– Uncovering Some Causes of Why We Lie To our Spouse Through Marriage Counseling in Nashville TN

UNCOVERING SOME CAUSES OF WHY WE LIE TO OUR SPOUSE THROUGH MARRIAGE COUNSELING IN NASHVILLE TN

References: “Tell Me No Lies: How to Stop Lying to your Partner-and Yourself-In the 4 Stages of Marriage.” 2000. Ellyn Bader, Ph.D. and Peter T. Pearson, Ph.D. with Judith Schwartz.

For many people, lying seems simple. Lying is “wrong.” Lying is bad, its unproductive. Lying causes pain and heartache. Lying is for little, immature kids. The problem with all of these thoughts is that they are too simple. The truth about lying is that it is complicated. That is not meant to give any justification or validation about the connotations of lying. But the very act of viewing lying as “simple” can actually produce the opposite of what we want.

In a great book about creating healthy marriages by Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson named, “Tell Me No Lies,” they offer some great reasons and causes as to why one spouse would lie to another. They write, “Why do we lie in our marriage? We want to look good—so we lie. We want to avoid hurting or disappointing a partner—so we lie. We fear that the trust will unleash conflict that will endanger the relationship—so we lie. We feel foolish about something we said or did—so we lie. We have trouble putting the whole truth into words—so we lie. We are relucatant to admit the darker sides of ourselves, our greed, envy and selfishness—so we try to hide them. We lie because lies come with being human, and we are probably never so exposed in our humanness as we are with our mates.”(p. 2)

This is a fantastic summary of some of the main reasons that we might lie to our spouse. The hope is that through honesty, even about our lying, can produce a type of intimacy that is greater than the connection we have established through lying. For instance, we may believe that our partner wants us to be strong, to be self-sufficient and capable of handling most of life. As such, we want to “look good” for them and meet their “supposed” expectations. I put supposed in quotations, because we rarely have the type of conversations with our spouses where we sit down and tell them what we believe they are expecting of us. Very often, our perceived expectations of our spouses are way higher than their actual expectations! But, because we don’t have these types of honest conversations, we create false conversations that try to live up to these hypothetical conversations. As such, we typically justify our own lying. We want to look good, and we want our spouse to think we look good.

HOW CAN MARRIAGE COUNSELING IN NASHVILLE TN CHANGE OUR PATTERNS?

Without badgering each partner over the head with the importance of being honest and the pain of lying, we might be able to step back and understand just what is driving one spouse’s intention to lie. Most of the time, lying comes from a fear of rejection that may not always be founded in reality. For these people, settling for a common marriage, they believe, is better than letting the truth out in the open and risk losing it all. For most people, we have been indoctrinated into a culture of lying from our own upbringing that we are quite unaware of. Most of us are fighting against the devil and atrophy to become more of who we want to be in this world and with our partner.

Marriage counseling in Nashville, TN can help break the ice that has formed between the two of you.   Marriage counseling in Nashville, TN can help you both realize you are fighting for the same thing, but scared to death to be the first one to make the move to shake things up. Bader and Pearson write, “We do believe that most people want to be honest with those they love.”(p. 2) This is a common truth I find in my practice and in my own life. At my core, I want to be honest with those I love. Part of marriage counseling in Nashville, TN is discovering all those things that get in the way of loving people the way we want to love them. Chris Roberts is a licensed marriage counselor in Nashville, TN that has worked with many couples struggling in the area of lying. Chris would love to be of help during this time.