Do most people LIE so they can be in a relationship?

From personal experience, do you think most people pretend to be someone else just so they can be in a relationship?

It appears that so many unhappy people I know who are married, in a relationship, or dating admit that their partner lied to them at the beginning of the relationship. Sometimes the lies are small, and sometimes the lies are as huge as hiding an addiction or a special "friend" that gives them pleasure.

I've gone through many relationships in my life and they all ended for one reason: The person I was with did not tell me they were _____________.

- A drug addict/Alcoholic
- A cheater
- Mentally unstable
- Unable to commit time to the relationship

The list goes on and on ...

My one friend told me her husband suddenly admitted he was psychotic. He is now in a mental hospital. But they've been married for 18 years. I don't believe someone can "hide" their psychosis for 18 years. I would love to be wrong, because if psychosis can be hidden for that long, then I fully understand why some people choose to be single.

For now, I only believe she made him psychotic, as opposed to him "hiding" it for 18 years.

This is a really great question!

I don't have much of answer though other then people may be on their best behavior early on. All that other stuff comes out over time. I suppose it's fair enough to label that as a lie.

But as for your friend, it's certainly possible he developed psychosis over time. I agree, I think that would be hard to hide for 18 years. There are some things people can hide for years, but yea, psychosis is probably not one of them.

I am curious why you asked this question. I know I am lot more jaded than I use to be. It's too bad because I was happier when I had much inherent trust in others. Personally I find myself questioning motive often, and really it hasn't left me better off. That's what happens when you get involved with someone who mirrored me, only to find out she is a bigot, a racist, self-involved, has no empathy, etc. I'd like to write it off as an exception, but like you, I find myself lacking trust now.

All of this hits home for me. When I first met my husband, he was amazing. As time went along, I realized he had mood issues, he was leaving without a reason to, things became horrible, and when I caught him telling a lie, he would explode. The problem I created for myself was not paying attention to all the red flags. In the end, all the red flags formed into one giant bundle, and blew me away all at once. So sorry to anyone who has suffered under some one else's lies. I did suffer, but it was my fault for ignoring the warning signs. My husband hid his mental illness from me, and at the same time, I saw it. Denial I guess. My husband became a pathological liar early in his life. He did that to cover up his double life of sex and drugs. So sad for him, even sadder for my foolishness, for having put up with him for 5 years.

xdude wrote:I am curious why you asked this question. I know I am lot more jaded than I use to be. It's too bad because I was happier when I had much inherent trust in others.

I've reached a point in my life where I'm not wasting any more time. I constantly see my friends and family in a vicious cycle of pain and misery because they refuse to let someone go.

On the other hand, I see a sharp rise in Narcissism because it appears that self-absorption and selfishness is the answer to a world where being involved with others just leads to pain and misery.

The question then becomes: Should I love myself because only I can trust myself, or should I spend the rest of my life being lied to, hurt, and punished by others?

most people hide who they really are for fear of being rejected. that's not exactly lying. it's just not setting themselves up for a fall. but they can't hide such things forever. if we reject them for what they hid, we're just validating their reason for hiding it in the first place. to love someone you have to accept them for who they are. so, if you see this as lying you're unlikely to ever find anyone you can accept.

RottenFish wrote:On the other hand, I see a sharp rise in Narcissism because it appears that self-absorption and selfishness is the answer to a world where being involved with others just leads to pain and misery.

For whatever it's worth, it's easy enough to find articles on the 'rise of Narcissism', confirming your views that is true. Personally I agree. There are limited controlled studies, but you don't need a controlled study to say I see a pattern of x, y, z happening.

Just to throw a thought out though...

I've long read/heard the thought 'nothing is as sexy as confidence'. I get that, but I wonder if the lines between confidence and narcissism (an appearance of confidence) have gotten blurred for many people. Now I am just going to ramble a bit -

There is arguably a difference between quiet confidence, and the loud look at me appearance of confidence. To be honest I think that if anything has gone wrong, many people are now attracted to the later, and the former is boring. Perhaps that was to be expected in a society that is so influenced by over-the-top movie/tv personas, and social media where there is a race to get more likes.

ask yourself this: who do you really know? who in your life isn't just passing through? in a world where most of our interactions are with strangers and people come and go with such regular monotony, of course people are thrown back on depending on themselves. no one is around long enough to feel committed to anyone else. it's all become very superficial. so, yes, we now live in a very sad world, and that's precisely why more primitive cultures are happier. ironically, our industrial development has brought us little but misery.

Some related philosophical thoughts...

I do think it's possible to somewhat improve the odds of starting out with more truth, less lies.

To some degree we may allow or even encourage a lying opener. Question is, how badly do we want the truth? We may find out earlier on the other person is lying, or they may tell us some truth we really didn't want to hear.

There are some good articles and books on how frequently we humans (and animals) lie to each other, but also that there are some benefits to the lies we tell each other (and tell ourselves). Some argue that the whole of civilized society is based on a shared lie. Stuff to ponder.

For whatever it's worth, we may accept that to keep a job, we will have to do some lying (e.g., agreeing with a boss, acting pleasant, agreeing to overtime we really didn't want to do, etc.) It's a kind of relationship. We may also accept lying from sales people; they may really despise us but instead act pleasant to make a sale. How badly do we really want to hear their unpleasant thoughts?

Okay so yea, probably personal relationships do hang on some degree of lying to each other (to keep the peace, to attract, because the truth would leave behind hurt feelings, and so on), but still we can be unconscious to the lies we encourage.