Staying Honest with Friends

Friendships are tough, aren’t they? All of us go through the process of finding people we enjoy and feel comfortable confiding in. Once a friendship is sealed, the serious stuff begins – staying in touch; being there when friends need us; being thoughtful, trusting, and honest.

The last two are the hardest. Deep down, a voice is always saying, “She doesn’t need to know that! It’s too personal!” or “What if he tells someone?” And let’s not forget about the politeness factor – if your slightly overweight friend asks if she needs to shed some pounds, are you really going to say yes? Let’s face it: sometimes honesty just isn’t possible.

Additional stress is placed on friendships as people get busier, have homework to do, extracurricular activities and jobs to go to, and growing bodies to keep healthy. At the end of the day, there are times when we’re just too damn tiredto deal with honesty.
But we need friends because we can tell them things, trust them, and know that they trust us. So how can we make sure friendships don’t fall apart due to dishonesty or lack of trust?

In this fast-paced world of the lap tops, cell phones, blackberries, and digital everything, communication can be instantaneous. Although face-to-face interaction is crucial, today’s average person is constantly moving. To help us stay in touch in the midst of the blur, we have now have e-mail, instant messaging, and social networks that allow us to connect with our friends with the click of a button or two.

This is a good thing, right? Well, mostly. With the replacement of an actual person with a computer screen, we no longer have faces to read or tones of voice to listen to. There is the knowledge that another person is somewhere on the other end typing a message, but something of them is lost. A kind of dehumanization occurs, a phenomenon that has curious affects – people are more forward and direct online, more willing to put themselves out on a limb because they don’t have to deal with an immediate personal response.

What? Did I just say that the more removed a friend is from another friend, the more honest they become? Yep. I know…weird. Now for the clincher – how can we get even closer to total honesty with friends online? The answer is anonymity, a long word with a simple meaning – to have one’s identity hidden. A new craze online has developed as more websites base themselves around this idea of anonymous online interaction. You can make sure your friends will be totally honest by letting them talk to you anonymously. And you can be totally honest while messaging them anonymously. Awkward social etiquette and face-to-face tensions are eliminated. You won’t be able to point a finger at your friends afterwards (and vice versa). But you’ll get the truth. Cool huh?