Do Relationships Need Lies to Survive?

Recently, a reporter from the Daily Mail discovered my new book, Behind the Door of Deceit: Understanding the Biggest Liars in Our Lives, and got in touch about an interview. She had a hunch, she said, that relationships need a dash of deceit to survive. When she said relationships, she meant romantic ones. To me, "relationship" has a much bigger, broader meaning, as does "love."

So taking the bigger meaning first, let me answer the reporter's question with an anecdote. Because I studied deception for so long, and have found in my work that lying (or, at least the telling of little lies) is ordinary rather than extraordinary, occasionally I get challenged. A conversation partner or student or someone in an audience at one of my talks will claim that they never lie. Even more interestingly, some will vow to spend the next several weeks without telling any lies at all. I never suggest or encourage this, but I do ask them to tell me about their experiences.

Only a few people have actually followed through with their personal experiments in honesty, but the result has been the same each time. They have to call it off after a few days, and go back and apologize. They say they are sorry to the person whose party invitation they declined with the honest response that the person's parties are always boring - or that the host him or herself is boring. They ask for forgiveness for saying to the friend who asked that she really does look like she gained weight. They try to make it up to the coworker whose contributions they described, in all honesty, as not up to par.

I draw a big line between little lies and big ones. Serious lies - the big time betrayals of trust - are probably never good for relationships of any kind. Little lies are often a different matter entirely. Sometimes people tell these lies not because they don't value honesty, but because telling the truth conflicts with something else they value, such as being compassionate or loyal or reassuring.

As I've noted before, romantic relationships are hotbeds for serious lies. Serious lies are often told by and to other close relationship partners, too, such as parents. For example, when parents hide a grim diagnosis of a grandparent's illness from an adolescent, sometimes that grandchild will still feel badly about the deception many years later. There is an intriguing exception, though, to the rule that the most serious lies are told by and to the people who are closest to us: In the 238 stories of serious lies that we collected, only 6 of them involved a best friend.

The reporter wrote an interesting story on the questions she asked me; you can read it here. Because she sent me her questions in advance, I wrote out some answers, so I thought I'd share them with you. (Continue reading here.)

Comments

[badmama3]

But can a relationship survive lying? I have caught my husband in a couple of lies, and it makes me question things in the past that he told me that never seemed quite right. It is so hurtful, and he has apologized, but I still don't quite trust him not to do it again. However, if I ever bring it up, he says I am re-hashing the past and can't let go of anything. I don't know how to handle things with him anymore. Would your book help me?

[Bella DePaulo - Huffpost Blogger]

I can't promise the book would help you handle things with him, but you would get to read about other people's experiences, and more analysis from me. These kinds of things can be so difficult -- all the best to you.

[MerhabaAbi]

Hi Bella,

Wow, what an eye opener! I try very hard to live an open and honest life but I find myself guilty of so many of the "little lies" you've described. Too often I find myself thinking along the lines of Jack Nickleson's famous line, "you can't handle the truth". Not only do I want to be kind and supportive more than I want tio be brutally honest but I lie to myself about my motives as well. Sometimes, I just don't want someone I care about to think poorly of me but I tell myself that I'm being kind to them. This is a very tough pill to swallow. Thanks for exposing me to me.

Best wishes,
little brother

[alkamm]

You can tell anybody anything if you have enough command of language to be polite about it. Usually, we lie because we can't tell the truth without being rude and boorish. We prefer to be rude and boorish, in fact, so we try to overcome this natural tendency by lying or not saying anything rather than confronting the facts in a sensitive manner.
All I'm saying is that if someone asks if they are fat, there's a middle ground between calling them pathologically obese and noting that they, like most of us, could work to lose a few pounds. If a person is fishing for a compliment, perhaps it's better to note the fact to them rather than either give them a fake compliment or skirting the issue by answering directly in any way.
Lies are gambles. In relationships, we gamble that going along to get along will pay off, but it's likely that even the small lies will limit the breadth of the relationship and end up being found out, subtly or grossly as betrayals. Don't give up on the truth. It can set us free.

[Bella DePaulo - Huffpost Blogger]

I think you are right that there are places in between hurtful truths and outright lies. You are also right that it can take some skill and effort to come up with those ways of communicating.

[khanti]

It depends on what you did.

[GrainOSand]

Perhaps to avoid lying one should work on their ability to express the truth such that after telling the truth remorse lingers not. A person once (actually more than once...but who's counting) gave me their honest opinion of something I wrote. The person was so bloated with honesty that they felt the need to damn everything I had ever written and anything I intended to write. I took the occasion as an opportunity to look inward and not outward...at someone else's presumed "truth". In response, I sought to assure the person that though their retort and analysis was harsh, it paled in comparison to stinging indictments I levy against myself. Thus I dismissed the written truth of that person as a rank amateur assessment where it concerned any analysis of me...especially since the person had not taken the time to form a relationship with anyone or anything beyond their own grandiose sense of self where it concerned me.

Thus, two things come to mind related to this story, be your own psychoanalyst, capable of delivering the necessary truth, the objective reality...and, if you pull no punches in telling the truth, please insure your punches are feather light, for if the truth is meant to assist (which it should be) to bolster (which anyone would want it to), then...it should not leave the recipient devastated, decimated, and deprived of opportunity to grow. Is the point to stroke ego or to commute knowledge thereby stimulating growth?

[Bella DePaulo - Huffpost Blogger]

Yes, sometimes people say, "I was just being honest" as an excuse to be cruel. Your comment reminded me of one of the papers I submitted for publication in an academic journal early in my career. The reviewer said that not only did he recommend rejection of this paper, but if he had reviewed my previous paper, he would have rejected that, too!