Sincerity and honesty are values that are often claimed as necessary elements in creating healthy relationships.

However, those whose personalities tend towards transparency may find many obstacles in their way. Sincerity has some drawbacks that are worth taking into account if you want to learn how to manage them. In many aspects, social dynamics make honesty punishable; it is a real sincerity.

The drawbacks of honesty

The world of relationships can be complicated for virtually everyone, but certain attitudes and personality traits have their own drawbacks associated with them. In the case of the drawbacks of sincerity, these can be doubly harmful.

On the one hand, these disadvantages, by themselves, produce discomfort, and on the other hand, this kind of problem can be disguised and disguised as part of the spirit of sacrifice associated with honesty; as if this discomfort were something positive, because it ennobles the sincere person who bears these negative consequences. In a way, we see sincere people as a kind of martyr , although this does not have to be the case.

We will now review these drawbacks and how they can be detrimental to honest people.

1. The presumption of guilt

One of the types of situations in which people’s sincerity is most evident is when they make negative criticism of others , however constructive it may be. Many times this happens when someone asks them to give their honest opinion about something, and yet when this turns out to be negative, it is often taken as a personal attack, as if it were not in the context of an honest conversation.

2. Free psychology consultations

Sincere people tend to go through the same thing as psychologists in general: people try to see themselves reflected in the opinions of these people, and that is why they are victims of a barrage of questions of a personal nature : what do you think of me? What do you think of my relationship with my wife? etc.

3. The lack of compatibility with others

Normally, sincere people find it difficult to find the same transparency and honesty in the people around them . It is not easy to get used to an environment in which lies and attitudes that only seek to give a false image are commonplace, and even less so if these elements are not part of one’s usual repertoire.

4. Unfair competition

There are many situations in which people who tend to hide their opinions and intentions are favoured , as for example in the search for employment; sincerity is penalised in recruitment processes. This causes sincere people to be displaced or forced to compete by lowering their honesty.

5. Harmful naivety

Another drawback of sincerity is what produces the habit of using it in everyday life: the naivety of assuming that others will behave in a similar way to oneself .

Since honest people accept sincerity as a natural component of their own personality, something that is neither imposed nor forced, they assume that this attitude is also present in most human beings. This is a double-edged sword, since although on the one hand it predisposes one to initiate relationships by leaving aside suspicion, it also facilitates the possibilities of falling victim to deception.

6. The apparent lack of social skills

Sincerity can be confused with a lack of social skills , which makes it difficult to establish relationships. If the person in front of us believes that our sincerity is in fact a sign that we do not know certain conventions of etiquette, he or she will simply value us as if we had not bothered to educate ourselves in aspects related to socialization.

This disadvantage can especially affect those who use sincerity as a tool of subversion, because their radicalism is dissolved in the belief that it is not honesty but ignorance. It is not enough to be transparent in communication; we must show that we are aware that we are breaking taboos.

A problem of others?

If you have read this far, you will have realized that many of these drawbacks of being too honest are not really inherently negative characteristics. In fact, in many ways the downside of sincerity is more of a problem for others. One that, if it ends up being paid for by sincere people, it is simply because they are in the minority, and they give in under pure social pressure .

There is no code of rules according to which if after asking for an opinion you are offended the fault should be of the person who has told you what he thinks; however, as honesty is a rarity, it ends up being punished .

All the drawbacks we have seen speak to the need for cultural and social change to make sincerity stop being persecuted and truthful communication flow properly. Only time will tell if appearances and dissimulation will continue to prevail in this battle.