trouble for doing anything wrong, it was always my mouth. The thing I can’t stop from running.

It was always going to screw me. It was always going to make it so that guys feel like they can’t tell me the truth when they’re doing something I am not going to like. It was always going to get me in trouble in school and then in meetings as an adult. It was always going to be a problem, but it’s mine. It’s my mouth, and it’s not going to stop.

I spent a really long time shoving nachos in my mouth instead of saying something. And while I love nachos, I won’t be wearing a size 24w anytime soon– so you’re just going to have to understand that I have things to say, and if you’re going to do something I don’t like, then instead of lying to me, either don’t do the thing, or be ready to have a chat.

And until I can find someone that understands that, that I would rather be hurt a million times with the truth than to be kept safe with a little white lie, a white lie that’s for you– to keep you from dealing with the “wrath” of a loud woman, I am not getting involved.

The truth hurts sometimes, but isn’t that a part of it? Isn’t that how we grow as friends and as people? Wouldn’t you rather know than keep things from each other? Isn’t that better?