Those of you that know me know that I talk excessively and am not shy about my thoughts and beliefs. This is because a past relationship made honesty and communication very important to me. We were dating for roughly a year, four months of which were long distance. For those of you lucky enough not to have experienced it, long distance dating is absolutely horrible. While not every long distance relationship has the same troubles, generally some barrier makes communication difficult; this barrier could be timing, internet access, work, or social life, etc. 

In my instance, it was a combination of timing. I was in India with a nine-and-a-half-hour time difference, and omission of important information in my significant other’s life. She learned shortly after I left that she had a severe mental illness and believed telling me about it required a face-to-face conversation. 

I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly; there are conversations that require speaking to the person directly for the sake of clarity and understanding, especially when the topic is emotionally charged. 

However, because I was not aware of this fact she began to withdraw from communication entirely. 

While we have long since forgiven each other for the negative things resulting from this situation, the lack of communication caused the relationship to crumble. I decided shortly after that I was going to be honest about anything and everything with everybody in order to avoid a similar situation happening again. 

Omission of important information is incredibly detrimental to any relationship, not just a romantic one. If you are unable or unwilling to share a certain aspect of your life with someone important to you, it will lead to future omissions or even lies. 

This is definite, because significant things that are happening to you bleed into all aspects of life, so even simple questions like “How was your day,” become difficult to answer. 

You are unable to say, my day was terrible because of *insert important thing* instead of responding with something that avoids the issue. 

While each omission in and of itself may seem small and insignificant, the compilation of many instances leads to a lack of trust. As well as this, it means that whenever the truth is revealed, and it always is eventually, the response is more negative due to the deception. 

It is far easier, despite being incredibly difficult, to talk about issues as they occur because they have not been allowed to fester and worsen beyond what they should. 

When issues are not addressed directly, our subconscious begins to eat away at us because we do not understand why something is different within the relationship. Until all of the information and emotions are understood by both parties, there will be an inability to fully communicate with one another. 

In short, be honest to the people you are close to; they care about you and want to help you with whatever you are going through.