by Craig Maslik

Created on: July 12, 2009

It's a little troubling to hear that one of the most sought after character traits that women look for in a man is honesty. This never occurred to me, as I always thought of honesty being a default characteristic in most people. At least, that it should be. One shouldn't have to ask for an honest person, just as we don't specifically ask for air breathers. Even the thought of asking for an honest man seems a little paradoxical. If she falls in love and one day finds that her man has told a whopper, seriously now, can she go to him and say, "You said you were honest".

I've been around for a while, before men stepped on the moon even. I've lived, loved, worked and played with enough folks to have a fairly good picture of people. If you walk up to any one of them and ask if they're honest, I'd bet nine out of ten would actually be honest to some degree, and ten out of ten would say they were. The nine may not be George Washington honest, but they've never crossed the "go to jail", line either. And the one, well, look out for this person, but for our purposes he or she is in the big house. Lets assume for the moment, that the majority of the nine are trustworthy enough to leave your wallet or purse unattended in their presence. At least for a few minutes anyway. And then, the majority of those folks are trustworthy enough to become friends. Then most of those folks can be good friends. See where I'm going here? We can narrow it down further but for the sake of argument, lets just say half the people you've ever known or met qualify as being "honest", half men, half women. We can battle about which sex is more honest another time, but for today, each half is equally honest. A lot of suppositions you may be muttering at this point. Well these are my observations and I'm sticking to them.

So here's my dilemma. The degree of emphasis women put on honesty makes this whole situation look like this. "An honest man is as hard to find as a woman who says what she means". Can the interpretation of what is "honest" be so different for men and women? Ladies, from a man's standpoint the quote, "say what you mean and do what you say", pretty much sums up the honesty rule. I assume a woman's definition includes some flowery attachments and special fluffing up till it looks like something men almost understand, but not quite. Still, I'm fairly certain what we believe "honesty" to be, is reasonably similar to both sex's. Now there's a scary thought.

The importance women place

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