What You See is NOT What You Get (Rant)

Recently I've had a 'friend' that has/had a crush on me say, "What you see is what you get with me. No secrets." He would say this whenever I told him I didn't know him well enough to go out with him, and I just wanted to get to know him better.

This annoyed me for two reasons.

1) It was like he was trying to convince me to go out with him even though I told him I wanted to get to know him better. I just wanted to say, 'I said no. I said I wanted to get to know you better. That's that.'

2) That is not true. Not with him, and not with anybody. Ever.

I am a pretty real and upfront person. Of course I will go heavy on the sugar if I'm trying to make a good impression, and yes, I can be sort of a chameleon, changing the way I act with different people...however, I do this no more than any other person. I really do try to be the same person around everyone, even if little things change.

BUT no matter how 'real' I am, that doesn't change the fact that you might like me a lot when you first meet me, thinking you know me, then really get to know me and realize I'm a completely different person than you thought I was. Capisce? You can never really know anybody by meeting them once, and unless you're talking about a complete idiot with no depth or personality whatsoever, what you see is NEVER what you get. If that were true, then what you knew about a person would be defined by what kind of clothes they wore, what kind of haircut they had, their dimples, their freckles, and their eye color. I have never heard anything so ridiculous in my life.

This guy doesn't seem to understand that there are more important things than how someone first appears. ANYONE can make a good impression for a couple of weeks or a month or even years! That's why it's best to get to know someone in all different kinds of settings so you can see what kind of person they really are in all situations. I can't meet someone and take a look at them and know about their deepest heartache or their worst experiences or their dreams or life goals or happiest moments or beliefs and convictions! What you see is NOT what you get. It is NEVER what you get.

Often someone that looks like an idiot you would never want to associate with can turn out to be quite smart and have real opinions about things. You just have to spend time getting to know them and talking to them. These are things you learn about a person only through time and friendship. I don't see how anyone could be shallow enough to say something like, 'What you see is what you get.' I understand the principal behind it, and I might use that phrase about somebody else sometimes, because I know some people that are just nice enough that it really would apply to them (even though it's not entirely true) for the most part; Because they are just nice people. But to say it about yourself to get someone to go out with you is just awful.

And just to let you know...The guy that said that initially proved my point. I thought he was a really nice guy at first and didn't want to hurt his feelings. In fact, I thought he was so nice that I really considered saying yes. But I'm so glad I didn't. I stuck to my resolution to get to know him better, and in spite of what he said, after some time, his real colors started to show, and he's not nearly as nice as I thought he was.

So yeah. What you see is NEVER what you get with anyone. People can be married for years and still not know each other completely. Every once in awhile my dad will tell us about something that happened to him and my mom will go, "Really? I didn't know that." They've known each other for nineteen years and still don't know everything there is to know about each other! How can they? We don't even know ourselves completely. The only one who can know us completely is God.