When the truth comes out: the third-date hurdle
by Mira and Charles on May 22nd, 2010Why not just hide the truth until it’s pried from your cold dead hands?
Welcome to the land of truth, lies, and trust issues. A friend of mine recently told me, in a sadly casual way, that every woman he ever met through a dating site was lying about something that was immediately apparent on the first date. Age. Weight. Sanity. Whatever.
The problem is that once we know that other people are lying, what are we to do? If I know that others lie on the site, then if I tell the truth who will want to even go on a first date with me? The implication: truth tellers never get to first base in the dating market. And so the dating game turns into liar’s poker.
But somehow, climbing a steep hill of fear and lies, people do start dating. Relationships begin. And then comes the famous third date, when it is now customary to make a confession or two. I was reminded of this by Hannah Seligson in a terrific new piece in the Daily Beast.
Third-date confessions make sense. We all face this classic dilemma when we start out in a new relationship. We want to be attractive to the other person. The smartest thing, from a purely selfish point of view, would be to suck the other person in completely, and only then reveal your secrets. Preferably after they’ve signed the pre-nup. After the honeymoon, if possible. And then…gotcha!
But of course that would horribly poison the relationship ever after.
So the trick is confessing your confession after you’ve gotten some traction but before you can be accused of withholding the truth. And, as Seligson points out, that’s the third date because, ah ha!, that’s when people usually sleep together for the first time. That’s the turning point where if you continue to hold back the truth you’re most like to be seen as a dirty lying weasel.
But, good as her piece is, Seligson accidently I think reveals a huge mistake people make in how we approach this whole business of telling the truth in a developing relationship. She says at one point: “Still, the third-date reveal can go either way. It can be a bonding experience, or it can be like dropping a concrete block on the surface of a still-delicate new romance.” The implication is that developing relationships are like little flowers or baby ducks—tender, vulnerable creatures we want to nurture at almost any cost.
And that’s a huge mistake. You see, you have to think of any newish relationship not like a cute baby duck that you want to nurture in the palm of you hand. You want to think of it a new design for the landing gear of a giant jet you’re going to fly in one day. It has to be something that can bear a lot of weight, take a lot of punishment.
And the only way you can test for that is to put as much weight on the relationship as you can as early as you can, without actually being obnoxious. Yes, you want the other person to like you. But you also need to know that the other person can handle you. Can accept you. Can bear the weight of who you really are. Only then do you know you can trust the other person and your relationship with him.
I know…it’s hard. Sometimes telling the truth is scary. Monstrous even, like stomping on baby ducks. Why spoil a perfectly good relationship by confessing that you have an ulcer, or, worse, a crazy mother?
BUT here’s the right way to think about it. YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE WITH SOMEONE WHO CAN’T HANDLE THE PAINS AND PROBLEMS YOU BRING WITH YOU. After all, everyone has a downside. No one is perfect. The ONLY issue is, Will the person you’re getting involved with be able to handle your shit?
So you can’t think, Oh, by telling the truth I’m risking strangling a perfectly good relationship in the cradle. You have to think, Great, telling the truth about me is the best way to find out the truth about him.
I know that millions of you are in new or sort-of-new relationships and are bedeviled by all kinds of confusion and dilemmas. And they all boil down to: Should I go forward with this relationship or not? The best help available on this issue is in Is He Mr. Right?, which will show you exactly how to decide whether to go forward or not.
If you’re in a more established relationship, then Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay will give the info you need to decide whether you’ll be better off staying or going.
