Relationship Advice on a Lack of Honesty

Do you know anyone who doesn’t bend the truth occasionally--who doesn’t, every once in a while, tell a “little white lie?”

There’s a cute story that Barbara Walters tells about “little white lies.”

She relates how she once interviewed President Jimmy Carter’s mother, who was known as Miss Lillian.

During the course of their conversation, Barbara asked her if she ever lied.

“Everyone tells little white lies,” Miss Lillian said.

“Could you give me an example of a little white lie,” Walters asked.

“Well,” the President’s mother replied slowly. “Do you remember when you first came in, and I told you how glad I was to see you and how nice you looked…?”

We believe that women are especially intuitive at spotting liars—probably because they’ve had so much practice.

Nonetheless, here are some signs that, consciously or unconsciously, you’re likely to detect when someone is not telling you the truth.

These come from Kathy Thompson, a writer, speaker, and profiler.

  1 - Bites lower lip nervously.
 
  2 - Plays with own hair or earrings.
 
  3 - Self-consciously covers mouth before answering questions.
 
  4 - Voice pitch goes higher, the voice is more negative, less fluid.
 
  5 - Blink rate increases (sign of nervousness).
 
  6 - Smiles, but leans face away from you.

  7 - A lot of throat clearing.

  8 - Scratching head or face when talking.

Most of the time you can tell when someone is lying to you, Kathy says, because most people are not very good at covering their emotions.

Watch for what people do in the lower part of their face, particularly the lips and the lines around the nose and lower cheek.

Does he punish for being honest? Every relationship has moments of conflict, disappointment, or frustration. In a healthy relationship, both people can work through these things if they have some genuine affection for each other, and trust each other enough to be truthful.

Let’s admit it. It can be tough to be honest sometimes for a variety of reasons. You may have done something you’re not proud of, you may have made an error in judgment, you may have been negligent about something.

You feel bad about it, and you’d rather not admit it, but you know it’s best to be honest about what happened, no matter how embarrassed or ashamed as you may feel.

But it should never be tough to be honest because you’re afraid to be.

In our collective opinion, your Prince shouldn’t “beat you up,” figuratively or literally, when you tell the truth.

He shouldn’t give you the silent treatment.

He shouldn’t lay a guilt trip on you.

He shouldn’t “hurricane,” or shout at you, berate you, accuse you of horrible and probably untrue things, or call you names.

He most certainly should never lay a hand on you.

Those kinds of behaviors just give you incentive to lie in the future, and they increase the chances that you WILL lie to him the next time to avoid getting the same treatment again.

Hey, it’s ugly, but it’s the truth. We’re all human.

If your Prince doesn’t understand this principle, it’s worth explaining to him, gently but firmly, once.

If he still doesn’t get it, it’s probably time to throw him back in the pond. He’s not a Prince after all.

And oh-by-the-way, he shouldn’t ever have to be afraid to be honest with you either.