Deception

As a parent, the most important message you can send your children about lying is that you always — always — want them to come clean with you. No matter how big a whopper they have told, remind them that you would always rather hear the truth, no matter how bad it is, than be deceived. Tell them there is really nothing more sacred in your relationship than your trust of each other. Of course, all this presupposes that we have discovered an untruth — some people are so expert at deception that it often takes a long time to find out that we have been lied to. How, then, can we best detect whether we are being misled? There is no foolproof way, but there are often clues you can see in behavior that should make you suspicious. Usually someone makes eye contact at least half the time they are talking to you. If you notice them avoiding eye contact or looking down during a specific part of a conversation, they may well be lying. A variation in pitch of voice or rate of speech can be a sign of lying. So can lots of umms and ahhs. Turning your body away, covering your face or mouth, a lot of fidgeting of hands or legs can indicate deception. Making statements that just don’t hold together should make you suspicious. If you lie all the time, even about unimportant things, you are likely to have a problem that will eventually — if it hasn’t already — cause you real relationship, financial or legal troubles. Figuring out what is driving you to lie in the first place will help heal this self-destructive behavior. This may mean going into treatment with a therapist to discover why you feel the need to deceive. Dr. Gail Saltz on The “Today Show”  http://www.today.com/id/4072816/#.Um2mo3co6Uk

Every lie is two lies;
the lie we tell others
and the lie we tell
ourselves to justify it.
Robert Brault

A Matter of Trust

Everybody lies. It may only be “white” lies, but everyone tells lies or “omits the truth” sometimes. We start lying at around age 4 to 5 when children gain an awareness of the use and power of language. This first lying is not malicious, but rather to find out, or test, what can manipulated in a child’s environment. Eventually children begin to use lying to get out of trouble or get something they want. White lies, those concocted to protect someone’s feelings, are not a big deal at all. The person, however, who seems to feel compelled to lie about both the small and large stuff has a problem. We often call these folks pathological liars (which is a description, not a diagnosis). They lie to protect themselves, look good, gain financially or socially and avoid punishment. Quite often the person who has been deceived knows that this type of liar has to a certain extent deluded him or herself and is therefore to be somewhat pitied. A much more troubling group is those who lie a lot — and knowingly — for personal gain. These people may have a diagnosis called antisocial personality disorder, also known as being a sociopath, and often get into scrapes with the law. Lying often gets worse with the passage of time. When you get away with a lie it often impels you to continue your deceptions. Also, liars often find themselves perpetrating more untruths to cover themselves. We hold different people to different standards when it comes to telling the truth. We expect, for example, less honesty from politicians than from scientists. We have a vision of purity about those who are doing research, while we imagine that politicians will at least shade the truth about themselves in order to get elected. Why do we dislike liars, especially sociopaths, so much? It’s a matter of trust. When a person lies, they have broken a bond – an unspoken agreement to treat others as we would like to be treated. Serious deception often makes it impossible for us to trust another person again. Because the issue of trust is on the line, coming clean about the lie as soon as possible is the best way to mend fences. If the truth only comes out once it is forced, repair of trust is far less likely. Dr. Gail Saltz on The “Today Show”
http://www.today.com/id/4072816/#.Um2mo3co6Uk

No man has a good
enough memory
to make a successful liar.
Abraham Lincoln

Emotionally Hidden

Why Do People Bottle Up Their Emotions?
* They are unable to fight back in an argument situation (eg the “opponent” is more dominant or it is someone of authority that it may impact their employment).
* They think that if they show their emotions it is a sign of weakness.
* They believe it is not normal to be feeling a certain way, so try to conceal their emotions from others.
* They are afraid of what other people might think.
* They feel that they have to deal with their emotions or problems on their own because “no one else will understand”.
* A situation may have occurred that has placed someone in shock and they just don’t know how to deal with it or they just block it out because don’t fully understand it makes them feel (or don’t feel) a certain way.
* They feel they have to be “the rock” for others.
* They don’t want to be hurt so they swallow their emotions back down.
What Happens When You Pent Up Your Emotions
* You can become crabby to be around & start snapping at other people for now reason.
* You get to a stage where you have bottled up your emotions to the point you “explode” – often the victims are loved ones, friends, co-workers.
* You turn to escapism (alcohol, drugs) for short-term solutions, to avoid confronting your emotions.
* You become depressed and numb and don’t know how to get out of the situation.
* Often the pent-up emotions will manifest themselves physically in the form of diseases…
* Some people commit suicide because they see no other way out. http://marcofratelli.hubpages.com/hub/Ways-To-Release-Your-Bottled-Up-Emotions

Man is not what he thinks he is,
he is what he hides.
Andre Malraux

Men Lie Three Times More than Women

Sorry, I didn’t have signal! The second most common lie told by men is over why they didn’t answer their phone. Men are three times as likely to lie as women, a new study has found (HushHush.com). And the average man lies three times every single day – or more than 1,000 times each year. In comparison, the study found that the average woman lies just once each day. The survey of 2,531 adults across the UK shows that we are a nation of liars, with just five per cent of respondents saying that they told the truth ‘at all times’. The majority, 52 per cent, of men said that they lied three times a day on average; whilst one in seven, 14 per cent, said that they lied more than five times each day on average. In contrast, almost three fifths of women, 57 per cent, said they lied once each day on average making this the most common response, with just 17 per cent going as far as to say they lied three times per day. When asked ‘What lie do you most regularly tell?’, the survey found that women are most likely to lie about their emotions, with 27 per cent admitting that their most regular lie was ‘I’m fine’. The most common lie men tell, with 45 per cent admitting to doing so most regularly, was that they’d done something they were supposed to have done but hadn’t. By Katy Winter http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2286671/Yes-darling-Ive-Im-sorry-I-didnt-signal-The-common-lies-men-tell.html

The liar’s punishment is,
not in the least that he is not believed,
but that he cannot believe anyone else.
George Bernard Shaw

Lie and Secrets

When it comes to relationships, people generally say honesty is the best policy. And it turns out, people are right. Honesty is especially good for the lazy among us, because science now shows us that keeping secrets is hard work. A new study conducted at Tufts University shows that keeping a secret can feel physically burdensome. In the study, people were asked to remember a secret they were told and then to estimate how steep a hill was or how far a distance was. People who remembered meaningful secrets estimated the hills to be steeper and the distances to be longer. The study also looked specifically at the burdensome secret of infidelity. People who’d recently been unfaithful to their partners were asked to rate how much their infidelity bothered them, and then to evaluate the effort it took to complete tasks like carrying groceries and walking a dog. People whose infidelity bothered them more were also more likely to think the everyday task required more effort. It’s interesting that keeping other people’s secrets and keeping a secret about your own indiscretion have the same effect. I can understand feeling weighed down by the guilt of infidelity, but feeling physically burdened by keeping a friend’s secret? Relationships are enough work without feeling like you’re lugging a 50 pound suitcase up Mount Everest. Gena Kaufman http://shine.yahoo.com/love-sex/good-reason-not-keep-secrets-relationship-171200543.html

Lies and secrets…
they are like a cancer in the soul.
They eat away what is good
and leave only destruction behind.
From “Clockwork Prince”
by Cassandra Clare

Should An Affair Be Revealed? – Part II

It’s not only patronizing, but it’s also false to assume that your spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Illusions do not make us happy, they cause us to wander through life, bumping into barriers that are invisible to us because of the illusion that is created. Truth, on the other hand, reveals those barriers, and sheds light on them so that we can see well enough to overcome them. The unsuspecting spouse of an unfaithful husband or wife wonders why their marriage is not more fulfilling and more intimate. Knowledge of an affair would make it clear why all efforts have failed. After revealing an affair, your spouse will no longer trust you. But lack of trust does not ruin a marriage, it’s the lack of care and protection that ruins marriages. Your spouse should not trust you, and the sooner your spouse realizes it, the better. If you knew that your affair would be discovered — that right after having sex with your co-worker, your spouse were to find out about it — you would probably not go through with it. And if you were honest enough with your spouse so that YOU would be the one to tell him or her what you did, your honesty would be a huge reason to avoid any affair. How the victimized spouse should respond to the revelation of an affair is a subject of a later column. I do not have the space to treat it here. But a spouse is twice victimized when he or she is lied to about an affair. Truth is far easier to handle than lies. From “Coping With Infidelity Part II” by Willard F. Harley, Jr., Ph.D http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5060_qa.html

The first and worst
of all frauds
is to cheat one’s self.
All sin is easy after that.
Pearl Bailey

Slave From Then On

People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all. from “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand

Things come apart so easily
when they have been
held together with lies.
Dorothy Allison