Ready to Date? Nine Tips on Being Loving in an Honest Way

Every now and then, I bop over to Oprah.com and see what's cooking in her relationship kitchen. While most of the content is pretty pedestrian, there's always something that surprises me. As I'm always looking for ways to improve my relationships while on the road to Mr. Right, the site recently published an article called Honesty is the Best Policy. It highlights ways and reasons people choose to be deceptive (and sometimes without even knowing it) and nine great ways to be loving in a more open and honest way.

We never want friends who will talk behind our back. That type of behavior never helps anyone and just feeds gossip and distrust. According to the article, we all want to have some "front stabbers" in our lives. Front stabbers are people who tell us to our face what we're doing wrong. They're the voices of reason when we don't necessarily WANT reason. All to often, we avoid the truth when we're looking for open, honest and loving relationships. Is that any way to build one, though?

According to the article, there are several reasons we choose to keep quiet when faced with challenges in relationships:

To be liked - we mistakenly believe being dishonest and not saying what we truly feel will make someone like us more. But they'll never like "us." They'll like who we pretend to be.

To feel superior - we can feel better about ourselves by holding a lesser view of those in our lives by not expressing how they could improve.

To avoid change - the status quo is always easier because we know our comfort zones.

To avoid being vulnerable - it's an uncomfortable feeling, so we keep quiet to avoid it.

To hide low self-esteem - if people don't know what we think, they can't look down on you for thinking it.

It's not hard to see that we avoid honest conversations because of the level of intimacy they entail. It's easy to be a jerk but much more difficult to be the bearer of hard-to-hear information with love and intimacy. The article offers these nine tips on how to become a "front stabber" from a warm and loving perspective:

Start with yourself - If you can't be honest about you WITH you, who can you be honest with? Start first with a secret you've been keeping and understand why you've been keeping it. Associate a positive emotion with the negative one and put your head on straight before discussing it.

Timing is everything - Don't start a "front stabbing" conversation without adequate time. Give yourself at least 30 minutes of uninterrupted time and find a place where you can speak with a sense of privacy.

Start with love - According to Dr. John Gottman, relationship expert, he can predict 96% of the time how a conversation will end within the first three minutes. That means if you start with harsh words, the conversation will end harshly. Take the time to start your conversation with love so you put yourself in the best possible position to have it end with love as well.

It's no end-all, be-all - It's only your opinion. There are certainly other opinions. The best you can do is express how YOU feel, so let the subject of your "front stabbing" know that this is how YOU feel and others may feel differently.

Start with the "I" not the "you" - Being an effective front stabber is about sharing how you feel about someone's actions or behavior. Talk about how you feel and now about what the "you" is doing. This takes the pressure off of your partner and places a shared weight between you.

Converse - Once you've dropped your loving bomb, leave the door open for talk. Otherwise, all you're doing is launching ultimatums.

Be specific - No one "always" does something. If you can't give specifics about someone's behavior, maybe you need to hold your conversation until you can.

Follow-up - Let the subject of your front stabbing know that you're loving them and not judging them. When we choose to front stab, we do so because we want to see the person in front of us grow and make better choices that will add to their happiness, not to cause hurt. A simple follow-up let them know you care and you're not abandoning them.