Do you find yourself keeping things to yourself a little too long? Perhaps even hiding uncomfortable facts and feelings? In this short post, we are going to take a look at why transparency makes everything easier.

He meant to say something.

He had an expectation about what he and his partner were doing that weekend; pretty sure the two of them had agreed upon re-watching the movie Lion on Saturday night. Important to this story is the fact that he loved watching movies, so he was happy that she had agreed to watch a movie together. She was kind of meh about movies.

As the weekend drew closer, he begin to have the uncomfortable feeling that his partner had conveniently forgotten all about watching the movie. He felt some old resentment welling up inside of him, but kept it to himself.

But did he speak up and say something? He did not. He thought to himself, “Well, maybe she is still going to watch that movie with me. She’s just tired when she gets home from work. That’s why she hasn’t mentioned it.”

But then, sure enough, on Friday his partner sent a text from work: “Hey! You wanna go to the beach this weekend? We could have a fire on the beach.” And he thought to himself, “Well, okay. I like the beach. And I guess we could still watch the movie while we’re there, at the hotel. I just need to remember to bring my aux cord.”

You see where this is going, don’t you?

It didn’t end well.

He brought his computer, still giving her the benefit of the doubt. But you know how it goes. One thing led to another, so that by the time they got back to the room after the fire, and he said, “Hey, that was fun. Ready to watch the movie?” she did not; she was tired by then.

They had a big fight about it. Neither one of them sleep well. They woke up the next morning with a fight hangover, and drove home mostly in silence.

Now imagine transparency.

I’ve given you an image at the top of this post, of a lovely corner column on a front porch. I took the photo recently as I was walking through a neighborhood up on Mt. Tabor. I give you this image, because transparency is a little bit like this porch post. It’s a structural element in your life which has both purpose and a lovely, visible shape.

What if you were to adopt this image to represent for yourself a new habit of transparency in your personal and relational life? A visible structure that adds support and at the same time is lovely; out there in the open for all to see?

What if, instead of staying quiet and keeping things to yourself too long, you openly put it out into the neighborhood of your life what is essential to the structure of your life? That you do have expectations, and you are going to be open and elegant with what you want before you get on the dark side of resentment — which could so easily have been avoided if only you had been transparent about what you want and expect?

A small and timely mention of expectations could have made the weekend movie debacle much better. Even if she had said, “I don’t want to watch a movie this weekend,” our friend in the example would have suffered less by having it out with her earlier in the week, instead of waiting until the moment of crisis, lost in his wishful thinking.

What would it take?

Let’s run it through the one simple structure.

First, accept. The fact is, when you hide your expectations, it usually doesn’t end well, does it? But have you actually accepted this fact, and taken responsibility for it? Because, yes. You could blame all of this on your partner. But that’s weak, isn’t it? You have a role to play in this.

Second, build. What do you want to do, in light of the facts? Given the fact of how it goes when you don’t speak up, you may want to start speaking up. Or maybe you want to find a partner who listens better; or one who likes movies as much as you do. But you can see you have some responsibility as well as choice here, right? What do you want to do?

And finally, connect. What are you actually going to do? If you don’t do something, you’ll just keep running through this same cycle over and over. So what are you going to do? And remember, as you consider what you plan to do, that small changes add up over time. A plan to do something small on a regular basis often succeeds better than some grand scheme that you try once and because it is too big, it fails, leaving you feeling defeated.

The takeaway:

You think that staying quiet is easier than speaking up, when in fact transparency can make everything so much easier. Start with one small step of being clear about your wants and expectations today, in real time, instead of waiting for the moment of crisis.

Why transparency makes everything easier

He meant to say something.

It didn’t end well.

Now imagine transparency.

What would it take?

The takeaway:

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