I read a post about a guy who dropped off a first date to her male friend's house. Now, according to the post, she admitted that the makes out with said friend from time to time.
One comment caught my attention. It was something like "Why did she tell him!? No guy is gonna want to hear that!"
This got me thinking, because I was more like "Why did she even do it in the first place?"
So i just thought, if you are doing something that might give a person you're dating the ick, such as having things like make out buddies or fwbs while dating them, shouldn't you tell them EXACTLY because it might give them the ick?
I mean, if you hope that they never find out, that feels a bit manipulative imo. You don't have to be crude about it, but I feel like this would be something the other person should know.
After all, if this behavior is something they don't like, shouldn't they have the choice to break things off?
This goes both ways of course.
But if you believe ignorance is bliss, then more power to you I guess.
But in the case I gave, I guess the date better hoped to god her make out buddy didn't ever spill the beans.
6 comments
Exactly, get it out of the way, which potentially gets them out of the way. Stop wasting your time.
Ignorance is bliss is basically telling your partner to lie to you. I don’t see how that can be healthy in the long run.
Speak and own your truth ASAP. Don’t hide or sugar coat stuff.
You can’t be a team if the other person is cut out of the situation cos you’re not sharing info.
It’s one thing to know you are not exclusive yet, even if you’d like to be. It’s another to have it shoved in your face. I understand someone I go on a first date with can have a date set up for tomorrow with someone else, but I don’t want to know that, preferably ever, or at least until we are committed to each other.
I was on my 3rd date with an amazing guy. He knows I have a strong moral compass (I can kinda be holier than thou about it). Anyway, he could tell and told me about how the last person he slept with was a coworker who he knew was married. She has since left the job. It honestly wasn’t my favorite thing to hear but I appreciated his honesty. I told him it was okay. I turned down a guy several years ago because he slept with a mutual acquaintance that he knew was married despite being a great guy. I regretted it later, but it was too late. That taught me even good people sometimes make crappy decisions. So, it does give me the “ick”, but now it’s not a deal-breaker. Especially since he could have lied or forget to tell me, but he didn’t. Anyway, still dating him, been together for about 6 weeks so it’s still new.
The premise of the question is flawed.
It assumes that your goal is to keep the other person. That’s thinking small.
The real goal is to build something authentic, powerful, and based on truth.
Withholding information isn’t an act of kindness; it’s an act of cowardice. It’s you trying to control the outcome by presenting a heavily edited, weaker version of yourself.
Tell them. Tell them everything. Not because they deserve to know, but because **you** deserve to be with someone who can handle the uncensored version of your reality. If they get the ‘ick’ and leave, they’ve done you a favor. They’ve filtered themselves out.
Plenty of people lie to make themselves look better. You’ll be surprised how divisive this topic is.
The classic example is someone wanting to take things slowly because “this person is special,” but they’ll sleep on the first date with someone else.
There’s a wide range on peoples’ morality, and some will even argue this isn’t a moral thing.