You know I really value you, SpiritRunner, but I recognize a tendency of my own in this post. It sounds like you'd rather get yourself tied in philosophical knots and escape to the land of the abstract than just address the behavior you're finding troubling. Like if you can only find the right formulation of words, what you're doing will be okay.

FWIW, I don't know how much value honesty has, in itself. It does make life simpler for the most part. I think honesty is incredibly valuable, but most of this value is borrowed from it's instrumentality. It generally helps me to have relationships of a higher quality which is something I do value "in itself."