Whatever Happened To... Honesty?

How much honesty can we tolerate? How brutal can we make that honesty, to get our point across?

In discussing honesty with my psychologist, she mentioned that many people simply don't like to be honest, or at least honest in terms of dealing with someone's peculiarities. Most of them would provide, how should I say it, an euphemism for that little piece of honesty that should in nature be more blunt.

I believe in brutal honesty. No matter how painful the fact is, so long as I know about it, I will be grateful that someone is willing to speak up and say something honest. In fact, I will be happier.

Now I realize that many people do not want to hurt others. They have a good heart not to do so. This is not a criticism against those people, but rather... a call, I suppose, to avoid watering down or keeping mum about personal opinions about other people.

Case in point: in a conversation a few months ago, I was told, in a moment of person-to-person honesty, that I was "a bit imposing". Later on, in an argument with that same person, he told me that he just gave me "a nice, watered down version of it", though he refused to tell me exactly what. It took not long for me to figure out his connotation. (Regrettably, I had to break all ties with him.)

Had he given me the blunt version in the beginning, perhaps many of our troubles would not have emerged. But I understand that, given his amicable nature, hurting others through words or otherwise isn't in his blood, and I hold nothing against that. Still, sometimes it pays to be frank - terribly frank, if need be.

Why would I want to be hurt with brutal honesty? I'm not sure. Maybe it's some kind of, for lack of a better word, masochistic desire (if anyone can come up with a non-sexual term for "masochism", feel free to share). All I know is that I have been hurt so many times, physically or mentally - the latter more common - , that eventually I became rather numb to pain. Any added brutality to honesty would barely faze me.