In Defense of Lying
I've been saying for the last few weeks that my favourite line from Glee (sorry, still can't figure out how to link to it) is when the Cute Teacher's Psychotic Pregnancy-Faking Wife's Crazy Sister says "Dishonesty is FOOD to a marriage, it will DIE without it". I don't really believe this, of course. But I do think that people who insist that honesty is always the best policy are, well, wrong.
There are different kinds of lies. There are lies you tell to make your own life easier, lies you tell to protect yourself and lies you tell to protect others. Some lies just come out of nowhere. I have one friend who's a veritable Shakespeare of lying -- nothing important (as far as I know), but basically she just does it to keep in practice. A bunch of us were having dinner at a restaurant in Toronto and one friend asked this friend where the washroom was. The Master Liar told her it was towards the back of the restaurant and down the stairs (which was true). The friend immediately stood up, went to the front of the restaurant and started climbing UP the stairs. The rest of us called her back once we got up from rolling under the table laughing.
And the marriage thing. Yes, in a marriage, largely you don't want to be lying your head off every time you open your mouth. You need to be honest about your basic values, how you want to raise your children, whether you just blew a mortgage payment at the casino. But the times when you think "whoa, what's with the hair?" or "you are completely unattractive to me right now" or "Seriously? Some woman actually LIKED that?" Is it helpful or constructive to say any of those things out loud?
I think if you're going to 'be honest', what you're going to say should hurt you more than it hurts the person you tell. To quote another TV figure from a bad medical show (because apparently all I do lately is watch crap on TV), "the truth will set you free, but it usually kicks the crap out of someone else".
When my friend's husband cheated on her and left her, and actually said he'd fallen out of love with her, I was horrified. It was one of the worst things I could imagine, to have the one person who was supposed to love you no matter what turn around and say "you know what, all those things you've always worried about, that you're fat, that your feet are weird, that your voice is whiny and you laugh too loud? They're all true, and they've made it impossible for me to love you, and I'm leaving". I was talking on the phone with this friend a few weeks ago, about how honesty even between friends is a mixed blessing. If someone criticizes something that you're already sensitive about, it just feels like your worst fears about yourself have been realized. If they come up with something different, then you're thinking 'holy crap, I hadn't even gotten around to worrying about that -- what else is there?'
I have friends who've sworn they'll never lie to their kids -- about Santa Claus, about dying, about where babies come from. That's fine, it's good to have principles. Personally, I have no qualms about lying to my children. I like them to have a sense of magic, I want to protect them from things that they're too young to understand except as overwhelmingly frightening, and frankly, nobody needs to know where the good chocolate lives except me. One of my friends says she remembers being really angry when she found out that her parents had been lying about Santa. Yeah, okay, they'll get over it. I've never said "no, you will never die", but I have an overanxious boy who tends to brood on things, so I find ways to get around saying, yes, beautiful nine-year-old boys die every day in ugly and unfair ways, because that's not something he needs to know with that kind of immediacy right now. And if I told my daughter what I really think of her cartwheeling ability? Irreparable damage would be done to our relationship.
I don't want you all to think I go around lying with gay abandon. I'm actually a terrible liar. I just don't think The Truth is the panacea some people make it out to be. Sometimes a little dishonesty is the best policy.
And Lynn? Remember I never actually said I was good at trivia :).
There are different kinds of lies. There are lies you tell to make your own life easier, lies you tell to protect yourself and lies you tell to protect others. Some lies just come out of nowhere. I have one friend who's a veritable Shakespeare of lying -- nothing important (as far as I know), but basically she just does it to keep in practice. A bunch of us were having dinner at a restaurant in Toronto and one friend asked this friend where the washroom was. The Master Liar told her it was towards the back of the restaurant and down the stairs (which was true). The friend immediately stood up, went to the front of the restaurant and started climbing UP the stairs. The rest of us called her back once we got up from rolling under the table laughing.
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| photo credit creative commons license |
I think if you're going to 'be honest', what you're going to say should hurt you more than it hurts the person you tell. To quote another TV figure from a bad medical show (because apparently all I do lately is watch crap on TV), "the truth will set you free, but it usually kicks the crap out of someone else".
When my friend's husband cheated on her and left her, and actually said he'd fallen out of love with her, I was horrified. It was one of the worst things I could imagine, to have the one person who was supposed to love you no matter what turn around and say "you know what, all those things you've always worried about, that you're fat, that your feet are weird, that your voice is whiny and you laugh too loud? They're all true, and they've made it impossible for me to love you, and I'm leaving". I was talking on the phone with this friend a few weeks ago, about how honesty even between friends is a mixed blessing. If someone criticizes something that you're already sensitive about, it just feels like your worst fears about yourself have been realized. If they come up with something different, then you're thinking 'holy crap, I hadn't even gotten around to worrying about that -- what else is there?'
I have friends who've sworn they'll never lie to their kids -- about Santa Claus, about dying, about where babies come from. That's fine, it's good to have principles. Personally, I have no qualms about lying to my children. I like them to have a sense of magic, I want to protect them from things that they're too young to understand except as overwhelmingly frightening, and frankly, nobody needs to know where the good chocolate lives except me. One of my friends says she remembers being really angry when she found out that her parents had been lying about Santa. Yeah, okay, they'll get over it. I've never said "no, you will never die", but I have an overanxious boy who tends to brood on things, so I find ways to get around saying, yes, beautiful nine-year-old boys die every day in ugly and unfair ways, because that's not something he needs to know with that kind of immediacy right now. And if I told my daughter what I really think of her cartwheeling ability? Irreparable damage would be done to our relationship.
I don't want you all to think I go around lying with gay abandon. I'm actually a terrible liar. I just don't think The Truth is the panacea some people make it out to be. Sometimes a little dishonesty is the best policy.
And Lynn? Remember I never actually said I was good at trivia :).
Comments
I really liked this post too -- I have exactly the same position.
Zarah
Another great post, Biblio. And I'm not lying.
To me, Santa isn't really a lie, so much. If I were directly questioned, I wouldn't conceal the truth. And not telling my husband that I don't particularly like his feet isn't a lie, either. Telling my daughter that babies are found in the cabbage patch, or telling my husband that my new outfit cost half as much as it really did, those are different.
No one likes brutal honesty. I'm with you. It's all a question of balance, like pretty much everything else.
I'm not saying lying is a great thing and we should all lie to each other all the time, but it is sometimes socially necessary in the "white lie" sense. Soemtimes you have to say "thank-you, I really like the present you gave me" even if it's not what you'd really like.