Honesty and Polyamory

Three times in the recent past, I’ve had strangers ask me to give them an opin­ion on some sit­u­a­tion touch­ing polyamory. Each time, they nev­er com­mu­ni­cat­ed with me again after I did so. I find that rather rude.

But in each case, I was utter­ly hon­est. I don’t think it’s healthy to tip­toe around issues or pre­tend they aren’t there, no mat­ter how uncom­fort­able it is to talk about them. 

Today I post­ed a mes­sage to a poly list that is like­ly to piss off a lot of peo­ple and real­ized that there is a theme that con­nects it to those oth­er three situations.

In each case, the sit­u­a­tions come down to a fail­ure (or refusal) to be com­plete­ly hon­est. Play­ing word games is dis­hon­est. Claim­ing that you want a friend­ship with some­one when all you want is sex is dis­hon­est (by any def­i­n­i­tion of “friend” I’d rec­og­nize). Refus­ing to dis­cuss sex­u­al desires and needs with your spouse is dishonest.

Why is there such a cul­tur­al bias against being whol­ly honest?