Lover or Liar? Pick One

Has someone you loved ever lied to you? How did you feel? How did you react?

Have you ever lied to someone you love? How did it feel to deceive? What was your ‘reason’?

It doesn’t feel good…lying, or being lied to.

In fact, nothing feels more betraying than to discover someone you trusted has told you an outright lie.

Lies can take the form of an intentional mis-truth or a silent withhold, either way they’re intended to deceive. Whoever said “what you don’t know won’t hurt you” failed to add, “unless you find out later“.

Lies are how we maintain power over each other.

And power is a coveted commodity in a relationship.

Whoever has the power, controls the relationship.

Whoever control the relationship gets more of what they want.

95% of couples remain stuck in the power battle for their entire relationship.

The power struggle is a phase that all relationships experience but very few transcend.

Why?

Because it’s hard work to move past the control game, the hardest in fact. It takes a continual commitment to sharing your emotional truths, your needs & your wants -a daily feat that requires immense courage and trust. It’s vulnerable to share our desires or admit how we really feel. Our feelings are so sensitive -we risk being ignored, shamed, invalidated, rejected. As one friend says “every heart is as delicate as a snowflake,” indeed.

However, perhaps you are one of those rare dreamers…willing to do whatever it takes to have a True Love that escapes the quicksand of the power struggle. Maybe you want to experience the deepest, most rewarding forms of intimacy available in romance (before you die!). If you are one of those people -my people- I’m talking directly to you.

There’s no way to get there, but through. The only antidote to wielding leverage to get your way is unbridled truth. Bring your needs and your sacred wants to the table with your lover. Share them with a naked, open heart and lean into the possibility of trust. This demands honesty & transparency. Without the truth your partner can never know where you, or they stand. And no collaboration can ever occur.

In romance, if both parties value connection more than getting their own way using threats (covert or overt), then honesty will be the only container in which true partnership can evolve. This is why I think lies are so dangerous, they erode the fabric of True Love. Every white lie is a paper-cut across the relationship’s heart. Even if one partner never finds out…the liar will know, and their esteem will silently suffer & shrink.

Lies erode intimacy and undermine freedom. They saddle us with the constraints of false information and propagate fear instead of love. To lie is to die…to yourself and to your lover, over and over again.

“Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship.

 

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“Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship.

How would your relationships change if you resolved never to lie again? 

What truths might suddenly come into view in your life? 

What kind of person would you become? 

And how might you change the people around you?

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