Disclaimer: Chief asked me to write this, and I'm not entirely sure that I've posted it in the right place. If any of the mods would like to move it to what they feel to be a more suitable location, I have no objection.

This post is, as the title suggests, about the difference between honesty and what I like to call full disclosure. Honesty is a good thing, and its importance in romantic relationships--or any relationship, really--cannot be overstated. Honesty is important in building trust, a fundamental keystone of long-term interactions and/or relationships. From a purely self-serving point of view, you're better off being honest about something that will upset your partner from the beginning. If you either wait to confide some slightly unpleasant or objectional truth or, alternatively, attempt to conceal it, when the issue finally arises or is discovered, the problem is often far worse than it would have been had you simply been upfront to begin with. If you don't lie, you also don't have to remember what you said--many falsehoods are exposed by inconsistencies over time

The distinction between honestyand full disclosure becomes particularly important when you don't want to lie and also either don't want to reveal everything that occured, or find such an admission to be unneccessary. To be clear, in most instances refraining from full disclosure is not lying--the exception being, of course, when you are under either an obligation or a legal oath to be completely honest about a particular topic. For instance, using the distinction between honesty and full disclosure in order to cheat on your girlfriend that you've been in a monogamous realtionship with is an abuse of the concept--this isn't an instance of full disclosure vs honesty, you're being dishonest. Both full disclosure and honesty involve actually telling the truth.

There is some information, however, that other people simply don't need to know, or information that you may find it ill-advisable to disclose at a certain time. If you want to take a girl that you just met to a club that you really like, tell her that you had awesome time last time you went, or that they play great music, ect.; don't tell her that last you time you went, you met a cool girl, grinded with her for two hours, and then went back to your place to have sex. It simply isn't necessary.

In the movie, The Invention of Lying, there's one particular scene where two individuals are on a date. She tells him that he has no chance of sleeping with her and that the only reason she's staying is because she wouldn't be able to find anything better at such short notice , while he is admitting that he knows he isn't good enough for her. This isn't honesty, it's full dislosure; and while it may make for good comedy, it's quite ill-adviseable in real life.

The bottom line is to use your common sense--if it's something that you want to disclose, or something that she needs or has a right to know, then tell her. If it's something that it isn't necessary to reveal, then don't. It's that simple.

Honesty and the difference between honesty and full-disclosure is also important in the context of seduction, not just relationships.

Some dude in the chat room saw a link to this thread and he was like "Oh, I guess I don't need to pay attention to this thread since I'm not looking for a relationship." WRONG.

I teach people who are learning pickup to hold honesty as a high value and that honesty can be used as a very powerful seduction tool, too. Anyone who's talked to me extensively or has read a lot of my posts will know that I am a strong advocate of using consistent honesty because it is awesomely effective for seduction and all areas of life. I asked Melissa to make this thread because a lot of guys are just not getting the difference between being honest and sharing way more information than they should be sharing.

For example, I told a guy in the chat to be honest. Later, he tells me a story about how he told a girl that he wanted to have sex with her; he told her this outside the presence of sexual tension and without having established any sort of sexual frame. Yeah, in some contexts saying that sort of thing might actually just establish an initial sexual frame (and a pretty strong one, too), but this guy was completely uncalibrated and trying this shit over TEXT MESSAGE. Goddammit. It doesn't help to tell guys like this "the bottom line is to use your common sense." If they had the kind of common sense that Melissa's talking about, they wouldn't be here trying to learn the natural instinct of mating through artificial means.
The point Melissa is making here is that there's a big difference between being honest and telling people everything.

This is actually pretty hard to explain without the insecure guys getting the impression that hiding behind omission of information out of insecurity is OK, or uncalibrated guys like the one from my example above getting the impression that they can disclose whatever they want outside the context of a smooth escalation.

I would say that it all comes down to a feeling. If you feel like you're motivated by insecurity, you're probably not disclosing enough. If you feel like you have no filter, you're probably disclosing too much. If you feel like you're developing rapport on a linear or exponential line (rapportXtime) by opening up to each other gradually, then you're doing it right.

My point when I teach guys to be honest is that they never have to lie or fake anything in order to make it. The truth is something you can rely on. I'll tell you how I really feel about the topic of honesty vs. disclosure, but I'm not going to ramble on about some childhood trauma in this thread. It just wouldn't make sense for me to do so. That's the difference between honesty and full-disclosure.

hey i know the answer to this and i could say it but for anybody in unnatural game; do routines count as lying?

just dont want anybody talking about their ex-stripper girlfriend, friend who's got some photos of their ex-girlfriend, esp and all that crap then thinking "hey she asked me if i like her, ill neg then tell her the truth because im honest"

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"You don't want girls to think you suck dick at fucking pussy"
-Seth (Superbad)

Good post Melissa! I agree!

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I'm not trying to be a dick Ezo, but you're being a Pick Up Snob in my opinion.

bbardot: you just reminded me about porn

I thought it was more like:

It is good to be honest but some truth does more damage than it does good. Dont hurt people just because you wanna be honest.

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I'm not trying to be a dick Ezo, but you're being a Pick Up Snob in my opinion.

bbardot: you just reminded me about porn