Why We Lie
Lying is an evocative topic, and even discussions about lying in relationships can kick up all of our stuff. It is essentially an adaptive behaviour in response to felt or perceived risk and is one of the ways we might protect ourselves, or someone else. (Yup, it can be a prosocial behaviour too!)
I most often encounter lying in my work with couples and with parents, often there is so much emotional heat around this that it can take some time to get anywhere near the function of the lie. With children it’s usually to do with not feeling safe enough to take ownership of an action. As a parent, I know I get tangled in my own shame around one of my kids lying (as in ‘omg, why do they feel it’s been necessary to lie here!? We don’t use punishments, why are they afraid?’). Kids might lie simply in a ‘path of least resistance’ way and it’s not necessarily anything to worry about, or it might be that for some reason they aren’t feeling safe enough to show parts of themselves they imagine you might reject in some way.
Julie Bogart (author of The Brave Learner) speaks beautifully about how it’s not kind or useful to expose kids when we catch them in a lie – the shame this causes can be more disruptive to the relationship than the lie! She suggests addressing this at a later time by simply saying something like ‘you’re always safe to let me know if you don’t want/need more of…’.
In couples lying can also do so much harm if not navigated carefully. Sometimes we lie in enormous ways like having an affair, or in smaller ways like forgetting to do something we’d promised and not wanting to have this known. We also lie to be kind, when we imagine protecting our partner would be better for them, wanting to shield them from something we imagine will cause them harm or even discomfort.
Lying is not necessarily a function of the relationship, it might be in response to the internal experience of one partner – some old part they are interacting with in themselves.
In therapy, before I deal with the lie, or a habit of lying, I want to be really curious about what ‘truth’, honesty and lying means to each member of the couple. I want to know what their religious or spiritual upbringing was, or whether they have a memory of someone getting into trouble at school or in their lives – sometimes this can be an event, or various tiny experiences of the importance of ‘truth’ and the perceived risk in these moments. In other words, what they imagined to be the risk is more important than what might actually have happened.
Often times we’re first working around regulation and equipping the couple to really dive into this in a way that isn’t further damaging. As a clinician it’s tricky to help clients to step out of a very polarised dynamic where one partner is perceived as ‘good’ and the other as ‘bad’. We start with the body, with the feelings, and then go to the lie.
This is also one of those things where a behaviour that appears to be the same is deeply contextual and a partner will make meaning about the act of lying or being lied to in very different ways. It might be that the content of the lying is just too emotive for you to get to any useful place with these discussions and this is a sign your need to seek help from a professional to help you navigate this in your couple.
What do you think? What does lying mean to you?
