more benemendacia

I've mentioned before that there are lies and then there are lies.

If you're at work (as a waiter or CEO or secretary or doctor or whatever) and visibly down, and someone asks if everything's OK, then it might be inappropriate to unload about your non-work problems, or even your work problems for that matter. The message, "yeah, everything's OK" communicates something like, "You can see I'm down about something, but I'm going to be just fine and I won't let it affect my performance."

Now. Let's make the same inquiry about a relationship: friend to friend, or boyfriend to girlfriend, wife to husband. And let's have the question "Is everything OK?" mean something like, "are you upset with me or about something involving our relationship, or something we need to discuss and confront?"

Then what?

I'd say in that situation it really is a lie to say everything's OK when there's something a friend/spouse/SO needs to communicate about. Simply denying it is unfair to the other person.

In such a case, if you don't want to go into it you can say, "No, everything's not OK, and we need to talk, but I'm not ready to yet."

Even in that case, I'd say the clock starts, and you shouldn't wait more than 24 hours.