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Total Honesty and Complete Trust
by J. Lang Wood
 
I heard Marie say it when someone told her to serve her husband this tofu pie recipe instead of cheesecake, because he would never know the difference.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” she said. “I could never get away with it. My husband and I, we operate on total honesty.”
“Total honesty?” a few people in the group gaped. “Total honesty is dangerous,” one man said.
“Total honesty…and complete trust,” she affirmed. And even then, she seemed to doubt herself, and stopped to check her tone of voice. That wasn’t sarcasm in there, was it? Cynicism? Discontent even?
The moment passed and the group went on to other subjects, but I had to think back on all she had ever said to us, and all I ever knew about her to realign it with this information about ‘total honesty.’
Now, this was an attractive woman. Early forties, and in reasonably good shape, with two kids in their teens who would be going off to college soon. She’d have had to hold a marriage together for quite a while to get this point, and maybe this ‘total honesty’ thing had helped with that. I’d noticed her quiet withdrawal when the office banter got too racy. I’d also noticed how she withdrew from situations with male co-workers that could have led to further intimacies. These occasions seemed to have lingered on the edge of my memory, for some reason, waiting for me to recall them back up. And now I knew the reason for her behavior—total honesty. When you’re put on those terms in a contract, you automatically deflect any circumstance that might threaten your holding up your end of the bargain.
I even remembered one time when I’d gotten too friendly with her—and it was easy to get too friendly with Marie because we had a natural rapport. The friendly banter and physical closeness had gone maybe a little too far, and she quietly said, ‘Careful, Randy’ and got back to work. And I joked with her. “Yeah, you’re married.”
“Yeah,” she said.
I learned not to get too chummy and familiar with her after that.
I recalled that occasion vividly now. All the meanings that went with it.
Total honesty and complete trust.
I envied that man now—her husband. As a guy who’d been cheated on, it was mesmerizing for me to see how a woman avoided it. Marie became ten times more attractive to me. This woman was totally trustworthy, and I became aware of the double-bind of what it would take to get her into my life. Make her cheat on her husband and she became another cheat like my ex. Leave her alone, and she would never be mine.
Stuck.
So I did what any man in that situation would do—I became her emotional lapdog. If she needed anything, I knocked myself out to provide it. When she was vexed by car trouble, I was vexed by it. Yet at no time did I reveal my devotion to everything she was, because that would have spoiled it and she would have had to withdraw. Total honesty and complete trust.
What power she had over me—and she never even knew it.
Two years later, I heard from the other women in the office that Marie’s husband had moved out. She was getting a divorce. She’d caught her husband in a romance with another woman. She walked around the office gray-faced and silent as she did her work. I knew this was my chance, and yet knew this was a bad time to approach her—even as a friend. She was raw and chewed-up.
We were left at the table during break one day.
“I know what you’re going through,” I said. “Been there myself. As much as it hurts now, you’re going to put yourself together and find someone else.”
“I don’t think so,” she said bitterly.
“You will, I promise you. You’ll learn to trust again.
Her mouth went into a sour curve I’d never seen before.
“Oh, yes. Trust. Total honesty and complete trust.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“That’s bullshit. You know it, and I know it.”
She gazed out over the empty break room as if nothing more could ever be said. And maybe she was right—nothing more could be. Trust was a crapshoot. Honesty was inherent risk.
I hid a smile.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. But you’ll try it again. And I will, too. Because life is too boring without taking that chance.”
She sighed then—a heavy sigh. But her eyes still glittered--angrily.
I knew she would be alright. She would go on to make other relationships. Women like that always do.
But probably not with me. We’ll probably just always be friends.
And I’m being brutally honest here.