The Case of the Overly Truthful Girlfriend

Many psycho professionals have gotten in the habit of prescribing open and honest and shameless communication. Do not worry who you hurt. If a thought crosses your mini-mind, throw it out there and let other people pick up the pieces. You have done the right thing. If they don’t like it they can put it you know where.

So, a young women writes to Carolyn Hax asking about how she should deal with a sticky situation. She and her lesbian girlfriend have been invited to her brother’s wedding. She does not want to bring her girlfriend along. She has not even told her that she too was invited. The girlfriend thinks that she was not invited because they are gay. In truth, it’s because girlfriend blurts out whatever she is thinking, regardless.

The letter writer explains:

Thing is, I adore almost everything about her! She’s kind, beautiful, passionate, clever . . . and committed to telling the truth no matter who it upsets. If your hair is unflattering, she’ll tell you. If your husband is screwing around, she’ll tell you. If your father died badly rather than the kind fiction your family have been telling you since you were a child, she’ll let the horrible cat out of the bag — at her cousin’s wedding!

I want my family to get to know her good side better before putting her in a situation where she’s going to risk alienating people by calling Aunt Mary fat — and I might have been less than discreet about some family issues before I realized she was not a vault.

Thing is, it’s so hard to talk to her about it, because she can’t budge from “truth is always best.” So do I take her and risk everyone hating her, keep lying and risk her hating my family, or find some marvelous third option?

Hax responds that the letter writer should be open and honest with her girlfriend. She says:

She insists on bluntness, so give it to her. “I don’t want to bring you because you don’t have a filter. I’m mostly fine with that, but not at a wedding when my family is meeting you for the first time.”

Let her see what “committed to telling the truth no matter who it upsets” feels like on the receiving end.

Evidently, and obviously, this woman has gotten herself involved with the wrong woman. One suspects that she has told her girlfriend too much and fears what the girlfriend might repeat if ever they should dissolve their sometime union. Who gets involved with someone who cannot keep a secret, who takes pride in indiscretion. The letter writer is an extremely poor judge of character. And she has confided in someone who has no filter... an error of judgment. For having been openly truthful, she has gotten herself in what seems to be an insoluble bind.

The problem can be solved. It’s difficult, but not impossible. She should go to the wedding by herself and throw the girlfriend who has no filter out of her life. That is the third option.