With Halloween around the corner, it is tough to avoid all of the clamor surrounding the day. You are encircled by costumes, tricks, and treats. Perhaps there is more we can take away from Halloween then just a bag of candy, aching feet, and a belly ache.
Shelves are stocked with any and every mask you could possibly want to transform your face into the desired character for the evening. For a night, you get to be someone else—anyone you want to be. The thing is, many of us wear costumes every day of our normal lives. We pretend to be someone we are not. We present a desired image that hides the real version of us that we don’t want anyone else to see.
Being transparent is scary. It leaves us vulnerable to rejection, shame, guilt, and pain. Not only does our “mask” protect us from others, but it sometimes keeps us from dealing with or facing the pain of reality ourselves. Perhaps that is why so many of us tote around these masks as if we were headed to a masquerade party. We hide ourselves away from the world, build up walls, and pretend that we are someone else. After all, if people know who you really are, they would be appalled, disgusted, and flee as far from as you as possible, right? Wrong.
We are all walking around wounded with sin, darkness, and parts of us that are less than ideal. The truth is: not a single human being on the face of the earth is perfect. We are all damaged, bruised, and broken, but there is something in that reality that brings life, healing, and hope. This is especially true in relationships.
Many times in the dating stage of a relationship, we get caught up in the euphoric in love stage. This special person we are with could never have any faults or failures. He is perfect. She is perfect. And he/she probably feels the same way about you … or so we think. We work so hard to put our best foot forward to maintain that faultless façade. Of course, he or she would never stick around if he/she knew the real you, right? So, many couples go through their entire dating relationship with their masks on; but the reality is we are all broken, and the truth is bound to come out at some point.
After vows are exchanged, the masks we worked so hard to keep on, in order to hide the ugliness of who we are inside, slowly fall apart. Ultimately the truth begins to reveal itself. It cannot be contained, and this can lead to both parties feeling deceived and disappointed. This is a point in the relationship where the couple needs to sit down and talk through the reality of who they are, what their relationship is, and how they can move forward through it together.
There is an alternative to waiting until we can no longer maintain our facades, and that is to be open and honest with the person we are dating prior to marriage. Time and time again, I have heard people say that they wanted to wait until they had the marital commitment before they felt safe to disclose who they really are to their significant other. They thought then that the person would be forced to love them despite their flaws. You are doing a major injustice to yourself as well as this person you supposedly care about so much if this is your plan. Do you really think it is fair to deceive and essentially trick someone into marrying you? Do you really want to marry someone who doesn’t truly know you? Waiting until marriage to reveal who you are is not only unfair to your spouse, but it is putting your marriage at unnecessary risk.
Dating is a time to figure out who you want to be with. It is a time to, with discretion and appropriate timing, reveal the truth of who you are. I would encourage you to be yourself all along. The point is to find someone who loves you. If you are pretending to be someone you aren’t, then he/she isn’t really falling in love with you, but rather the façade you are presenting to him/her. It is much better to be yourself and find someone who loves that.
Honesty in relationships is the best policy. At the same time, you should use discretion in disclosing the deep and intimate details of who you are with someone. Your first date is not the time to share everything from your past. Not only will this most likely scare the person away, but it can leave you feeling hurt, broken, and rejected. Like most things, it takes time to build up a rapport where it is both safe and smart to open up. Take time to grow closer together, and when you think the relationship is serious, begin to have those deeper conversations. Make sure that you create space for both of you to share, and be sensitive, understanding, and express empathy and appreciation for the things he/she has shared as well.
It is important to reveal the true you before marriage. It ensures that you both know what you are getting into, who you are marrying, and what potential struggles or issues might lie ahead. It might be scary, and understandably so. The person you love so much could very well walk away from you, but better for you to know that before marriage than after marriage. Breaking off dating relationships, or even engagements, is much easier than dissolving a marriage. Most likely though, it will be appreciated, valued, and create a deeper intimacy in your relationship. Think about it: do you not want to know who you are marrying as well? You wouldn’t want to awaken one day to find that the person you fell in love with and committed your life to had been pretending the whole time. It goes both ways. No one wants to be tricked into marrying someone they don’t really know.
Transparency, honesty, vulnerability, and openness are essential to a healthy and thriving marriage. If you practice those things in the dating stage, it will be much easier for you to transition into your marriage. That transparency is so important though because it allows for better communication, deeper intimacy, and a stronger relationship. It also creates accountability to and for our spouse, which is a necessity for withstanding the temptations and storms that life presents. Though super scary, vulnerability is one of the best building blocks for intimacy in a marriage. To be known so deeply and intimately despite your brokenness and shortcomings is an indescribable and beautiful thing that cannot be experienced outside of marriage. That is how it was designed to be by God, to emulate the love He has for us in a tangible way here on earth. What an extraordinary and liberating reality: to be who we really are – the good the bad and the ugly – and be loved anyway.
The question is then, are you tricking yourself and your significant other or spouse into believing you are someone you are not? Or are you treating them to the liberating vulnerability and transparency of who you really are and allowing him/her the freedom to love you anyway?
