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Monday, July 30, 2007

Love Lies

Don't kid yourself that your relationship is different. Love rarely includes total honesty. In fact, life involves various levels of untruth. Most of us learn as kids that its safer to lie in a variety of situations. We lie to protect ourselves from bad consequences. Lying seems like the best idea in these situations. This is not usually reality, but it often seems like a good plan.

The less-powerful tend to lie to whomever is perceived as more-powerful.

Many people feel strongly about honesty and truth in love relationships. They define "love" as having someone who doesn't lie to them. If you can't believe what your lover says, how can you know that they love you? So, lying is bad. But what about so-called "white lies." The occasional social lie that we tell ourselves doesn't hurt anyone and may, in fact, keep them and us from ugly, unnecessary realities. Then, there are the things we tell people to take care of them, to make them okay. If we don't want a friend or lover to feel bad, we say, "You look great in that outfit" when they really, really don't. It depends on your point-of-view whether or not this is truly kind.

Then there are relationship dishonesties. You might assure your lover that you're okay with a situation when it truly rankles in your soul. It can seem like the noble thing to do, but doesn't your partner need to know if you have a problem with a situation? Don't you, at least, need to understand what's bothering you?

Its less noble, but just as true that you may also lie sometimes to your mate get off your back. You love her, but sometimes she bugs you or freaks out about nothing. If you tell her the truth, it'll just end up in a pointless argument, you reason. Better to just not get into it.

Not really.

Avoiding arguments by dishonesty will eventually come back and bite you on the tushie. Sooner or later, your mate will find you out in your lie and then the argument you were trying to avoid is really big. This kind of lie goes right to the core of a relationship and leaves your lover wondering if anything you've told him is true.

Then, there are the lies we tell ourselves about our love relationships. These are perhaps the worst. Relationships are never uncomplicated. Think about it--you are a very complex, unique individual. Your mate is also a unique individual. Now, let's put those complexities in an intimate relationship and we have…lots of interesting situations. Life gives you many situations and everyone of them impacts not only you, but your mate, as well. Its like driving a semi with two huge trailers. You can only directly control the engine--yourself, and that's sometimes difficult! But those who are connected to you--the ones who love you--are impacted by where you turn, impacted by your choices.

Honesty really is the best policy in relationships, not because of any moral reason, but because you lie for lousy reasons. You want to side-step issues in the relationship that need to be dealt with or you don't want to see the reality of the relationship. Maybe you don't want to be alone, or you hate the dating/mating process, so you stay in a bad situation…and you lie to yourself that its "okay." Lying is almost always a sign of trouble. If you find yourself dodging the truth, better do some soul-searching and figure out why.

Love--seriously real love--doesn't need dishonesty to keep it going.