Married? Don’t lie!
by Mira and Charles on February 26th, 2010A journalist recently asked us about spouses who lie
Marriage is supposed to be a lie-free zone, and yet we all know that married people do lie to each other. Here is a recent Q and A with a journalist that tells the truth about lying in marriage (which is a lot less fun than lying in bed):
1. What starts happening when honesty is eroded between partners
CHI: Let’s face it: we lie to people we don’t care about, people we want to use, and people we’re afraid of. So a lie is a way of telling someone he falls into one of those three categories. If you tell me (by lying to me) that you don’t care about me, or that you want to use me, or that you’re afraid of me, then you’re telling me that our relationship, our love, our closeness is a lie too. All I can do is pull back, far back, in hurt and anger. So there is an angry, chill distance. People live like angry roommates, not intimate friends. And here’s the thing: it takes a long time to heal a betrayal. You can say you’ll never lie again, but years will have to go by for me to believe it.
2. Why do men and women ever trick or lie to their spouses?
CHI: It’s some combination of evil and stupidity. By evil, I mean a focus on “what I want” and not on what’s good for the other person, and if that’s not evil, I don’t know what is. This evil is an inability to or an unwillingness to put oneself in the other person’s position. Interestingly, in the happiest, longest-lasting marriages, you tend to find that people really think about what things are like from their partner’s point of view. After all, love is when the other person’s happiness and well being is as important to you as your own. But stupidity comes into play here too. People think their deceptions just won’t matter or won’t be found out. But they always are.
3. How can small lies or deceptions grow into bigger ones and start to damage a relationship?
CHI: It goes back to when you’re attracted to someone and are afraid that you won’t possibly be attractive to him or her as you really are. It can start as a harmless-seeming resume inflation: your job is made out to seem more important than it really is, you make yourself out to have more money than you really do, your real role in your previous divorce is made out to seem more innocent than it is, you claim to want children more passionately than you really do. We think that these exaggerations and deceptions won’t matter once we’re deeply in love – once he sees how wonderful you are he won’t care. Or, more coldly, once he’s in it will be hard for him to get out. But a deception like this is a message that, “You don’t count, only what I can get from you counts. The love you thought was real was really a lie.” And so these kinds of deceptions usually flash freeze love and then you see it crumble into hate.
4. How do men and women differ in how they lie and what they lie about?
CHI: There is NO difference in how men and women lie and what they lie about or in how likely they are to lie. Well, OK there is one difference: only a man will lie about how big his penis is, and only a woman will lie about how big her breasts are. But that’s it. Liars of both genders will lie right to your face, looking you right in the eye, with conviction in their voice. The big difference, the only difference, is between secure and insecure people, good and bad people, and sane and mentally ill people. And between people who can get away with wearing purple stretch pants and people who can’t. And that’s no lie.
If there have been lies in your marriage, what do you do about it?
That’s what we’ll talk about next time…
