honesty vs loyalty

This is a topic i've been thinking about a lot lately, and I apologize in advance that this post is going to end up being much more reflective than narrative so feel free to stop reading now if you're afraid of being bored.

So I remember several months ago having a conversation with a few friends about important qualities in significant others. I think the conversation started with one friend asking the rest of us to name the most important thing we look for in a guy/girl. I immediately responded honesty, because it's a quality that has been instilled in me as long as I can remember, and I tend to value (ok, judge) people by their honesty. Especially in a relationship, I think it's more important that anything else to be able to trust the other person, and I've always directly correlated that to their honesty. If someone always tells you the truth and the whole truth, you grow to trust them. I'm an especially trusting person, and recognizing that that makes it easier to be taken advantage of, it's important for me to validate my trust in a person by identifying them as an honest, trustworthy person. Well, I also remember another friend responding that loyalty is the most important quality in a relationship. At the time I disagreed, thinking if the person is honest, it would be easiest for the two people to work anything out. I thought honestly and loyalty went hand in hand. Lately though I've come to realize that they really don't always come as a pair, and I've started wondering whether loyalty is in fact more important.

To finish the example of a relationship, perhaps loyalty is even more linked to trust than honesty is. If your significant other always acts in support of you, always thinks of your well-being and always cares about you above all else... well that just sounds like a perfect relationship (assuming it's reciprocal). And I think I just defined loyalty... and I've realized that it doesn't follow that he/she must always be perfectly honest. I've never been of the mindset to think it's ok to hide the truth to "protect" someone, but I've opened up to the possibility that there may be some cases when it's ok to be somewhat dishonest to someone you love and care about. I can't think of an example (please feel free to provide one in your comment to this post), but I think one may exist. OK I guess I can think of one example, though thinking about it makes me realize that it does fall under the protecting someone pretense. So lately I've been somewhat dishonest to my mom-- I keep finding myself putting on a facade of happiness when I talk to her, because I don't want her to worry when I'm not perfectly content; she has enough to worry about. The more I think about this the more I realize I probably should just be honest with her, but it's easier said than done. And I'm digressing. The point is, loyalty can come without honesty, and honesty without loyalty (e.g. cheating on your husband but then confessing to him, or falling out of love and being honest about it) isn't nearly as good as loyalty without honesty. I think I've been converted. Ideally you'll have both, but you can't force yourself to think one way or the other... in fact, that is the hard thing about loyalty. You can't force yourself to be loyal to someone or something, it has to come (oh dear, there is no way to word this without sounding cheesy and cliche) from within. You can force yourself to be honest, and as long as I can remember, I've actively been honest with nearly everyone, because it was always ingrained in my head that that's the right thing to do. But that doesn't take away the need for loyalty, though it probably does make it easier to be loyal.

I also remember having to ask several people in my life for feedback about what they see as my strengths and weaknesses (for Tal Ben-Shahar's touchy-feely Psych of Leadership last year), and the only comment I was surprised by and even offended by was when one of my roommates and good friends named commitment as my shortcoming. She refered to my missing rugby practice and games for other activities, but mentioned she's seen it elsewhere-- and I realized that all throughout college I really didn't commit very well to any one activity. I did like a lot of things that I did, and I would get passionate about one thing and then the next, but I was never consistently passionate about one thing, be it my major, sports, other activities, and so on. I liked EPS and I always did my homework, I liked choir freshman year but quit when ROTC got in the way, loved rugby but missed it frequently for ROTC, and the one thing I couldn't get out of (ROTC) I wasn't very passionate about. It's a little depressing. The only thing that I was consistently loyal to throughout college was my friends... which I think is also the most important, but still.

Tying these two threads together, the honesty vs loyalty in a relationship debate and my personal lack of commitment, I'm starting to wonder whether I've leaned toward valuing honesty because, as I mentioned before, it's very easy to control being honest but you need to find passion before you can be fully loyal to someone or something. Again, this is a little depressing, and I really do have passion in my life, for friends/family, for the outdoors, for the ocean (hence the Navy), for sleep (haha), but I haven't always found it. I think I'm pretty passionate and loyal to the Navy, but I still question whether it's 100% legit or if I'm just convincing myself I love it.

Which brings me to my final point.. so I was talking to a friend yesterday about honesty and my guilty conscience and how it leads me to be brutally honest all of the time. He was of the mindset that sometimes you have to lie in order to get what you want, that there could be something you'd do anything for-- in the context of this post, he was on the loyalty side. I argued for the sake of argument, but I think I have to agree with him and my other friend from a few paragraphs before who voted loyalty the most important quality in a significant other. I hope I will never have to lie to succeed in life, but if there is a cause I truly believe in or a person I'm head over heels for and I need to lie to promote that cause or to stay loyal to that person, I'll probably do it. And in fact, I hope I find that much passion for someone or something at least once in my life.