The Impact of Lies – Truth Seeking – Trust Building

Lies are often the sign the relationship is ending. 

When someone lies, they are essentially putting their own self interest before those of others and in particular the one they love.  A lie is a definite intention to deceive for self preservation of ego, financial reasons or benefit from the outcome they are seeking.

Why People Lie To You?

People lie in relationships to save face, avoid conflict, protect their egos, protect their image, and just to avoid hurting their partner’s feelings,

Their unwillingness to make a sacrifice for the greater, long term good of a relationship is another indicator that they do not place a high value on it.  Disrespect sets in. Resentment builds. Contempt has settled.

The cost of lies and deception goes beyond the immediate impact of hurting someone you love. 

When you think about why you tell little white lies, for example it may justify lying to protect someone you love, essentially you don’t trust them to deal with the truth.  In fact, you are managing the information with the intention of controlling their response and manipulating the evidence to create an advantage. 

When they say, “I didn’t want to hurt you, I didn’t know how to tell you, I was scared what you would do………know this is not about your capacity – it’s an assumption they have made. 

Who lies most in a relationship?

Men lie more than their partners according to the study, and one in 10 claim to do it regularly. One in three of the 2,000 adults questioned admitted that the lies they tell their partner are serious lies

 

“Men lie 8 times more about themselves than other people.

Women are more likely to lie about others.” – Pamela Meyer, TED 2011

 

The impact of lies in a relationship is not only felt by the person who is being deceived.  It affects those around you and destroys  the trust given to you whilst diminishing the respect extended.  It creates confusion, leaves you feeling betrayed.  It can cost lives, leaving them feeling worthless, helpless and powerless. 

Why They Lie About You

It’s one thing to lie to you, but when you find out that your ex-partner is lying to others, it can create insecurity, panic and the activity of collecting evidence to justify, explain and defend yourself.   The impact of lies is far greater that just the personal turmoil, more costly than finances lost and has the potential to be devastating mentally.  When you recognise that it’s on the table, you can gather all the pieces, all the components of it, and make a bigger picture of what’s really happening. And when you know what’s happening, you have some semblance of sanity, less confusion, and some more understanding.

The following examples of how lies and deception play out, are taken from lived experiences taken during statements of survivors:

Creating Confusion: Telling my children that I am a bad person and can’t be trusted, casting doubt on my decisions for them and causing rebelling or friction in that relationship.
Fabrication: Submitting lies to court officials accusing me of illnesses I don’t have or interpreting my behaviour as symptons of mental illness. 
Hijacking Time: Forcing  me to court about the care of my children based on lies 
Interference: Calling my daughter’s medicine delivery company and nurse and having her treatment delivery redirected away from our home
Jealously: Approaching my male friends and warning them to stay away from me incase I sought a relationship with them (post me asking for a divorce)
Invasion: Violating my bank accounts and changing my  payments to other organisations that were timed to coincide with paying my mortgage and utilities and meant I would be unable to pay my bills and receive fines and damage my credit rating
Conditioned Anger: Yelling at my children and calling them stupid because they sent me messages asking for my help
Revenge: Making a relative contact the local housing authority to try to enforce an eviction of my elderly parents from living in the annexe of my home
False Allegations: Reporting my husband to the police for ‘kidnapping’ when he walked my daughter from the school office to the school football pitch
Monitoring: Systematically checking my children’s phones to make sure they aren’t communicating with me and frightening them so they only contact me when they feel they won’t be overheard
Vexatious: Forcing me to spend money to attend 20 court hearings to defend my parenting and secure the continuing care that my children both wanted and deserved
Reputation Damage: Telling parents of my children’s school friends lies about me and encouraging them to undermine me and assist with the alienation of the children towards me
Polarized Parenting: Allowing my daughter to be refused water during meals, to have her hands held as she tries to eat and describing this as ‘necessary training’ when I try to intervene to appeal for her rights to be respected
Disrespect: Never attending medical appointments for the children but asserting that any adult can administer the injection that my daughter needs daily without her consent and when she has specifically asked for it to only be done by her Mum or her Gran.

The attempt to normalise behaviour that is not usual or acceptable is about shifting the expectations of capacity and ‘doing it badly’ deliberately. 

“Morals are the guardrails and parenting is the handrails.”

Having to defend your choices, decisions and why’s are exhausting.

But now you have another choice that maybe wasn’t there before, or that you didn’t see. And I think that’s important.

What I’m talking about is – truth erosion, fact erosion, truth attrition, fact disintegration – whatever it is, it’s when someone takes the facts and twists them in a way to make you believe something else other than the truth.

What I mean by that is you can have one person in a relationship say, “Look, we had this conversation last week and I said that you can’t use the car” and the other person might say, “No, you didn’t. You didn’t tell me that. You did not say I couldn’t use the car” then the other person will say, “Yes, I did. I remember this conversation clearly” then the person who’s doing some sort of fact-altering or truth-attrition is going to say, “No, you didn’t. I know what you said. This is what you said” and then they’re going to twist it. It’s where someone takes truthful data and turns it around into a falsehood they use to their advantage.

Lying can be a natural defence.  Not looking bad and looking good. 

Strategy – We won’t say we know how you feel. But We Will Listen.

I love this woman and have admired her for over 20 years.   Journalist Celest Headlee explains why and how to have the conversations that bring the most value.  At Upstream we use these principles and techniques to find out everything we need to know to help you.  We don’t interview people to catch them out in lies and with a deep understanding of language, love and the labels we attach to our emotions we help you pull those thoughts and feelings together so you feel confident when you finally get to share your story.

In this YouTube Talk At Google she gives great tips and explains how we conduct our interviews and conversations.

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