I like directness too! With friends and partners, I want to know each other, including negative feelings we might have about each other. I want our inner worlds to make direct contact.
This reminds me of Foreverland by Heather Havrilesky where one time she was comforting her husband, and her husband said he felt so close, and she told him she didn’t feel close in that moment. Of course he was upset, but she liked it for the long-term closeness of the relationship.
Honesty is high-risk, high-reward intimacy. I think it’s the highest form of intimacy. You can truly know each other and want to be there for each other, or you can find out your inner worlds are not compatible.
lovely! On the topic of virtue / vice, and vice perhaps framed as a compulsive sin (a habitual / maybe addictive pattern / tendency of missing the mark on some important higher good), the directness you've described here is clearly a virtue in some sense (integrity of relationship, truth, etc) and also of course a vice (maybe something like not allowing someone to move through their own processing by forcing their hand, and so a little bit in a cousin category to trying to fix someone?)
What is the higher good that tact points to for you, and that too much directness violates, that you see applies in your most intimate relationships (like with your long time friend)?
Resonated with this deeply. Definitely feel like this filters out a lot of friends who's core drives are to avoid pain– something I'm still grappling with.
Best part is you acknowledge that people have their threshold. Directness doesn't equate forcing people to open up. And there are core experiences for us that do not entirely hold the same weight as to others. Baseline is when the conversation happens, we hope we are honest and true and are willing to listen first and foremost.
I like directness too! With friends and partners, I want to know each other, including negative feelings we might have about each other. I want our inner worlds to make direct contact.
This reminds me of Foreverland by Heather Havrilesky where one time she was comforting her husband, and her husband said he felt so close, and she told him she didn’t feel close in that moment. Of course he was upset, but she liked it for the long-term closeness of the relationship.
Honesty is high-risk, high-reward intimacy. I think it’s the highest form of intimacy. You can truly know each other and want to be there for each other, or you can find out your inner worlds are not compatible.
Direct but not rude, honest but not cruel, loving but not crude.
lovely! On the topic of virtue / vice, and vice perhaps framed as a compulsive sin (a habitual / maybe addictive pattern / tendency of missing the mark on some important higher good), the directness you've described here is clearly a virtue in some sense (integrity of relationship, truth, etc) and also of course a vice (maybe something like not allowing someone to move through their own processing by forcing their hand, and so a little bit in a cousin category to trying to fix someone?)
What is the higher good that tact points to for you, and that too much directness violates, that you see applies in your most intimate relationships (like with your long time friend)?
Resonated with this deeply. Definitely feel like this filters out a lot of friends who's core drives are to avoid pain– something I'm still grappling with.
Best part is you acknowledge that people have their threshold. Directness doesn't equate forcing people to open up. And there are core experiences for us that do not entirely hold the same weight as to others. Baseline is when the conversation happens, we hope we are honest and true and are willing to listen first and foremost.