464 - This Is Why You Struggle with Honesty
Honestly...we all struggle with honesty
There have been times in everyone’s life when we’ve deceived our partners, whether intentionally or unintentionally. But what even is honesty, and why do we struggle with it sometimes?
Deception comes in a variety of guises, from flat-out lies, elaborate fabrications, misdirection and exaggerations, to evasions, equivocations, concealments, omissions, strategic ambiguity… to more subtle misdirection and camouflage.
-2010 study by Burgon and Levine on deception in romantic relationships
One study by Roggensack, K. E. & Sillars, A. in 2014 identified an interesting distinction between types of honesty as well.
Obligatory honesty, which encompassed ideas such as:
My partner and I should disclose where we are financially.
My partner and I should be honest with each other about needing time alone.
My partner is not allowed to check my personal stuff, such as text messages or my computer, without permission.
I should know where my partner is at all times.
If my partner spends any time with the opposite sex, I should know about it.
Discretionary honesty, or ideas such as:
I do not need to know everything my partner is doing daily.
It’s ok that we do not disclose everything about our past history to each other.
Sharing genuine emotions is not necessary all the time.
It’s okay to fudge details if it would cause conflict.
We can keep secrets if it wouldn’t hurt the relationship, but we should share them if it would strengthen the relationship.
As for why we sometimes struggle to be honest with our partners, several themes surfaced in a survey done by Jennifer Guthrie and Adrianne Kunkel in 2013. These themes were:
Engaging in relational maintenance.
Avoiding relational turbulence such as confrontation, suspicion, avoiding negative reactions.
Eliciting positivity by lightening the mood, making partner happy.
Evoking negative feelings, such as trying to elicit jealousy in the other person.
Restoring equity and harmony after a perceived relational transgression.
Managing face needs.
Positive face - supporting your own or your partner’s feelings and self-presentation.
Negative face - supporting your own or partner’s negative face by avoiding unwanted activities or imposition.
Negotiating dialectical tensions.
Balancing autonomy/connection.
Balancing openness/closedness.
Balancing novelty/predictability.
Establishing relational control.
Acting coercive - making sure your partner behaves or feels the way you want them to.
Continuing previous deception.
Some other reasons we might have trouble being honest could include:
Shame (relates to saving face).
Unsafe environment for sharing honestly (relates to relational maintenance).
Difficult history with honesty from family of origin.
Assumptions or projections based on how you think that other person will react or what you yourself would prefer, or unclear expectations about obligatory versus discretionary.
What can we do about it?
Some steps we can take when thinking about honesty or lack thereof:
The Reality Check. Is this even a problem for me? Ask yourself:
Has my lack of honesty or disclosure caused conflict in my relationships or has it disrupted connection?
If it hasn’t, has my lack of honesty or disclosure caused stress or pain internally for myself?
The Honesty Rewind, or looking to your past and family of origin. Journaling exercise OR a conversation exercise:
How was honesty encouraged or discouraged in my family growing up?
How was dishonesty encouraged or discouraged?
How did I see my caregivers acting honest or dishonest?
Self-Acceptance Supercharge:
Are there parts of yourself that you constantly feel the need to hide, shrink, obfuscate, sugar coat in order to be loved (Hint: the answer is yes, everyone does)?
If you fully accepted this particular part of yourself, how would that change the way you talk about it?
Our Honesty Agreements (a talk to have with a partner):
What types of information should be obligatory to share?
What types of information should be private or shared depending on context?
Do we hold different opinions about this? Why?
What can each of us do to make it easier for the other person to be more honest?
Stop On a Dime. This works better for asynchronous conversations, such as texting:
You have to start trying to catch yourself early on, when you first feel the urge to lie or obfuscate.
When you first notice that knee jerk reaction, just stop.
Scan your body, scan your mind, scan your feelings. What is going on inside you?
If you want, call it out: “I felt the urge to lie to you just now.”
Remember that it’s all right (and even encouraged!) to work on this topic with a counselor, therapist, or coach, especially if you suspect their may be something compulsive at play.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about what makes it difficult to be honest with a partner, whether it's sharing a negative opinion you have about something they did, or if it's about disclosing information about other relationships, or if you've experienced a partner omitting information. We've all had difficulty making the call of when to be forthright and when to keep our mouths shut.
Today, we're going to dive into what the research says about what gets in the way of being honest in relationships, as well as tools to help you feel more comfortable being open and honest with someone that you love. If you're interested in learning about our fundamental communication tools that we reference all the time on this show, you can check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers some of our most used communication tools for all types of relationships.
You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or wherever you get your books. Also, you can check out the first nine episodes of this podcast where we cover some of our most widely used and shared communication tools.
Dedeker: I've never told a lie to a partner, so I don't really know what the-
Emily: Ever?
Dedeker: -experience is like, but I'm just wondering, for the two of you, if you've ever-- I assume you've told so many lies to partners in the past, what's motivated you to lie or to omit information to somebody that you love?
Emily: Self-preservation.
Dedeker: Say more?
Jase: Yes, I think embarrassment.
Emily: I would weigh, I'm just thinking about a particular relationship, the pros and cons of saying the thing, and how it would be received. If I felt it would be received negatively, then I would probably omit or maybe whitely it or try not to talk about it or skew the truth slightly out of self-preservation. I think my self-preservation meter is fairly high sometimes, but it also is in the context of the relationship. I think that in certain relationships, if there is a narrative of if I say something and it's not taken well, then that's going to be really bad potentially. Then the self-preservation goes up and maybe the omission goes up as well.
Dedeker: The omission meter goes up?
Emily: Yes. Correct.
Jase: Right.
Dedeker: Yes. Jase, you said embarrassment.
Jase: If it's something that I'm embarrassed about, there's that temptation to be like, I'd rather just pretend it never happened, rather than needing to talk about it. I think that's come up. I can also think of times where I've been less than honest because I haven't been sure if it would actually just hurt them more than the good it would do, or is it something that actually needs to be shared or not. If it's, "Oh, I don't like this particular thing," or something, it's like, when do you share that, and when do you just say, "Oh, well, whatever. I'm not going to worry about it so much."
Sometimes, I've made the wrong choice, where then later it's like, "Now I can't deal with this thing and it's been too long that I haven't said anything, and so now I'm stuck." That's the trap, I guess.
Dedeker: Yes, I think I've definitely felt both of those things that you're sharing, the self-preservation and the embarrassment. I would feel those things if I'd ever told a lie. I think that would be part of my motivation. Also, maybe part of my motivation might be maybe a sense of just not wanting to deal with whatever the consequences might be of being honest.
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: Whether it is, I think like you're sharing Emily, maybe the sphere that my partner's going to have a really bad reaction that's going to be destructive or maybe really bad for me, or all the way up to, "Maybe this might hurt their feelings, maybe this might make them uncomfortable. I'd rather not have to care take them through that, and so I'm just going to not." It's like these different flavors of motivation there.
I want to hone in on specifically the non-monogamy angle here that I think-- I know I've definitely struggled with this in the past, and a lot of people want very clear rules of what information do I disclose and what information do I not disclose about other partnerships or between partners or things like that. This adds a whole other layer of where we don't necessarily have this very clear manual about sharing information. We don't have the scripts about how to talk to a partner about other partnerships, and so things get a little murky.
Emily: I would use the word minimizing sometimes when it comes to, not necessarily omission, but minimizing the truth, especially early on in non-monogamous relationships or early on in one's non-monogamous journey. If you have started dating someone and are really falling for them or really having like very intense feelings, you may want to minimize that to another partner because you don't want to hurt them. You don't want to tell them, "Oh, yes, I'm having such an amazing time," because that might be challenging for them to hear, for example.
Yes, that is a question of what is the right way to gauge how they're going to feel and how intensely I should be sharing my feelings towards another person.
Jase: I think another one with that, whether you are monogamous or not, but if you've said, we want to be honest about if you feel attraction for someone else, be honest about that, whether or not we agree that's something you would act on in our relationship. I think even then, it's like, "Well, is it any time I ever feel attraction to anyone? Is it only when it's above a certain strength level? Is it only when I do want to do something about it?"
Because otherwise, it's like, is it just weird to be telling you that all the time when you're just thinking, "Oh, gosh, you really want to be with all these other people," when maybe it's more just, "No, I just happen to feel some attraction for a second there." Something like knowing where to share there is also a tricky one, I think.
Dedeker: Yes. I've seen people, again, create some agreements around that that maybe started with good intentions, but then in practice, fall apart a little bit around, well be honest with me, when you're starting to develop feelings for someone, or be honest with me when you think the relationship is becoming more serious. I think our logical cognitive brains can think, "Oh, yes, totally. I can be honest about that. I want to be honest about that. I want to keep my partner in the loop about how things are developing."
Again, there isn't necessarily a switch that flips when you're emotionally starting to entangle with someone, and evaluating whether this is going to turn into a more "serious relationship" or not, that can be a complicated process. Then I've seen people get mad at their partners when it's like, "You told me that it wasn't serious, or you didn't tell me that it was serious, and now all of a sudden, it is." This gets really muddy sometimes. Sometimes, people can get really, really hurt and feel really, really betrayed and genuinely feel lied to when maybe that wasn't necessarily where their partner was coming from.
Emily: It wasn't the intention. I think that's the challenging thing is if you can find the intention behind something and lead with that, and again, assume good intention, then that's a great place from which to start, but often, it's really difficult to do that, especially when really intense emotions are involved.
Dedeker: Yes, I want to start laying out what we're talking about when we're talking about dishonesty and honesty. I really loved, when I was doing the research for this episode, this quote, it was from this 2010 study by Bergen and Levine that was about deception in romantic relationships, and this is how they defined it. "Deception comes in a variety of guises from flat-out lies, elaborate fabrications, misdirection, and exaggerations to evasions, equivocations, concealments, emissions, strategic ambiguity, two more subtle misdirection, and camouflage."
Now with that broad of a list, I'm like, "Well, that's everybody."
Emily: I know. That's all the time.
Dedeker: We've all grabbed for one of those tools from the toolbox at some point.
Emily: Well, we're constantly making these little calculations at any given time. Like how is a person going to react to the thing that I say, and what is the truth? What is truth here?
Dedeker:
Emily: Do not get all esoteric about it, but I do think that it's an important thing to think about given whomever you're standing in front of and whatever it is that you're going to say to that person, especially if it's a really emotionally charged or fraught topic.
Jase: Well, and I think when we're talking about emotions, like developing feelings for someone, we can be ambiguous on even knowing how to describe how we're feeling.
Emily: That's true. Good point.
Jase: Because I'm still trying to figure that out. It's like, "Well, is my partner being ambiguous because they're trying to figure it out, or are they being ambiguous because they're trying to hide something from me? Am I being honest with myself about this or am I being ambiguous because I'm not sure?" That's a tough question.
Dedeker: Let's talk about honesty, and I'm going to spend some time talking about this 2014 study by Roggensack and Sillars, it's titled Agreement and understanding about honesty and deception rules in romantic relationships. This was published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. This study was somewhat small, common trap that a lot of studies fall into of is mostly white hetero college student couples. What I liked about this study is that they identified an interesting distinction between what they call obligatory honesty versus discretionary honesty. This was all generated from interviews with their research subjects.
For instance, obligatory honesty included these statements that people would make like, "My partner and I should disclose where we are at financially," or, "My partner and I should be honest with each other about needing time alone," or, "My partner is not allowed to check my personal stuff, such as text messages or my computer, without permission." This, of course, ran the range where it also got a little bit controlling in some of these like, "I should know where my partner is at all times," or, "If my partner spends any time with the opposite sex, I should know about it." This is all from people's real relationships.
Of course, it's going to run the range and be subjective of what are the areas where people think it is obligatory to be honest.
Jase: These are the things that they self-identified as this is a thing that should always be true. Is that the idea?
Emily: Yes, it's an obligation.
Jase: I should always have honesty about this thing.
Dedeker: About these-- Yes, it's an obligation to be honest about X, Y, and Z topic. Again, that was subjective. That was different in each relationship. Now, this was different from discretionary honesty, which is a little bit of like, whether or not you're honest depends on the context. For instance, there were these statements like, "I don't need to know everything that my partner is doing daily," or, "It's okay that we don't disclose everything about our past history to each other," or, "Sharing genuine emotions is not necessary all the time." Again, of course, this starts to get into certain weird areas like, "It's okay to fudge the details if it would cause conflict."
Now, this one was interesting. This was a direct quote. "We can keep secrets if it wouldn't hurt the relationship, but we should share them if it would strengthen the relationship," which is yet so subjective.
Emily: Wow. That's also subjective. It may be subjective for one person in the relationship versus the other.
Dedeker: Sure. Yes.
Emily: That's really tough. How do you know? You'd have to know your partner so well to know.
Dedeker: Super well. Yes.
Emily: To at least have an idea of what their reaction would be to that thing that is a secret.
Dedeker: Yes. The whole point is it lays out that in each relationship, it seems like people bring to it a certain set of expectations about honesty, where some things are like, yes, you have to be honest. Then other things, it maybe depends on the context. I was curious about what you all felt about that.
Emily: The one that really got me here was the sharing genuine emotions is not necessary all the time. To that, I would say, yes, I agree. After all, sometimes, you do diminish an emotion because you realize it's really going to be difficult for your partner to handle it in the moment.
Dedeker: Sure.
Emily: I think that's true with a lot of things. It just made me think of if I am really upset in a moment, I may not tell my partner that. I may instead simmer down or halt because I don't want to get in a situation where I'm going to also be engaging my partner in a way that would cause them a huge amount of upset as well. That just sounds like a recipe for disaster. Is that dishonesty? We talked about radical honesty in an episode before and this idea that, yes, we always have to be honest or not. I don't know if that's necessarily the wisest thing to do at all times. Discretionary honesty, I do think, sometimes is probably a wise choice, a wise place to go to.
Dedeker: I have a good example of this from a client, specifically about this sharing genuine emotions, maybe falling under that discretionary honesty category where he was going through a situation where a partner of his was going through a breakup with another partner, and he was having some feelings about it because he was having, I think, a lot of anger and resentment around the experiences that he had while his partner was in this other relationship and the ways that it affected him.
It's like, he also had his own almost process going through the breakup, but he knew. He was like, "This is going to take her a while to emotionally recover from this. This is very devastating. It is not my time to be bringing this to her. I'm going to be a supportive partner, and I'm going to be there for her and I'm going to listen to her, and help hold her feelings and space." He was coming to me, to process his own emotions, which was a good idea to-
Dedeker: That's wise.
Dedeker: -have a place to go. He knew that now is not the time to just be vomiting all over in a radically honest way, the ways he was feeling about the whole situation because he knew that it was going to interfere with his partner's ability to process and heal from the breakup.
Jase: Yes. I'm just thinking of several examples of that where it's like, yes, I guess that question of, is this my time to share how I'm feeling? I think that's the criticism that I brought up previously about radical honesty as an approach because sometimes I've seen it lead to that, "Well, this is my excuse to just overshare and always make it about whatever I think and whatever I feel," which can be a really selfish way to go about your relationships. I'm thinking too of people I know, radical honesty aside, who just cannot hold their tongue when they have an opinion about something, even when that is not helping anybody.
It's not even in the case where it's like, "Oh, this is something I need help processing." Because I can understand that. I can relate to that. I still think there are times where it's better to wait and find a different outlet for that, instead of maybe your partner who's going through something much harder than you are even. At the same time, I don't like the traditional thing of-- If I think about like a mad men type thing of this keep all of your feelings away from your partner and don't let them see anything, but this polished veneer. Instead, you just go off the deep end in what you do in the rest of your life, that's not good either.
Again, it's like, if you're looking for an absolute rule to follow, I don't think you're going to find it here.
Dedeker: Well, okay. I'm curious though, that if we can accept that broadly, this is subjective, this is personal, this is unique to each relationship for people to figure out what are the things that we think should be obligatory to be honest about, and what are the things that we think are discretionary, up to your own judgment to be honest about. I guess I'm wanting to hear from the two of you about-- Whatever it is you're willing to share. You don't have to go super deep on it. What falls into those two camps for you? I know for me, I'll just go ahead and start. Discretionary honesty is, I'm like if you have a criticism about my body or appearance.
Emily: Maybe doubt it.
Dedeker: Where I'm kind of like, if I really, really, really want your opinion about how my stomach looks or something, I will preface it by saying, "Yes, I truly want your honest opinion. If I've not prefaced it in that way, I don't want you to be honest if it's negative." That's discretionary.
Emily: Something like unsolicited advice, for example, could be discretionary because I do think a lot of people immediately jump to saying, "Oh, I think you should do this in this situation, even if you're just describing something that's challenging in your life."
Jase: Sure. Yes.
Emily: That is maybe them being honest about how they feel and about how they want to help you in that moment, but I don't necessarily think that they should be doing that. Ideally, I would want to prompt you for your help and your honest opinion on something. Yes, I think in that moment, that's discretionary, for example. I think that there are types of relationships where, yes, it is important to be really honest about your finances or about how you handle money, things like that. If you are able to discuss with a partner about how you deal with your own finances or how you deal with household, for example.
Those are the types of obligatory honesty things that are important and beneficial to a relationship to know.
Jase: Yes. Looking at this list here, the one about, "I don't need to know everything my partner is doing daily," something that we've talked about on this show before in the context of non-monogamy, and that's still where I stand on this is like, if my partner has sex with somebody else, I would put into obligatory honesty. I want to know that you had sex with someone else. Whatever kind of sex it was, I want to know, broadly speaking, what that is. The discretionary honesty is like, "I don't want to know the details. It really doesn't matter to me. It's not my business. That's just not part of the relationship for me."
Other people go about that differently about how much they want to know in either direction. Sometimes it's like, "I don't want to know at all anything or very little," or some, it' like, "I want every detail." For me, it's like I don't need to know all that. That's not my business. That's one that clearly for me goes into that discretionary honesty category. I would say on the flip side, also, I'm not willing to tell you that. Even if you are someone who wants all that? I'm like, "Well, I don't think this is going to work then if that's what you need because I don't want to tell you all those details.
I don't feel like I should tell you all those details, and I don't want to then obligate all of my other partners to be okay with me sharing all that with you. I don't want to do that, so that to me would go into, not even a discretionary honesty, but a this is not a thing you get to have all the answers to.
Emily: Some of the things on this list, I feel are more entwined than the three of us tend to be in our relationships or ask for more types of intents entwinement. We probably are not going to say, "Yes. It's okay for my partner to check personal stuff or text messages or something." Or that you need to know where they are at all times, for example. I think that that might be the case in certain relationships, but there's a level of personal autonomy that is I think present often in perhaps some of the relationships that I want, for example.
That allows for a sense of I am a person that gets to exist by myself and not necessarily only within the confines of a couple, and that that needs to be okay with someone. It doesn't mean that I'm being dishonest but it just means I get some things just for me and for the other relationships that I have in my life, and you don't need to know absolutely everything about them.
Emily: It's funny. I'd never thought about this specifically in terms of obligatory and discretionary honesty. I almost feel like there needs to be this third category of like I was saying like these are things that you will just not get from me. It's not at your discretion, but just this is a no.
Dedeker: Just privacy?
Emily: Yes, privacy.
Jase: Yes. Like a privacy. Like the sexual details thing I mentioned, or one of the ones here in the obligatory section was I should know where my partner is at all times. That I would say for myself and probably a lot of people I know, it kind of be more if you always think you should know where I am, this isn't going to work out. I'm not okay with that being a requirement.
It's not to say I'll never tell you where I am, but this is hard and fast. This cannot be required of me kind of a thing.
Dedeker: We'll get into more into this later, but I do think it is about finding people who match with you.
Emily: Totally.
Dedeker: Right?
Jase: Yes, exactly.
Dedeker: Because there's some people who will totally agree. "Yes, I should know where my partner is at all times."
Jase: Absolutely.
Dedeker: If those two people are together in a relationship, then great. If that what works for you, then awesome.
Jase: These kinds of discussions are something that come up somewhat often actually in our monthly video processing and peer support sessions that we have with patrons. That's for people on our Patreon at the $9 and up level each month. We have these monthly video calls where you get to get on and share what's going on in your life. Get to have other people in real-time to bounce ideas off of, get feedback on things, help develop where you stand on certain issues that are murky. That it can be hard to figure out.
It's just been so cool to get to have these groups. It's just really neat seeing how compassionate and how helpful and how empathetic this group can be when working with each other. It's really amazing. If you would like to be part of that, and, of course, support this show and help us keep this content coming out into the world for everyone for free every week, you can go to patreon.com/multiamory and you can join there and check out all the various benefits you can get as a thank you. Then, of course, if you can take a moment, check out our advertisers here.
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Dedeker: Welcome back from the break. We are going to dive into, why do people avoid being honest. We've shared some of our personal experiences with that, but I found this really fascinating study from 2013. This is by Jennifer Guthrie and Adrianne Kunkel. It's titled Tell Me Sweet (And Not-So-Sweet) Little Lies: Deception in Romantic Relationships.
This was published in communication studies. This study, they looked at a group of undergrad and graduate students, not just undergrads.
Jase: Wow, what a range.
Dedeker: I know. Specifically, it was undergrad and grad students who were in romantic relationships. The mean length of average length was about two years that they've been in these relationships. They had them record in a diary for seven days every time that they intentionally deceived or misled the romantic partner.
Now, a funny side note about this is that they did a little bit of an orientation with these research subjects, I guess, to lay out some definitions. They mentioned something about how they didn't call it deception or lying when they were getting them on board. They didn't want that negativity--
Jase: To bias them.
Dedeker: Yes, exactly. I think they called it a negative communication pattern. They tried to use more neutral framing or language.
Jase: That's clever.
Dedeker: Functionally, they described it as essentially deception and misleading. The average, at the end of that, was 0.7 acts of deception per day. I think if you grabbed a random person off the street and you just asked them, "How often do you think that you intentionally deceive or mislead your partner?"
Emily: Maybe someone would be like, "Once every year or once every quarter."
Dedeker: Right. Exactly. Maybe once a month? I don't know. For me, I was a little surprised, I was like, oh, basically every day.
Jase: That's true. That's true that it's probably more often than you would guess.
Dedeker: Yes. I think so much of this happens below the level of conscious thought.
Emily: Exactly. It's just little white lies or something.
Dedeker: Yes. Knee-jerk stuff.
Emily: Oh, yes, you look great in that hat. Something like that. You're just being nice.
Dedeker: Now, here's what I found super interesting is that they also had the participants record what were their motivations for being deceptive. They found six predominant themes that emerged. We're going to go through each of those six. We're going to spend some time at the end discussing do we think that this list missed some things. Do we think there's other motivations that maybe they didn't cover? But we're going to go through each of these.
One of the motivations was what they called engaging in relational maintenance as in avoiding relationship turbulence. As in, avoiding confrontation or avoiding suspicion or avoiding a negative reaction. Then, I do have some direct quotes here. This one participant said, "I denied being attracted to a friend. My girlfriend worries too much that I will cheat on her and I don't want her to worry as much."
Emily: I would hope that you could be in a relationship where you can discuss attraction, maybe mutual attraction, or just attraction to other people in general. I get that that would be challenging. If the narrative is, "You're going to cheat on me eventually." then I understand you're being like, let's lessen that somehow and say, "No, I don't find other people attractive." Or this particular person that maybe you're intimidated by attractive for instance.
Dedeker: Sure.
Jase: Yes. It goes back to what I was saying before about that, is it literally every fleeting moment of attraction I ever have? Is it an ongoing interest? Is it just the acknowledgment that, yes, I find people attractive in general, rather than specifically this person? It is that are you telling me this because you want to do something about that?
Dedeker: I don't want us to get too hung up on this specific example.
Jase: Sure.
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: This was just one example that was under the umbrella of it's about avoiding causing conflicts which is very common. That would probably fall under a little bit of a self-preservation banner. Also, what they considered deceiving in order to do relational maintenance, also things like trying to elicit positivity by lightening the mood or making your partner happy.
The example that they gave was this direct quote, "I told her I was having a good time when I really wasn't. I know it is important to her that I get along with her work friends."
Jase: I get that. If it's a big day for your partner and you're not feeling it, but that's not going to help the situation. It's like, okay.
Dedeker: Like, "Yes, I loved sitting next to your mom the whole time. It was so great."
Jase:
Emily: Sure.
Jase: Well, maybe at some point, you could be a little more honest about that, but in the moment, I think it's that kind of I don't want you to make this about me, I guess. It's like I want to show you support. Then maybe later, you can talk about, "I had a little bit of a hard time, but I'm glad that I did it because it was important to you." Something where you can take that time.
Dedeker: Some other things also trying to evoke negative feelings in the other person. Such as trying to elicit jealousy in them.
Jase: Trying to.
Emily: Lying about something to try to make you jealous.
Dedeker: Okay. Again, this is all under the banner of relational maintenance, right? If it's the sense of, "I think my partner is drifting away, I'm worried about preserving the relationship. Maybe, if I talk about this hot guy that I hung out with last week, maybe that's going to cause-- and maybe I didn't actually hang out with that hot guy or whatever.
Maybe that's going to spark some jealousy so that my partner will come back to me."
I'm not saying any of this is good. This is just the reasons why we do the messed up stuff that we do sometimes. Then this one was interesting that restoring equity and harmony after a perceived relational transgression. This is the example, "I wanted to make him know that I was really upset about a rude comment. By telling him I cried, he felt more sorry." Now by telling him, I think this person meant lying about the fact-
Jase: I did cry.
Dedeker: -that they cried. In order to make-
Emily: Wow.
Dedeker: -them feel more sorry.
Jase: Like, you take me seriously. I'll exaggerate a little bit. Yes.
Dedeker: I've been there.
Jase: Sure. Yes. God, this is fascinating. Hearing much more candid explanations than I think people would give in another context. Right?
Dedeker: Definitely not. Definitely not.
Emily: Well, it's interesting because that self-preservation extends to our own thought processes about why it is that we're doing something in the moment because we're justifying it to ourselves. We're being like, "Yes, I'm not going to go there because it's going to make my life harder if I say what I really think or what I really mean." Yes, you're exactly right. Hearing it in this context, hearing the reasoning behind it is just really fascinating. I would hope that all of us could maybe stop and think before we decide to be deceptive. What is the reasoning behind this? Why are we actually doing this? What are we longing for, Dedeker?
Dedeker: Exactly. The question that I love to ask. I am hoping that by going through, just giving people listening examples of motivations about why that can help to unlock something because, again, so much of this stuff comes from just a knee-jerk reaction where we don't even have time to think about it. If we get some more clues about why I feel the urge to omit information in this context or why I feel the urge to not be honest in that context, that maybe I can understand why, then I can set to solving that for why in a way that doesn't have to necessarily involve deceiving. Another theme that emerged was what they called managing face needs. Doing some--
Jase: What a weird term.
Dedeker: Some exfoliating. Some extractions.
Jase:
Dedeker: Clay masks.
Emily: Serums.
Dedeker: Some serums.
Emily: Sheet mask time.
Dedeker: No. Managing face needs, as in either preserving positive face, which is either supporting your own feelings or your partner's feelings and your sense of self-presentation or preserving negative face as in avoiding unwanted activities or impositions or avoiding negative ways of being seen. Examples of preserving positive face-- again, this is a person's example. We didn't write this, "She asked me if I thought her cheeks were getting fatter. I did, but I told her no, I didn't want to hurt her feelings."
Jase: We touched on that earlier. We were like-
Emily: Talked .
Jase: -don't give me the raw truth.
Emily: Yes, totally. Discussion of body. No, thank you.
Dedeker: This example of saving positive face, "I don't want him to ever view me as dumb."
Jase: It's like admitting a mistake.
Dedeker: Right. Lying about a mistake, or maybe I feel like this could be the lying, pretending like, "Oh yes, I knew that thing. That fancy word that you dropped. Oh, yes--
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: -I totally," because you don't want to be seen as being dumb, uneducated, or things like that. Now the negative phase one, the example they gave for this one is they said one such participant deceived her partner about why she "could not go over to his house one night." She wrote, "I didn't feel like going over to his house, but didn't want to hurt his feelings." This is about avoiding some negative imposition or activity that you don't want to take part in. Instead of just being able to say to someone--
Emily: So you lie.
Dedeker: Yes. Instead of just saying, "I don't know, I don't really feel like hanging out with you right now," you have to come up with some other reason. Like, "I'm busy, or I got to do this, or I got to do that."
Jase: That's a tough one because it's such a slippery slope, but it makes sense. It's like we want things to just be easy, we don't want to hurt feelings, so we'll do it, but sometimes, we can then get ourselves into bigger trouble later. That one's so fascinating because it is so common, I think, that I want to save someone's feelings, so I'll fib a little bit, or protect them from my real reason, or just, I don't want to have to justify why I just don't want to or why I just don't like this. Instead, I'll make some excuse. I think that's one we all do all the time.
Dedeker: All the time.
Jase: It's consider normal and polite.
Dedeker: It's so normal. Yes.
Jase: It's also this slippery slope. I think that a good example of this was something actually from how I met your mother way back in the day. It was about where the character Robin, at some point, just to save someone's feelings or whatever, agreed that "Oh, she liked having her left knee tickled." That was their silly example. I think it was a proxy for faking an orgasm-type thing or pretending you like something sexually that you don't, but it was the lefty likey, lefty like that, was the thing.
It ended up being-- the whole joke in the show is that years and years later, that partner shared with her current partner, this is a thing she likes. She's doing that, and then finally has to come clean to both of them of like, "I've never liked this. I've always thought it was stupid. I just did that to save your feelings that one time. Now it's become this thing for years now." It just reminds me of that. The slippery slope that a little nicety can get you into.
Dedeker: It's reminding me of Hyperbole and a Half. The woman who writes or did the comic Hyperbole and a Half shared this story of in her childhood. One time, she was able to impress the adults around her because she could have a spoonful of hot sauce and didn't freak out about it. Then it became this whole thing that everyone thought that she loved hot sauce-
Emily: Oh, God.
Jase: No.
Dedeker: -and would constantly gift her hot sauce.
Jase: Gosh. Yes.
Dedeker: All these family members. Her dad would parade her out and be like, "Oh my God, look at what my kid can do." She never liked hot sauce.
Emily: Oh gosh.
Jase: Gosh.
Dedeker: She never corrected-
Jase: She got stuck.
Dedeker: -anybody about, she got stuck. Yes.
Emily: Yikes.
Dedeker: The next theme was negotiating dialectical tensions.
Jase: Now, at risk of you thinking I'm stupid, I could not parse that sentence and get meaning out of just that.
Dedeker: Well, I appreciate your honesty about it.
Jase: Thank you.
Emily: It was like a different dialects of. the language.
Dedeker: You pretend that you speak a language that you don't actually understand. I do that a lot when I'm in Japan sometimes.
Emily: Well, a different dialect of a language that you don't understand.
Jase: I see. It's when you're an American dating a British person and you just pretend you understand the weird shit that they say.
Dedeker:
Emily: Exactly. You're like, "Yes."
Jase: When he's like, "Oh, I'm knackered, and I'm all Higgledy-piggledy." She was like, sure.
Dedeker: like totally. I feel you.
Jase: I'll get you.
Emily: 100% brown. Yes.
Dedeker: I'll be honest, I also couldn't tell you what dialectical tensions are, but I can give you the examples which will maybe make it easier to understand. They included things like balancing autonomy versus connection. For instance, they shared an example of someone who told a lie in order to secure more alone time. Now this feels very closely related to that lie about why I don't want to go over to your house. That, especially with dating and romantic relationships, were so enculturated to feel like, once we reach a certain amount of closeness, all of our time belongs to each other, and by default, if we have free time, we got to spend it together.
Then that can lead some people to feel this pressure, that instead of being able to say, "Hey, I just need some alone time," that they have to be like, "Oh, I need to leave the house for this," or, "No, no, I'm busy that night," or whatever, in order to be able to preserve that sense of autonomy.
Jase: I've definitely had some relationships where I've felt like that, where it's like I can't just ask for it or say that I want it without hurting their feelings, so I do have to make an excuse or something. Those weren't relationships that ended up lasting, which maybe is telling in itself, I don't know.
Dedeker: Sure, sure.
Emily: That is something that I said to a new partner very early on in our relationship. If you ever need a night off, just let me know. Just be honest about it.
Dedeker: Nice.
Emily: I think setting those expectations upfront because, with NRE, you want to hang out with a person all the time, but there's going to be a point where you need your frigging space.
Dedeker: Now, I thought this one is cute because, on the flip side of autonomy, they put connection. They share this example where a person used deception in order to get more connections. "I told this little lie so that I could spend a few more minutes with him driving back to my place. It usually drives me nuts to waste time like that, but it never hurts to spend a few more minutes together."
Jase: I want to know what the lie was.
Dedeker: I don't know, was it like, "Oh, actually, take the freeway, it'll be faster when it's not faster--" or-
Emily: Maybe. That's right.
Dedeker: -"Oh, that's sure. I can totally. If you need to swing by the gas station, that's fine. I'll wait." Oh, that was-- .
Emily: I got to go.
Jase: There's some construction, we've got to go around this other way. Something .
Dedeker: Other dialectical tensions include things like balancing openness versus closedness. For instance, some people talked about how, "Yes, I omitted this information, or I told this lie because that's not any of his business, or that's just private information." Now, they didn't have any examples of someone being deceptive in service of trying to get more openness from the other person, but they're like, "Theoretically, that could be possible. I could maybe tell a story that makes me seem more vulnerable than I actually am, or more open than I actually am, in the hopes that then the other person will be more open or vulnerable."
That starts to get into a weird mind-game manipulative approach, I suppose, but that's openness versus closedness. Then they also talked about balancing novelty versus predictability. For instance, a lot of people shared how they deceived a partner in order to surprise them with dinner plans, or with gifts, or with trips. That's pretty common. We don't tend to find that very threatening or very morally reprehensible necessarily.
On the flip side, they shared how one participant's partner made some-- they said some novel plans with a friend. To me, I read that as that was out of the routine that this couple was used to, but their partner made plans with friends for the Super Bowl. She deceived him in order to "Just be casual and watch it with him alone, as they had done the previous year". There's not a ton of details around the situation, but something where it's like this person told a lie or did something deceptive in order to get their partner back into predictability and routine.
It could have been something like, "Oh, no. I got to be at home because I've got to take care of this thing with the-- I don't know, the plants or whatever. I can't leave, I don't know, without them giving details. I do think that being motivated to lie, or deceive and order to preserve a sense of routine or predictability, that's often tied to safety for people. I think this is actually a lot more common than maybe most people would admit to.
Emily: Absolutely.
Dedeker: Especially because I'm biased because I spend all my time working with a lot of people who are opening up their relationships for the first time, and there can be a power struggle around trying to maintain a sense of routine and predictability.
Jase: Fascinating. Em, I will be honest with you about something that I did. Just look up what dialectical means.
Dedeker: Oh, will you illuminate all of us, so that we can stop lying to other people about how smart we are?
Jase: Right. It seems like there's a couple different uses of it, but basically, it comes down to two different people holding different views or different beliefs related to our episode last week. It comes up either in terms of a debate or a dialogue, like the dialectic being, each person holds a different opinion or a different belief and we're going to talk in a certain way to try to understand each other and resolve that, or it can be two opposing things that can both be true. I think that might be what they're getting at here.
Dedeker: Sure. That makes more sense. All of the DBT therapists listening are just yelling at us, it, so frustrated.
Jase: So sorry.
Dedeker: There's three more categories, three more dominant themes that emerged as far as people's motivations around lying. One was establishing relational control. This is going to start getting a little uncomfortable, as in acting coercive, making sure that your partner behaves or feels the way that you want them to. One participant noted that he deceived "to make her feel bad about sleeping all day and getting nothing done in the hopes that she would be more productive." or "A friend of mine who gets along really well with my girlfriend kept texting me about getting lunch and watching the game together, us three.
I ignored his texts and didn't tell my girlfriend because she probably would've wanted to hang out if she knew."
Jase: I see. Was worried that his friend is too into his girlfriend or something like that.
Dedeker: Yes. Maybe he was sad or maybe he's just a little threatened by that connection, or just didn't want to.
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: Maybe it's not even anything that untoward, it's just he didn't feel like hanging out all three of them and so decided to not tell his girlfriend that his friend was asking about that.
Emily: Would gaslighting behavior fall under this? Again, I don't know if gaslighting is always done--
Dedeker: Intentionally?
Emily: Yes. If you know absolutely that that's what's going on, or if it's more of an underlying thing that you're doing to get your way, or to coerce, or to manipulate.
Dedeker: If there's a certain amount of like, "My partner's not behaving the way that I think that they should," or, "They're not feeling the way that I think that they should, so I need to find a way to convince them to change their behavior or to feel a particular way," then yes, I'd probably put it under this, because It's all about trying to control to a certain extent. Then the last two, one of them was continuing previous deception. As in the reason was I told a lie before, and so I have to keep lying in order to maintain it.
Then the last one was unknown, that there were some participants that couldn't identify their motivations for particular lies. There were some examples in the study where, I don't know, this person wrote, "I went to the movies by myself and I didn't tell my partner and I have no idea why I didn't tell them, there was no reason to not tell them." Sometimes that happens. Sometimes that can start to get-- and we'll talk about this a little bit later, that could start to get into maybe there's something pathological here, maybe there's some unexamined reaction or something here that's going on, but sometimes that does happen.
Jase: Yes, or that it just was one of these other reasons, but they weren't self-aware enough in that situation to identify it as maybe this is trying to reclaim some independence. That's a hard abstract concept for someone to identify in themselves if it's not such a strong feeling. So they're like, "I don't know, I just did it."
Dedeker: I think there are a couple other reasons that people will struggle with honesty that this study doesn't cover. This is definitely not an exhaustive list, things like if you have a difficult history with honesty from your family of origin, this didn't really address that. That you may just have some prior trauma or some prior patterns programmed into you that haven't been unknit quite yet. Something that I've noticed in working with clients is that sometimes people can have assumptions or projections based on how they think that the other person is going to react to certain information that may not be true.
They may have a sense of, "Oh, I cannot share this because my partner's going to react poorly," when maybe that's not actually the case, or they project, like they say, "Oh, if somebody shared this information with me, I would be really upset, and so I'm assuming that my partner feels exactly the same as I do. Therefore, I'm not going to share." Some of this boils down to some unclear expectations about that, like what do I consider obligatory versus what do I consider discretionary?
Jase: I also feel like a lot of the explanations they gave to me read as a bit manipulative, and I don't always mean that in a negative sense, but there are reasons engaging in relational maintenance, or managing face needs, or negotiating tensions between what they want and what they think they can say, but I also think just shame. Being ashamed of something yourself could be a reason. I guess they would probably put that under the managing face needs, that saving face in a situation. Not wanting to come across as dumb, or not wanting to embarrass yourself some way.
I feel like it's a little bit different than not telling her that her cheeks were looking fatter or whatever the example was. I think that's a little different from, "I was ashamed of this thing that I felt, or thought, or did, and so that's why I'm hiding it." I could say that might be another category.
Emily: I talked about this at the top of the episode, the unsafe environment for sharing honesty. If there is a pattern of real upset, or even anger, or abuse in a relationship, perhaps if you share something that is met with maybe dismissiveness or defensiveness and you realize, "Hey, it's not worth it to be honest in this moment," then I can see that being a reason that they didn't really discuss here as to why you don't decide to really share something in exactly the way that you feel that it should be shared maybe.
Jase: Before we go on to what we can do about this, what are some steps we can take, we're going to take another quick break to talk about a couple sponsors for this show, and also to remind you if you hate ad breaks, you can always become a $7 patron. Then you get a separate feed where you get early releases of episodes and you get them without any ads in them. Of course, then that goes directly to help support our show, but even if you don't, it's really important to us that this show is available to everyone out there in the world for free on their podcast players, or just straight in their web browser on their RSS feed, or on our website.
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Emily: We're back. Finally, we want to discuss what can be done about all this. If you feel like you have a bit of an honesty problem, maybe give yourself a bit of a reality check. Check, "Is this even really a problem for me? Is this something that comes up in my life that I find, okay, maybe I do have a little bit of a problem with honesty"? Ask yourself, "Has my lack of honesty or disclosure caused conflict in my relationships? Or has it disrupted any connection between myself and my partners or other important people in my life?"
Then if you realize that it hasn't, ask yourself, "Has my lack of honesty or disclosure caused stress or pain internally for myself?" I think that's a really big one because if you're carrying around the knowledge that you have been dishonest with a partner and you realize, "Hey, that's actually causing a lot of shame and causing a lot of pain internally," then maybe that's a reason to try to become more honest with someone.
Jase: I'd say another one to consider for this is if you are doing a lot of this, a little bit of dishonesty for the sake of keeping everybody else happy, but it's just adding a lot more mental work for you to constantly be keeping track of that or feeling like you're not really expressing yourself. It might not even be, "I feel guilt about this," but maybe you are putting yourself in a place of doing a lot more emotional and mental labor that no one's asking you to do.
Emily: That reminds me of not coming out, for instance. If you find, "I'm really having a difficult time at work or a difficult time with certain people in my life because they don't know the real me," that's being dishonest potentially for self-preservation. I guess you can weigh the pros and cons there. "Is that more challenging in my life to not tell everybody who I really am versus would it be worse if they knew, and would I be seen as other or would that be more challenging in my life?"
Dedeker: Totally.
Emily: Something to think about there. The next thing that can be done about this is the honesty rewind. That is to look to your past and family of origin. Do a journaling exercise or a conversation exercise. Ask yourself, how was honesty encouraged or discouraged in my family growing up? Then ask yourself, how was dishonesty encouraged or discouraged in my family of origin growing up? Finally, how did I see my caregivers acting honest or dishonest? I think if you grew up with caregivers who were dishonest a lot, that probably means that you might see that as something that is easier or more okay to do.
That's something to look at. If you saw your parents being super dishonest with each other all the time, maybe you think, hey, that's how partners are towards each other.
Jase: Or it could be the opposite. It could be, "I saw them be dishonest and so I have a zero tolerance." You have to be brutally honest all of the time. Right?
Emily: Totally.
Jase: Either way though, examining it, doing the honesty rewind can be really helpful. This is one that I still struggle with thinking about. For me, it was specifically in my family, our relationship to my grandparents on my mom's side who are very conservative, had very strong opinions about what you should and shouldn't do based on their religious beliefs and also just their opinions that they felt were facts. There was a lot of, "Hey, this is a thing we're not going to talk about around grandma and grandpa, or if they ask about this topic, have an answer prepared.
Like what church you're going to now that you've moved to L.A. or something to just be like, "We don't want to deal with it, so let's just not." That was like, that's how we did it for all of my life that I can remember. Obviously, the things we might be dishonest about changed over time, but there was this sense of, "This is just not worth it. You're going to make it hard for all of us, let's just all avoid these things or lie a little bit about these things." Whatever it is. I don't know, I still struggle with that on because it's like I might see myself doing that in certain areas.
Like with work colleagues or something where I'm like, maybe I could be taking more risks and being a little more authentic and honest but that's how I was brought up. It's definitely a good thing to examine and understand ourselves a little better.
Dedeker: Yes, I for sure. There's a long family history on my mom's side of the family of control of information being the name of the game.
Emily: Interesting.
Dedeker: All my entire 36 years that I've been on this earth, I've had to deal with having family members tell me, "Your grandfather decided to give the car to your uncle, but don't tell your aunt. Don't tell your aunt, okay?" Or, "Your aunt decided to give some money to this person. Don't tell this list of six people in the family."
Emily: That sounds exhausting.
Dedeker: Oh my God, yes. It's exhausting. To this day, control of information. There's always a sense of who gets to know and who doesn't get to know sometimes very benign things.
Emily: Why?
Dedeker: Oh, Emily will be here all night.
Jase: This is a whole other episode.
Dedeker: This a whole other thing.
Emily: Okay. Why does Dedeker's family do X?
Dedeker: I can also have some theories about how that's influenced my relationship to honesty-
Emily: I'm sure.
Dedeker: -and to controlling information and who gets to know what and all that stuff. The whole point of this though is that like if you do this exercise, you are going to find some valuable information because at the end of the day, it doesn't have to be something traumatizing or truly morally reprehensible that your caregivers and family did. That's how you got socialized about what is okay to be honest about and what is not.
Seeing your mom talk to a lady in the parking lot that she knows and being all smiley and nice. Then as soon as she gets in the car, she's like, "Oh my god, that lady talks too much." That's how we learn as kids when to be honest and not, there's going to be information here. This next one I call the self-acceptance supercharge. I think this is especially true that if you're someone who tends to be dishonest in service of covering up some embarrassment or shame, that it's really helpful to work on inviting in self-acceptance.
I was thinking about this recently because there was an Ask Amy Column where this woman wrote in, she just got into a new relationship with a guy and she's really excited about it but then she just learned that she snores. She's super embarrassed about it. While she's trying to go to the doctor and figure it out, she's mortified about the idea of having this guy spend the night and find out that she snores. Ask Amy is basically like, "You just got to tell him that that's the case and hope that he's okay with it." If it's a good enough relationship out, the two will figure it out."
That's not going to be the most important part of you but I really loved this quote. She says, "If you can't imagine being so frank, then my advice prerequisite is to work toward crossing the honesty threshold. Learn to accept yourself before you worry about whether anyone else accepts you. You might be surprised by how much of the hard work of relationships is behind you once you complete that first step."
Emily: Woof.
Dedeker: I know.
Emily: Then you're like, "Oh, wait a minute. All this honesty stuff is actually about me." Yes.
Jase: All right. No thanks, Amy. You can fuck right off.
Dedeker: I think it's good to think about, are there parts of yourself that you constantly feel the need to hide or to shrink or obfuscate or sugarcoat in order to be loved? The answer is yes.
Emily: I love that Jase and I are like, "Uh-huh."
Jase: Yes, we're nodding along. Yes.
Dedeker: Everybody does. Everybody has something that they feel makes them unlovable. I think this is very common in particular for people who are non-monogamous or have been for a while, who've experienced a lot of rejection around that or maybe they themselves haven't quite accepted that this is who they are. That often leads to people being maybe sketchy or not upfront with people about the fact that they're non-monogamous, all that stuff. Whatever it is for you, I invite you to think about if you fully accepted this particular part of yourself, how would that change the way that you talk about it or share about it?
Just to imagine. See if you can even envision that version of yourself that fully accepts what you think are the embarrassing unlovable parts.
Jase: Wow.
Dedeker: I know the two of you look so uncomfortable.
Emily: No, not really.
Jase: No, actually I think it's great.
Emily: That's good advice. It's good advice.
Jase: It's good.
Emily: It's just a good advice.
Jase: It's good. Yes. Okay.
Emily: We hate it but yes.
Jase: This next one we call the honesty agreements or come up with your honesty agreements. This is one to have with your partner. This is about those obligatory and discretionary honesty things that we talked about from that study earlier. Just to have that conversation, if you haven't ever had it or if you haven't had it recently, of what are the types of information that each of us thinks is obligatory, this has to be shared. What are the things that we either think should always be private or that it's like, "It can be private or not," up to you.
Actually have a conversation to get a little bit of clarity on those because it's very possible that for one of you, something could be obligatory and for another person that could fall into the discretionary category. This might take some time to discuss, but the point of it is to see where we might differ and then also to talk about that and try to understand it. I have found for myself when having these sorts of conversations, I think they tend to come up more often when you're becoming non-monogamous because then there's more stuff that we normally just don't ever have to talk about or are told we should never talk about that suddenly we need to talk about.
Often if you do find that you disagree on something on whether or not this thing should be shared, if you talk a little bit more about the why and what's the purpose of either sharing or keeping that private, you might find, "Oh, okay, no, actually we're not as far off as we thought." There's this part of it that needs to be obligatory, but this other part of it that can be discretionary. Just having that discussion is really important so you don't end up in a situation where one of you is keeping something that they think is okay to keep and the other feels betrayed by that .
Or you're sharing stuff that the other feels like you shouldn't, and so now they feel a weird, "Why are you telling me this when this isn't something I'd think I would tell you unless I had some meaning behind it?" Honesty agreements, talk about those. Get a sense of where you both stand. It is best to have this conversation when you're not actively in conflict. This isn't right after there's been some big breach of disclosing or not disclosing things. Ideally, have this before that.
If you already do have a history of conflict over this topic and this is a really charged conversation, this can be a really helpful one to have with a trusted third party, like a coach or a counselor or a therapist or someone like that to help both of you be more productive in this discussion. If it brings up a lot of emotions.
Emily: If you find that you're about to be dishonest, you should stop on a dime. This reminds me of something that Jase talked about in our last episode last week. Essentially, if you find yourself being dishonest in an asynchronous conversation, such as like texting, or maybe you're emailing back and forth with somebody, you can catch yourself early on doing that thing or having the urge to do the thing to lie or obfuscate. When you first notice that knee-jerk reaction, just stop, halt, take a minute, and then scan your body.
Scan your mind, scan your feelings, and ask yourself, "What's going on inside right now? Is this about me? Is this about I feel uncomfortable because I'm worried about how my partner will react or how the other person will react? Is it because I'm keeping a lie up that I have had for many, many months?" Maybe it's time to come clean in this moment. This might be a bit of an expert mode, but Kathy Labriola, who's a friend of ours who's been on the show many times, she has a tip to call even that out.
Meaning say something like, "I felt the urge to lie to you just now." That sounds really intense and really amazing if you're able to do that. That is an interesting thing to maybe even practice perhaps with somebody that you feel a little bit more comfortable with or that you feel won't take that personally or take that really badly if you can tell them, "Hey, I kind of felt the urge to lie to you, but I'm not going to. I'm going to come clean and tell you what I really am thinking and feeling in this moment."
Jase: I think it helps them understand that you feel vulnerable somehow, sure about this, or you're scared about this thing, and that might help them to react in a more compassionate way and be a little bit more understanding. I could see that. Again, depends on context and depends on the relationship but I like that one. That's interesting.
Emily: It doesn't have to be that direct quote. It could just be like, "I'm feeling scared about being honest right now."
Jase: Yes.
Emily: That's really a softer way to put it.
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: Right.
Dedeker: If you want more tools for this, I highly recommend that you check out our Episode 420: Courage for Hard Conversations. That's one that's really good where you know that you want to be honest with somebody and it still feels scary and intimidating. Go check that out for some more tools that will help you get through that. Also, if you suspect that there might be something compulsive at play, if you suspect that the way that you're being honest or dishonest has something to do with some prior trauma or some kind of baggage, this is a great topic for one one-on-one work with a therapist or a counselor or a coach.