Editor’s Note: I’ve been lucky enough to get, Maryanne Comaroto, internationally know relationship expert and radio host, to guest blog once a week for the next ten weeks! What follows is pure dating and relationship gold that’s been mined from the deep and fertile depths of Maryanne’s rich experience. Today’s dating gem takes off from Maryanne’s post concerning what you should and shouldn’t reveal in your relationship.

So what to do? What I usually do; I took this show on the road. I gathered a studio audience filled with men (I was pretty clear on where we women stood on the matter) and dragged 40 other men down the rabbit hole with me, determined for them to give it up. To cough up the truth, the whole truth and nothing but…their truth. Thank God (dess) they came along willingly!

Under the right circumstances men will tell you almost anything, particularly when they know you won’t hold it against them—for ransom!!

I started out the show asking men to imagine they are on a date or with their significant other at a restaurant, and a woman/girl/female walks by—an attractive one, at that. The girlfriend/mate notices they were looking just a little bit longer than the normal glance, which in girlspeak is over three seconds and constitutes a stare, which then reflexively triggers her claws and insecurity (if she has any)! Then she says the words men NEVER want to hear: “What are you looking at?” Oooohhhh, every man knows what I mean, too, because this is that moment, that place where they have to decide, should I tell the truth or not? Most men in this group, as it turns out, opt for NOT. Which is no surprise to me, so I press on (like I do) and ask WHY? Why don’t you tell the person you are with, the truth? Set her free, set yourself free. Validate her intuition. She knows it, she feels it, yet repeatedly we dance this dance, this unspoken agreement to keep each other hostage by trying to protect something we ultimately cannot. Our egos.

Invariably, each man told a similar story as I passed the microphone around. They want to say it (the truth, that yes, they were looking and liked what they saw), but they feel that the women cannot handle the truth and they would suffer the consequences or punishment (usually a withhold of sex). So the men decide, it isn’t worth it. (For the record, most women don’t tell the truth because we fear men will leave and we need them to stay, so we too withhold such truths.) I declare to my men that all of the above eventually turns to poison and kills the relationship—a slow, yet lethal seepage of lie-onide. And ask, what, if anything, can be done? and wait to see who cares.
A few brave men raise their hands and say they will bite the bullet, that they are tired of the game – played when dating or otherwise – want to be free and see whether the damage can be avoided with some compassion, patience and valor. My heart swells, I deliver copious hugs and close the show hopeful for all relationships now and in the future.

Dating or not, regardless of the subject matter, I remain a faithful servant to the liberating phrase, The truth shall set you free. And today fill my life with people young and old devoted to the truth, whose hearts swell with compassion and expand with courage to venture towards greater freedom of being. Thanks to those brave men and my devotion to the truth, I am ever grateful and am no longer afraid to lose what is not possible to have. Blessings!

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