Having given a lot of thought about this recently, I felt like I should, in the spirit of fairness, expand a little on it.

It might just be me, but, in most cases, I don't like to pretend or be left to draw my own conclusions when it comes to relationships - any relationship. And I believe that everything can be said - it's just a matter of finding the right tone and opportunity.

There are two general situations in which I rely on this no-bull approach: 1. when somebody offends me; 2. when something I perceive as an "elephant in the room" makes me uncomfortable.

The first situation is the most common. It generally occurs when people are being genuine and end up offending me without having ever meant to. For example, a couple of years ago, a former colleague somehow decided to make a joke about my teeth. I laughed at the joke and looked at her, still laughing, and asked: "Did you seriously just tell me my teeth are yellow???" She immediately saw how inappropriate that was, apologized, and we continued chatting and making jokes. In my mind, the incident was immediately forgotten because I had addressed it and made my feelings known. It felt like that was the better option - over saying nothing, harbouring hard feelings and then rambling on about it to somebody else.

The second situation is a bit trickier, because, at least to me, it requires more guts.

A couple of weeks ago, I made a joke to a colleague. A few days later, I learned that colleague was going through something, the context of which made my joke quite inappropriate. Obviously, I wasn't aware of it when I made my joke, and he probably knew. But I grew uncomfortable, wondering had he realized how bad my joke was in his context? Had I saddened him at all? But what if he had not gotten it? Was I really going to go up to him and force him to realize how inappropriate my joke had been? Plus, the context was a rather sensitive one, and I don't know that colleague all that much, so I had no idea if it would be crazy awkward for him to have me broach the subject.

After a while, I chose to apologize through an email, in order to address my discomfort from a distance, and let my colleague decide whether to keep that distance or not. We talked and things were back to normal.

I can generally work up the needed guts to do that, but not always - and this is the part which made me feel like I had to expand on my previous post. Because I made it sound as if no-bull was a no-fail, constant credo of mine. But in all fairness I have to admit I do sometimes fail.

I did try to address an elephant-in-the-room type situation with someone recently. I started to, even. And then my guts just up and left, and I allowed the other person to let my comment slide. And I've been banging my head against the wall ever since - because now that I've started acknowledging the situation, it's even weirder. To me, at least. It's not really affecting the relationship, but I'm having a hard time dealing with the fact that GOD this should be addressed.

Which is why, all in all, it might be a very selfish way to go about things. Not everyone can deal with it. And by easing my own mind by acknowledging things that the other person might have preferred left unsaid, I just might be making them uncomfortable. For that reason, I always try to turn the discussion into a light, funny one, because my goal is certainly not more awkwardness.

The flip side of that outlook is that I have a great appreciation for people who make an effort to be honest about things. For example, I used to say to a friend of mine - who wasn't really a friend at the time - that she was the anxious type and worried too much about things. And one day she came to me and said "you know, I really don't like when you say that because I don't think that I am like that at all." So I apologized, stopped calling her anxious, and the case was closed. Yes, she could have kept her feelings to herself. But why?