We all tell lies. That is a sad but undeniable truth. The question is whether those lies damage the important relationships in your life and, if they do, how can you get better at handling the truth?
Relationships are challenging. Two people coming together to co-habit and share a lifetime, or even a few years, with each other can be difficult, if for no other reason than people are different. No two people are identical in their likes and dislikes, their strengths and weaknesses, or hopes and dreams. After the doe-eyed, weak-kneed, reality-defying honeymoon phase, a relationship must move into something more sustainable. Lasting relationships are not built on love, they are built on trust. For trust to exist, honesty must feed it. If you want to bring truth-telling into a relationship, though, you need to be ready for the consequences. So, in the interest of relationships everywhere, we’ll explore how you can navigate honesty in your relationship. Before we do that, however, it behoves us to think about why we might lie in the first place.
Why lie?
On the face of it, as the truism says, honesty is the best policy. If that is the case, though, why do we all lie? Yes, even you tell lies, and you probably do it quite often. One study conducted at the University of Massachusetts and published in the Journal of Basic and Applied Psychology found that during any given 10-minute conversation, 60 per cent of people will lie. Maybe those “60 per cent” are real bad seeds, but researchers at the University of Notre Dame found that the average person lies about 11 times per week. That’s more than once a day. It points to the fact that lying is simply part of being human and there are many reasons why this is the case.
For a start, lying is a strategy favoured by evolution. You can use a lie to save yourself embarrassment or boost your image. If you lie about being the one who spilled your mammoth milk and put out the fire, then you can maintain your status in your neolithic tribe. It is natural to want others to think well of you. A well-placed lie can help in that regard. Humans need to be liked and lying can make that easier.
Lying is okay
Sometimes, a lie is not entirely selfish. When your partner asks, “Does my butt look big in this”, they are really looking for affirmation and your lie of, “Noooo, it looks wonderful!” makes them feel supported and confident.
That is all fairly innocuous lying but, in her book, Lying, philosopher Sissela Bok makes the point, “Those who begin with white lies can come to resort to more frequent and serious ones … The aggregate harm from a large number of marginally harmful instances may, therefore, be highly undesirable in the end — for liars, those deceived, and honesty and trust more generally.”
Small lies can inure you to the effect of lying and may eventually lead to lying about bigger things. Like money spent on a credit card, gambling or infidelity. Lying has a spectrum and the endpoint of it is not pretty.
Nevertheless, we lie because, in the short term, it is often easier than being honest. Lying may lead to problems in the long term, but honesty is not without its own downsides.
Too true?
Before we go too far down the rabbit hole of creating honesty in your relationship, it is wise to consider whether telling the truth is a worthwhile goal? German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously said, “By a lie, a [human] annihilates [his/her] dignity as a [human].” However, Kant is also renowned for taking this attitude to an extreme degree. For instance, he posed the question of what you should do if a potential murderer asks you where your friend is. Kant’s answer is that you should tell the murderer the truth. Would you save your friend’s life by telling a lie?
Another philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, was described by his biographer Norman Malcolm as having a “ruthless integrity which did not spare him or anyone else”. There are countless instances of Wittgenstein behaving with a “cold brutality” in the name of being honest, and of hurting people in the process.
If people are hurt by your honesty, you could argue that is their problem. But as members of a society, surely, we must take some responsibility for how our actions and utterances impact others? A blind adherence to truth-telling might reflect an inability to deal with the nuanced demands of social relationships.
Nevertheless, while unvarnished and thoughtless truth-telling can have negative outcomes, there is a range of benefits that arise from artful truth-telling in your relationships.
Truth is truly liberating
Honesty is an essential part of allowing yourself to be vulnerable. It also helps undo any self-deception that you might be carrying around. In psychological terms, being truthful reduces “cognitive dissonance”, the mental disharmony that arises from contradictions between what you do and what you believe.
Being truthful allows you to address your reality. It allows you to take meaningful steps toward creating harmony within yourself and in your relationships to others. In fact, the “Science of Honesty” project at the University of Notre Dame found that truth-telling improves both mental and physical health. This study of adults aged between 18 and 71, found that lying was shown to increase levels of stress, sadn