If I asked you the question, Is it ever okay to lie to your significant other?, your initial answer would probably be some version of, “No, of course not.” But if I gave you a minute to think about it, I bet you could come up with plenty of scenarios where you have lied previously or would lie to your spouse and wouldn’t see anything wrong with doing so.
As a matter of fact, according to The Normal Bar, the title of both a book and an extensive research study on relationships, only 27% of people say they never lie in their relationship with their significant other. The rest of us mere mortals? Well, we lie occasionally.
So how do we determine when lying is okay and when it’s not?
Some lies are obviously not good for the relationship; those are easy to distinguish. The confusion comes in as it relates to those scenarios that aren’t obvious: the gray areas of lying.
A good filter to use to help us make the decision about whether or not to share something with our partners is to answer the questions: Is it helpful? Is it kind? Is it true?
I am of the opinion that lies meant to protect our spouses from unnecessary harm or hurt can be okay. For instance, if a friend said something derogatory about my husband, I don’t have to tell him about that person’s opinion. If this friend said, he’ll never be able to start that new business or that new business venture of his isn’t going to work, I don’t have to share that with him.
Comments such as these aren’t helpful or kind, and frankly, we have no way to know that it’s true. He may be successful in his new business, and he may not be; that’s just someone’s opinion. It does not help my husband to give life to that comment by sharing it with him. So, if it’s not helpful to our partners and isn’t necessary for them to know, that might be a scenario where we would withhold the information and feel good about the conscious decision to do so.
Conversely, we might choose to exaggerate or embellish something we might share with our significant others if it will help them, provide encouragement or make them feel better about themselves. Because we want our partners to feel our love for him or her, we might over-encourage them so that they might believe in themselves a bit more. For instance, we might say, “I thought you did an amazing job” to our spouses regarding the performance she gave when we knew she didn’t do as well as she had previously or even as well as she had hoped.
The intention behind our actions is what’s most important. If it comes from a loving place for our partners, then we might be able to see how either exaggerating or withholding information might be the compassionate, kind and most loving thing to do. However, sometimes even the best of intentions can lead to lies that damage.
In addition to all the obvious ones, the lies that can be toxic to the relationship include:
- If it blocks intimacy with our partners
- If it’s not expressing what we need or allowing them to know us authentically
- Not sharing something because we don’t want to face it ourselves
- Withholding information that could change the foundation of the relationship
- If this lie will require subsequent lies to be told, it’s probably not a good idea.
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If we never lie to our significant other, always being 100% honest, there may be times that we are unnecessarily cruel because not every thought we think is loving or kind or truthful.
If we do occasionally lie to our significant others, we need to be clear about when doing so serves and supports the relationship and when it’s simply avoiding facing the truth of something our partners deserve or need to know. One thing is obvious: lying should be the exception in our relationships, rather than the rule.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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