Protecting someones feelings by lying

Protecting someones feelings by lying

This concept is probably incredibly familiar to anyone who has been through enough social events or interactions in their lives. Finding something out, and hiding it or lying about it for the sake of 'protecting their feelings'. To me this statement is very touch and go. By hiding something from someone to protect their feelings may open doors to many other problems in the future if that does not withhold. Keeping something from someone may in the short term be fine but in the long term can be problematic if said person is to find out through external sources. It might hurt them even more to know you were hiding it this whole entire time. 

I feel this is most common for parents towards their children, or for partners towards each other. But this is still something a large majority of people do whether it be subconscious or not, isn't it?

Now don't get me wrong. I think there are plenty of instances where it is okay to hide something from someone to protect their feelings. An example would be to do with confidence. If someone thinks they are doing good at something but other sources are saying they are doing a poor job just to bring them down or to discourage them, you don't always have to speak about it. You can encourage them to keep improving but there is no need to tell them about harsh criticising words from other people. Even if they find out later that's okay because discouragement is harder to tackle when you are new to something compared to when you have been doing it for a long time.

In contrast, if a family event or a friend dispute or anything that involves conflict and feelings happens, I do think it's more often than not wrong to hide or lie to people about things because inevitably all things in this world will be found out or not at some point, and the end outcome may not always be pretty if parties were not transparent with one another.

So, think a little! Don't hide things just because you don't want to hurt their feelings... You might hurt them more by not being honest and telling them.