The Depth of a Relationship Is Determined by What Both People Are Willing to Be Honest About

**Matthew Gottesman** (0:02)
Welcome to The Niche Is You. My name is Matt Gottesman, at Matt Gottesman on Instagram, and this is my daily podcast where I create short, quick hitting episodes to help you uncomplicate life, creativity, and the pursuit of your highest self. There's only main character energy here. Now let's get into it.
Welcome to episode 836 The depth of relationship is determined by what both people are willing to be honest about.
You know, no matter what type of relationship, whether this is a business partnership, a spouse, a friendship, what creates depth is honesty. And obviously, well, let's sprinkle in some time in there, you know, because we need time, right? But honesty is such a beautiful bridge. And it's something that, you know, we all need. And depending on, obviously, whether or not you feel safe with that person, or you feel like, you know, you can trust that person, all these things, right? And I think we've been operating in society for some time, where everybody kind of holds back because they're unsure about how they'll be received, you know? And then that's also operating from a whole other place, etc. And so when you really think about it, though, the depth of a relationship really achieves its maximum through honesty, right? Intimacy is a byproduct of shared truth telling, basically. And so in this episode, I want to talk about several things, why time is essential for depth. Absolutely. It's not enough on its own. And I do say that time because we need time to understand each other. You need time to see someone's character.
You need time to see how they do things. You need time to see that the words and the actions match up. You need to see them experience life. It was interesting growing up. A lot of my education was in international business. That's what I studied. And so I would study different cultures. It was always fascinating to me learning how in Europe, especially and in parts of South America, business was done very relationally. I remember in Spain, it was like they wanted to get to know your family, they wanted to get to know you, they want to get to know your dreams, your aspirations, your visions. They want to have coffee with you or they might want to take you out for a beer or whatever it was. They wanted to keep learning who you are for some time before doing business with you. And it's because this kind of philosophy, which I have, which is like do business with people you want to do life with. You know, where they're consistent, where they'll know how to show up no matter what. And like, listen, being in the game of life isn't that it's easy. It's just that you're just showing up to it. You're just not avoiding the things. And if you're around people that you have to avoid the things, that ain't it, right? So, but time, time allows us a lot of times to understand the person in front of us. It's not enough, because we need more than time. We need honest conversations. We need, and sometimes there's a little bit of conflict in there that happens, right? Because we learn about how we each deal with that conflict. I also want to talk about how trust and honesty work together over time to produce real intimacy, right? When you really think about it, I think we, everybody wants to say all the things to each other, whether we've got massive social media telling people how to behave, like don't tell them right away. Don't say this, do this, don't do that. First of all, rule of thumb is if you're honest about who you are and how you feel and both people can do that, and with grace and love and respect, you're fine. Say the things, have the conversations, right? Like that's what says, you know what? I trust you. You're willing to actually like talk about these things versus, I'm not really sure. And you know, you do these things like, we have to communicate. Without communication, what are we even doing?
I also want to talk about the specific ways we've been letting time do all the work that honesty was supposed to do. I want to talk about why the topics both people avoid become the ceiling of the relationship. If you avoid things, there's a ceiling. This, by the way, this isn't even just a relational thing. Think about this in your life. If you avoid things, you can never allow the thing to reach its full potential. This is your health. This is your finances. This is your purpose. If you avoid dealing with things, you're going to create ceilings, all right? I want to talk about why the topics both people, excuse me, how honesty in relationships is a mutual practice, not a one-sided demand. Funny how a lot of times, we might exhibit honesty or ask honesty from another. But remember, they can ask us for our honesty at any point in time, too. I mean, we should always be honest. But I'm saying, they might ask us for some things, too, and vice versa. So it is a two-way street.