LYING LOVERS

Heather Little-White, PhD, Contributor

"One is easily fooled by that which one loves."

- Jean Baptiste Poquelin Molière

We know that when someone lies, he or she will present information in a way to make the other person believe that the information is true. According to Wikipedia, a liar is a person who is lying, who has previously lied, or who tends by nature to lie repeatedly - even when not necessary.

Lying is typically used to refer to deceptions in oral or written communication. In written communication, forms of deception such as disguises or forgeries are generally not considered lies, though the underlying intent may be the same.

When caught in a lie and challenged, liars often make up new lies, and do not care if they are found out. As Hare states, "Lying, deceiving and manipulation are natural talents for psychopaths. When caught in a lie or challenged with the truth, they are seldom perplexed or embarrassed, they simply change their stories or attempt to rework the facts so that they appear to be consistent with the lie. The results are a series of contradictory statements and a thoroughly confused listener."

Reasons for lying

One would believe that with close bond and intimacy of the relationship, there would be no reason to lie to your lover. A common saying, 'Ask me no question, I tell you no lie', may provide enough understanding for why lovers lie. When too many pointed questions are asked, romantic partners tend to lie because they feel that their independence and privacy are being eroded. It is the intensity of the interrogation that very often causes partners to lie when they feel as if control is being taken away. Consequently, your romantic partner will fight back by lying. It is said that deception is useful when trying to regain a sense of freedom and independence.

Pathological liar

Lying is a mechanism that people use for boosting themselves to the extent that they become pathological liars. Your lover may lie so often that you have to wonder if he or she is a compulsive/pathological liar or a sociopath. A compulsive liar will resort to telling lies, regardless of the situation. It becomes routine, almost a way of life with which they feel comfortable. The compulsive liar will take comfort in bending the truth about large and small issues. Lying becomes second nature. Regrettably, if your lover has become a sociopath through lying and other antisocial behaviour, there may be some difficulty in bringing about change.

Is there a cure for the compulsive/pathological liar? Hardly, but therapy and medication may help if pathological lying is symptomatic of other conditions, like antisocial personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder or attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Lying is not always associated with these conditions, so a clear treatment set for pathological lying is difficult to define.

Love is blind

You may think it is easy to detect a lying lover because you are more intimate with your partner and you ought to know how he or she typically behaves. It should be easy to catch a lover in a lie by watching their body language but unfortunately this does not always give you the cues for which you look. The old maxim that love is blind may really impede your ability to detect a lying lover.

When two people get together and profess their love for each other, they automatically trust each other and they think they know enough about how the other behaves. The truth is that while this trust provides people with a sense of security and comfort, it creates an opportunity for deceiving your lover. When people become emotionally involved, it is much harder to spot their lies. In many instances, facing the truth would cause too much pain, especially when it comes to serious issues such as infidelity. It is always easier for other people to see the truth and you may be the last to know. Studies have shown that lovers have a very difficult time actually telling when their partners are lying and some lovers manage to take this skill to a new low (Levine and McCornack).

Gut feelings

Some lovers rely on gut reaction/instinct to detect deception but those reactions may lead to you catching your lover only about two per cent of the time. As such, you build up a false confidence that you are able to detect deception. The reality is that as intimacy increases, people's confidence at detecting deception increases, but the actual ability to detect deception by your lover declines. Lovers have more reasons to lie because of the trust placed in them by their romantic partners. More often than not, people place the most trust in the person who is most likely to deceive them.

Signs of lying

How do you tell if your lover is lying? The non-verbal signs of lying are excellent cues if you are aware that your lying lover will make more mental effort to communicate than when he or she is telling the truth. The emotions associated with lying give people away as they are more stressed and anxious than normal. Research indicates that lying people are more likely to:

respond in shorter responses

make more speech errors (more ums, ers, ahs, etc.)

blink more often

fidget more often

Importantly, people who are lying do not break eye contact. It has been shown that liars blink more than truth-tellers. At times, though, he or she may look towards the right when trying to make up an answer or look to the left when trying to recall something. You will recall that the left side of the brain deals with memory and factual details and the right side with imagination and creative responses to questions.

Lie detector

Is it possible to become a human lie detector? Many people claim that they can teach someone how to detect deception but detecting deception is very difficult and training to detect lying is not easy, nor does it contribute to more accurate detection.

More important, the training effects obtained are limited to very specific situations - situations where the researchers know exactly what non-verbal cues are important to focus on. Training does not help because the non-verbal cues associated with deception vary widely from situation-to-situation, person-to-person, the nature of the lie involved, and so on. In fact, recent research suggests that lie detectors are born, not made.

Reference: www.truthaboutdeception.com

Send feedback/questions to Heather Little-White at heatherl@cwjamaica.com.

A lie is a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement, especially with the intention to deceive others, often with the further intention to maintain a secret or reputation, protect someone's feelings or to avoid a punishment or repercussion for one's actions. - Wikipedia