When can you lie to your lover

You may think that in a sweet and close relationship, you should not lie. However, according to the opinion column of the New York Times, the conclusion is that loving couples actually lie, and they may often lie.

Based on personal experience and the experience of some philosophers, Clancy Martin, a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts in the United States, said: "If we want to maintain a relationship, we can only say what we really think in our hearts not often."

This statement coincides with the view of Bellad Paul, who is a senior expert in this field. He and his colleague Deborah put forward many years ago: "White lies can be seen as' compassionate service 'and used to maintain a relationship."

So far, all or almost all of the literature on intimacy psychology supports this statement, as long as it is based on maintaining a healthy romantic relationship. Close partners are open and open to each other, and the closer their feelings are, the easier it will be to confide and share their true feelings. According to that theory, lying will create a gap between you and your lover. Over time, the gap will become deeper and deeper. Once you tell a lie, you must keep lying and cover up another lie with one lie.

Martin's remarks are not only based on whether you are actively saying some untrue words, or whether you deliberately cover up some sad facts. When I find you and your old lover drinking coffee and chatting for an hour. Your partner will certainly be unhappy, but if you can filter out some details and just talk about your day's work experience with your spouse during dinner, you can save a lot of unnecessary trouble.

Apart from the theory, it seems to be a very interesting topic to discuss, so I decided to test this theory empirically. Looking back at the recent literature on "deception and relationship", I came across a very interesting experiment, which was jointly completed by Hart, a professor of psychology at Texas Women's University, and her colleagues. This experiment uses white deceit or white lies to close lovers.

The subjects of this experiment are not ordinary college students. Hart and his team select the subjects according to different age groups and different love times. And they use online questionnaires. This method gives us a chance to understand how lies work in real life rather than in the virtual world of college students. The 255 subjects, ranging from young girls aged 18 to old women aged 71, were not nearly 40% male.

Hart and his team used LIARS (Emotional Relationship Scale), and the abbreviation of this method is almost similar to the spelling of the word lying. Use the 12 measures in this scale to verify whether close lovers will lie. These questions in the scale are scored from 1-5 points, including such questions: "If it is possible to hurt my lover, then I think it is OK to lie to him. To evaluate how people feel when they are cheated. Hart and his collaborators created 12 measurement items, such as:" I think it is better for my lover to tell me some white lies than to tell me the sad truth directly. "

You can try to evaluate these two items yourself. Compare your feelings when you feel like a liar and when you are cheated. For the same behavior, everyone will make excuses for himself and criticize others. So lying seems to be without exception. You know why you lie to your lover about your coffee with your predecessor, but if your lover hides from you because of the same behavior, you may have more suspicions.

Hart's research shows that people's behavior can be judged by lying and being cheated. The score of cheating is higher than that of anti-cheating, which means that people feel better when lying than when being cheated. In addition, people who are good at telling lies are often deceived by their partners. Men are more likely to lie than women. However, in heterosexual relationships, men are more likely to tell some white lies than women. The frequency of cheating is correlated with lower relationship satisfaction. In turn, relationship satisfaction is an important factor of high intimacy.

To study the relationship between lying and being cheated, it seems that people who scored high in both experiments, but did not score high in intimacy with their partners. They prefer not to lie, or do not want to know the truth. In fact, according to the paper written by Hart and his team, the frequency of cheating is related to the low degree of relationship satisfaction. In turn, relationship satisfaction is an important factor of high intimacy. Telling your lover a lie may make you feel that you have helped your lover. But as time goes on, this will not have any effect on your lover and your relationship.

If both partners agree with this rule, lying may play a role in their relationship. Katherine Rogensak, a psychologist at the University of California, Barbara, and his colleagues went to verify the mandatory and arbitrary rules of lying between partners. The mandatory rule is that you and your partner agree to abide by the habit of not telling white lies, social media, or influenced by your ex-boyfriend. The discretion rules for lies are those you decide to lie to your partner. You may also think that you and your partner do not need to share your emotional response.

Unfortunately, the sample of Rogensak et al. includes undergraduates, so not all the research results are applied to couples in the real world. There is evidence that even so, when couples agree to these rules in their relationships, they are unlikely to conflict.

In a word, if you are going to lie to your partner, don't mind being cheated. You need to establish some basic rules. Best of all, you have established these rules in your relationship before you lie. Over time, you may need to redefine these rules, but if you adopt the rules stipulated by both parties at the beginning, lying will not affect your relationship. Just make sure that only your partner, not yourself, is the one you want to protect from the pain of the truth.