Immediate repentance and a request for
forgiveness can fix that, although asking and receiving forgiveness for some of
the stupid, pointless lies we tell can be humiliating. It rarely works out like
a sixties TV confession where Ward pats Beaver on the head and says, “That’s
okay, son, we all make mistakes; the important thing is being man enough to
admit them” — after which everybody goes for ice cream.
More often the person you have wronged
looks at you like you have three heads.
That doesn’t change the fact that
repentance and confession are the only right way to go, but let’s not pretend
it always works out exactly like we’d hoped.
But if we don’t go through that process,
things are going to get much, much worse.
Lies and Relationships
Why? Because lies don’t drift away into the
ether. Undealt with, they lurk between me and the party I’ve lied to forever.
Even if he or she forgets the conversation and never thinks about it again, I
have no way of knowing they’ve forgotten it; which means that every time the
subject about which I was deceptive comes up I will remain uncomfortably
conscious of my own guilt. What might have been pleasant interactions between
us now become exercises in working through how I’ll respond in the event I find
myself needing to cover my tracks. To the extent one or both of us remains
conscious of my deception, the company of the person I’ve lied to is no longer
anywhere near as much fun.
I wreck my enjoyment of the relationship,
and perhaps the other person’s as well.
Unless I am a sociopath, I will find lying
stressful. That’s the principle on which polygraphs work. Lying accelerates
aging and does long-term damage to the body. It shortens
your telomeres. Perhaps instinctively we try to minimize the damage.
The Rationalization Game
Having rejected confession as a possibility,
rationalization becomes the only way to ease my discomfort, and that’s where
everybody gets hurt:
It
Must Be Your Fault. If I’m not the bad
guy, then somebody else must be. In my conveniently rewritten narrative, if it
looks like you’re perceptive enough to realize I’ve lied to you, it’s because
you were too pushy, or you’ve failed to respect my privacy, or you were butting
into something that’s none of your business. I mean, a real friend wouldn’t box
me into a corner where I had no choice but to lie, right?
“A
lying tongue hates its victims.” What a jerk you are!
It
Must Be Your Fault 2.0 Alternatively, if
I realize I’ve successfully put one over on you, you can’t possibly be my
victim; that won’t do at all. You must be unreasonably gullible. Any halfway
intelligent person would surely have seen through my story. So I come to
despise you because I have succeeded in deceiving you, and pride myself at my
efficiency in prevarication.
Good to be competent at something,
I suppose.
What Actually Happened Anyway?
In either scenario I deceive myself,
because I’ve become convinced that my reasons for lying were something other
than what they actually were. My grasp of reality diminishes with every
convoluted rationalization of my behaviour.
An honest answer is like
a kiss on the lips. A dishonest answer is a smack in the chops.
The second is not a proverb, but it may as
well be.
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