 by Jackie Fine
His pants were not on fire.
I'd caught him in an outright lie all the same. We'd been together
for quite some time, so even though the words he was saying were
true, I could tell they didn't apply to the situation I'd asked
him about.
He was on the phone to a woman he thought I might be jealous of,
so he told me it was someone else. Maybe so.
But catching him in a lie about her made me much angrier - and
a thousand times more suspicious. Just ask him about it. In the
end, my suspicion had only lived a brief moment, but the lie made
it grow.
The worst part is, he lied to keep from hurting me.
The night was late, we were both tired, and a drawn-out explanation
seemed more difficult than merely relaying the contents of an earlier
conversation with another friend. I understand his motives, and
on one level, he was right. Had I not caught him, I never would
have known.
If I hadn't caught him, would it have really mattered? If not,
then why not lie?
And why do we lie in the first place?
The first reason is easy: to avoid punishment. That's an odd word
to use here, but the best. We learned to lie as children when only
four cookies remained out of six. We didn't want to get in trouble,
so we made something up. That's part of why he lied to me then.
Not to avoid punishment, but to avoid the possible negative outcome
of the truth. In some circumstances, we can even consider a lie
of this nature to be noble. Philosophers will forever disagree
on the fine points.
Another reason we might lie ties into that. We want to look good.
He didn't want to appear as though he might be cheating, so he
lied in order to avoid the mere appearance of impropriety. Think
about how we act in sex here. A woman might fake an orgasm so her
husband looks and feels good. The idea applies here, only with
a twist. In the end, the lie still operates to benefit someone's
self-esteem.
Perhaps the catch-all reason to lie is to avoid intimacy.
Being intimate with someone can be a scary way of life. It feels
so beautiful to have someone know everything yet love you all the
same, but that ideal is extremely difficult to live up to. We might
not even have to lie directly in this situation. We can just keep
our mouths shut to avoid telling the truth.
Of course, the less we reveal, the less our partner knows. The
less they know, the more guesses they have to make. If your reticence
has already made them suspicious, further silence can prove deadly
to a relationship.
Yes, all this hinges on human imperfection. Lies scare us because
they grow out of and feed on insecurity, jealousy, selfishness,
and privacy. Privacy isn't bad, but privacy in excess becomes exclusion.
We lie to avoid dissatisfaction. Either that dissatisfaction rests
in our own estimation or in someone else's.
But the fact to remember is, unhappiness is curable.
Like I told that boyfriend from many years ago, tell me the truth.
Don't cut corners with me. Slow honesty is far better than a quick
lie.
Intimacy takes time to build but is easy to destroy or avoid. A
friend from Georgia used to tell me "If I'm lying, I'm dying." So
true; don't lay intimacy to rest.
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