Total honesty. Relationship builder or killer?

Tell me something you've never told anyone. What's the wildest thing you've ever done? You can tell me anything. Really.
Thats the question posed to Amy,a sweet girl next door by her practically perfect fiancée in "Sleeping Dogs Lie", an anything but typical movie I recently rented.
The subject matter of this movie (which was directed by BobCat Goldthwait of Police Academy notoriety) scares most people away from renting it, which is a mistake. As perverse and shocking as the premise is, this is really a touching, funny worthwhile movie. Your wondering what Amy did, aren't you. Well..once in college she blew her dog. She gave it oral sex. (gasp!) But they obviously don't show it and she never does it again. The point of the movie is whether she should tell the man she loves in the spirit of total honesty or if she should keep that one in the vault. All Hell breaks loose during a visit to her family home when the sins of the past are revealed. By the end of the movie, the lesson is that there are some things better kept secret.
I'm assuming most of us don't have a lusty one nighter with a Lab back in college to worry about, but we have done other things we don't want on the cover of the family newsletter. In order for a relationship to be healthy, how important is a policy of complete honesty?
In terms of kinky experiences and forbidden fantasies I'm confident I've told my partner all the kinkiest, which are thankfully turn ons in his case. Granted, theres nothing so wild as K9 lovin' in my history. I think it is a relationship builder that I'm not worried about him judging my past or my fantasies. I hope he feels the same way and from the things he has told me I think he does.
But are we totally honest with each other? No. If he comes out and asks me point blank about something my compulsion for being honest kicks in, but I don't volunteer anything that would hurt his feelings or cause unnecessary stress. I heard somewhere, as we probably all have, that if you feel the need to be brutally honest you are probably being more brutal than honest. I've had to check myself sometimes with my own brutal honesty to be sure of my own motives before jumping on my soapbox of Truth. I say I want him to be totally honest, and when I'm at my most masochistic you could swear I'm looking for something awful that will cause unneeded pain and suffering. Why else would I want to know what bad things someone may be saying about me, for example. I know I'm not alone when it comes to digging where I shouldn't be digging. But when I'm being rational I'm glad my partner loves me enough not to say some things, especially if they could only do damage.
So how do I feel about total honesty? Honesty and trust are essential to a healthy relationship. But when it comes to some truths...what he doesn't know won't hurt him.
What do you think about total honesty? As bloggers sometimes it seems like we have no limits in terms of what we will reveal, but what are yours? Have you ever put something out there that was obviously best kept in the vault? Has anyone ever confessed anything to you that you really wish they hadn't?

Oprah! Oprah! I just had an A-Ha moment! (revisted)

3:15 PM - Oprah! Oprah! I just had an A-Ha moment! (revisted)

Something Personal....
I just read a bittersweet blog in which a girl remembers a past love with a mix of fondness and longing.As is typical of most of us, she realized in hindsight just how wonderful their life together was; a fact she was blind to when it mattered. Her feelings of regret , plastered out on the screen, for not appreciating what was right in front of her grabbed hold of something in me that was guilty of the same thing. It effectively opened my eyes, but only temporarily, to the very real blessing of the guy lying asleep in the next room.

In that moment, in this moment, I know with everything in me just how lucky I am right now. Nothing in my life before he made his entrance could have predicted me ending up with someone so....good. Certainly not the track records held by the majority of my friends and family, who with a few exceptions, don't end up with the good guy. Instead of the hero, they seem destined to hitch their wagon onto the jerks and creeps. Or at least to someone who will never be mistaken for Mr. Right. But I think I did.I know I did. Is it even possible that I could be a winner at love?
This same time last year, fate was preparing to follow up the many bitch slaps she had merely been teasing me with by landing a teeth-rattling sucker punch right to my core.I got knocked down to one of the lowest points of my life where I couldn't even afford myself the luxury of thinking of the future. The day I met Cain homelessness was literally days away and I wasn't sure I cared. Looking back I can't believe how quickly my life changed direction.

I was someone who wasn't looking for love, and honestly never believed that it would happen to me. It just wasn't in the storyboards. The writers of my story simply weren't interested in telling a love story. I was even OK with that.
Now I'm living with a truly awesome human being. Integrity is a word that defines him. He is idealistic, fair, honest, fucking A smart (if a bit long winded for a Gemini like myself who can finish his sentences for him, then still have to endure waiting while he confirms that I was right in guessing what he was going to say) funny (sometimes in a very Virgo, Star Trek loving, High School English Teacher kind of way) and warm. Did I mention he is fucking hot. Take a look at his pics in my picture section. Add to this the bonuses that he doesn't have an unpredictable temper, doesn't ever resort to violence and never makes me feel trapped, pressured or judged.(Well, I do feel judged on my cleaning habits, but I possibly deserve to be.)

I just went and crawled into bed with Cain for a little while and we held each other while I tried to grasp onto the moment. In this moment we had each other. We had our love, and we had our future together. But who knows what the future has in store for us? The odds are that every relationship will end. Most people deeply in love and on top of the world don't stay there. Those dizzying highs more often than not are followed by bone crushing falls to the Earth. I have faith that this will not happen to us, but my faith isn't blind. The reality is that we will have some bad times ahead somewhere in our path. I am resolved to fight for us, and I know he is too. Will it be enough?

Is one of our greatest enemies my self destructive, needy, selfish emotionally immature inner brat that doesn't appreciate what we have. It's the part that lurks in the dark waiting to sabotage everything over inevitable roadblocks, some real some imagined. It's at those times when that stubborn bitch side of me rises up that I need to remind myself to appreciate what I have.

As I lay with my arms around Cain, I held him as tight as I could without waking him up too much. I squeezed my arms around him, listening to his heart beat in his chest, inhaling his scent. I know one day I will look back on this time in my life and wish I had realized what I had and appreciated it. Even if we grow old and die together I know that there will be times that I would gladly pay a millions of dollars to be able to experience this moment that I was already starting to take for granted. Instead of staying in his arms all night, I had to sneak off to the computer to get these thoughts on the screen. How good are our chances of a lifetime together when I can't even hold onto rare moments of comprehension for more than a half hour? I hope putting this in writing will help make these truths part of my conscious thought rather than cheap sentiment that burns away at the first light of day. I'm committed to making sure that if this relationship fails it won't be because I threw it away in a moment of arrogance. On second thought,...I'm just committed to making sure this relationship thrives with newfound appreciation. I can make it sound so easy. Maybe it is.

update. It isn't. I wrote most of these thoughts about 2 months ago and haven't thought about them since. I just took the time to edit them and polish things up a bit. As I read this I start to remember how I felt that night in my moment of clarity, and once again I resolve to make this a part of my conscious everyday thoughts. Lets plan on checking back in a couple months and see how that worked out.

Yet another advice column

now that I've fulfilled my dream of getting my own kind of horoscope out there to the people, I figured its time to work on another one I've had. A sex and relationship advice column more along the lines of Dan Savage than Ann Landers.And While I am not a licensed therapist I am more qualified than....say...You over there. I ended up getting a bachelors of science in Sociology, but psych was my major tor half of that time and I took as many human sexuality classes as i could....about 3.. Plus I'll just say that I am no virgin to....well to much of anything anymore.I was very new to the whole relationship thing until recently but I lucked out with a guy who is thoughtful, hot, full of integrity, and rarely raises his voice..unlike myself. Plus he's a big ol' whore , which allows me to be too if that's the mood I"m in. Point is...well point is its not gonna hurt you to send a letter and maybe it will be fun.. And informative. And after all, knowing is half the battle.

For now, I'm stealing some letters written to Dan Savage for Savage Love...but I'm not gonna read his responses until mine are done.Lets go.

I hope you post this note as a warning. I recommend that everybody stay away from Craigslist. When I started looking at the personals on Craigslist, I was fascinated (there are some freaks out there), but I was also looking for pictures with bare female flesh. After I exhausted the pages for cities in the U.S., I started looking at ads posted in other countries. That's when I noticed that the same hot babe in Finland posted the same picture in six different U.S. states and four different countries.

She wasn't the only one posting the same ad in many different places. When I realized that all these offers for NSA sex were scams, I lost interest in even looking at the pictures. Your readers should know that hot anonymous sex is unlikely to occur—at least through Craigslist—and focus their efforts elsewhere.

Don't Be Fooled

My response- Don't be fooled, you can start off by not being a whiner. Maybe it was just me but your tone was kinda like the kid that tattles on other kids, in this case Craigslist, hoping he will come across as a much better person by the adult he's narcing to.. That kid doesn't have many friends for a reason. Anyway...The main point I wanted to make was ...Speak for yourself. I don't know first hand what the odds are for a straight man trying to get a NSA hookup on Craigslist. I have read some pretty whoreish ads that are supposedly left by women. (And I mean whorish in the best possible way. It always makes me a little warm inside when a woman is in touch with want she wants and secure enough to put up an ad for a gang bang. Actually come to think of it that was probably written by a man) I have had plenty of hot times hooking up off of CraigsList as a gay man. (One of my most memorable being an unbelievably attractive ex-Mormon boy who still had all the manners and charm he was raised with, but who could unleash a unbridled sex monster inside. The result was something like "Please rape me) Granted, with Phone and/or internet access any decent looking gay guy with the right attitude can have a hookup ready to go in 15minutes, less if he doesn't have a shopping list of qualities he Must have in a potential sex partner. I'm pretty sure it's not quite so easy for the straight guy, but it does happen and not every woman on there is a scam or a bot as they are called. Once you know what to look for its pretty easy to tell a real person from a lure to get you to a pay site.
I think the bigger question here has to do with the fact that you got so obsessed going through craigslist that you ran out of ads in your state, moved on to others and ended up having the entire lineup in Finland memorized. But hey...I can be irritating as fuck myself sometimes.

Currently listening : Back to Basics By Christina Aguilera Release date: By 15 August, 2006