The truth isn’t as easy as we like to think. While I’ve always considered myself an honest person, I haven’t always been honest with myself. I crafted stories about my life — stories that made it easier to wake up and get through each day. I was creative with the truth, manipulating it until I could live with my reality. It felt safer than facing the mistakes I’d made. It was easier than doing anything about them.
But lies can’t last forever. The truth has a way of seeping in through the cracks. When my stories began to splinter, I had a choice: I could either keep living within the false world I’d constructed, or I could be brave enough to step outside of it and live in the real one.
6 Lies We Tell Ourselves in Relationships
Most of the lies I told myself had to do with my relationships. Before I confess, I should explain. I’ve always been a romantic. For a time, it was a hopeful endeavor. I was sure that I could find a person to love who would love me, too. I wasn’t looking for a Prince on a white horse, but I was looking for a love that wasn’t built on conditions.
Over time, I became a hopeless romantic — living life more in my head than out of it. I had discovered that the love story I’d dreamed of wasn’t going to happen. I was too much and not enough all at the same time. The men I loved kept letting me down. Romantic love was just another bedtime story. I began to craft a fantasy I could live with. It was the start of the lies I would tell myself.
1. We Can Change
One of the biggest lies we’ll ever tell ourselves is that we can change for relationships. We can’t. We might think we can change our looks or our interests, and everything will fall into place. But that’s not how love works.
When the relationship is the motivation for change, it’s unlikely to succeed. External motivation is often superficial. Our change is predicated on the results being what we want. Internal motivation is far more effective, and it exists whether or not anyone else likes the results.
While change is possible, I just don’t believe that changing for relationships works. It’s a lie we tell ourselves because we want the relationship so much that we ignore that it’s a poor fit. The problems don’t disappear because we made a few surface adjustments. The relationship doesn’t run smoothly just because we learned to pretend to be someone we aren’t.
2. We Can Change Them
An even bigger lie we tell ourselves is that we can ever change or fix another person. We can’t. It doesn’t matter if we have their best interests at heart. We can’t heal them or make them live up to their potential. It’s not our responsibility to do so, and we can’t do it anyway.
In a healthy, loving, supportive relationship, it’s possible to heal together. We have the safety and support possible to do the inner work while maintaining a successful relationship. But we still don’t change them. They don’t change us. We change ourselves.
The problem with this lie is that we tell it as if it’s for the other person’s benefit. We’ll help them be better. We’ll teach them what true love feels like. We’ll show up for them in ways they haven’t experienced, and they’ll be saved by our love and effort. Only, that’s not how it works. We just end up figuring out what we denied all along: we can’t change other people. We can only accept them and make our decisions based on that acceptance.
3. If They Loved Us Once, They Will Again
Quite possibly the worst lie I’ve ever told myself is that if he loved me once, he would again. It wasn’t true. All it did was leave me holding on to false hope. I wanted to believe that what he once felt would spark to life again, but that wasn’t the reality I was facing. I lied to myself because I just couldn’t bear to admit that he might have loved me once, if he did at all, but he didn’t feel that way anymore.
This lie is easily one of the most painful because it keeps us in relationships where we’ve worn out our welcome. We don’t feel safe, loved, or cherished. If anything, we feel pressure to earn back the love that we once felt and long to feel again. The false hope might feel like a protection, but it keeps us caught in a web of anxiety that’s not easy to escape.
4. It’s Better to Have Someone Than No One
This lie is one I never told myself, but I’ve heard it often. There’s this idea that having someone is better than having no one. But I had so many someones who made me feel terribly alone and unwanted. I know exactly what it means to sacrifice ourselves for companionship. I also know what it feels like to be alone and content with my life. Given the choice, I’d rather be by myself than with someone who makes me feel as though I am.
This lie keeps us in inadequate, unhealthy relationships. It might give us company, but it chips away at our souls. This is what settling really looks like. We might make the best of it, but we know in our hearts that all we’re doing is taking what we can get rather than believing it’s possible to have what we actually want.
5. Other People Are to Blame for Our Bad Relationships
This lie is the easiest to tell. Our history of bad relationships? Always the other person’s fault. I used to think that way. This person was immature, and that person was commitment averse. I could easily explain what the other person did wrong to make the relationship fail. But it was just another lie.
The truth is that we’re all responsible for our relationships. While we can’t control the other person, we make choices. Some of those choices seem insignificant along the way — the little red flag we ignore, the gut feeling that something just isn’t right, the tiny clues that keep leading us to larger ones. We can keep blaming the other person and lying to ourselves. We can keep that victim mentality close at hand. Or we can be brave enough to be accountable for our relationships — even when the truth is ugly.
6. Love is Enough
All we need is love … and safety, security, a sense of belonging, compatibility, chemistry … We lie to ourselves and say that love is enough, but it’s not. We can love someone unconditionally and choose not to be in a relationship with them. We can feel love but still make the healthy choice to look for a compatible match rather than a convenient one.
We need more than love. It’s just not enough on its own. It has to come with commitment, honesty, loyalty, and effort. Love isn’t meant to carry the entire weight of relationships without any support. We tell ourselves that if we love someone, we’re meant to be with them, but that’s not how healthy relationships work. It’s just a lie we tell ourselves so that we don’t have to figure out how to love someone and still leave.
The Truth We Need to Accept
It’s taken a long time, but I finally see the benefits of living in reality and not in a self-created illusion. Reality can be painful. I’ll be the first to admit it. But there’s something beautiful about choosing to see people for who they are and accepting them. There’s something extraordinary about being able to love someone who no longer loves us and still loving ourselves enough to move on.
When I get lonely now, it’s because I’m actually alone. It’s not the end of the world. It’s a feeling that passes if we let it.
The truth releases us from unhealthy relationships. It allows us to be free to live and love again. It teaches us accountability, patience, acceptance, and self-worth.
It can be as romantic as the fantasy, if we let it. In fact, I’ve learned to romanticize reality without the lies. I seek out the beauty within reality, and I find it. I’m honest with myself first so that I may live an authentic, meaningful life.
Sometimes, I miss the fantasy. I miss feeling like I’d met the love of my life. I miss being able to tell myself a story of star-crossed lovers. They were coping skills I used to great effect to survive tough times. I just don’t need them anymore. I learn to love the taste of the truth on my tongue. I’m living my life, and I don’t have to spin the facts first to love it.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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