Can’t Tell You the Truth: Part 2

Achild leads a parent to believe she’s still registered in college when, in fact, she’s no longer enrolled in her program. A husband fails to inform his wife that he hasn’t been paying the utility bills, preferring to have her find out when the lights no longer turn on. A son claims he has no idea what happened to the money he won, unable to face his father’s wrath that he allowed himself to be swindled out of $20,000.

Are these people pathological liars? Or are they just regular folks doing what they can to avoid having unpleasant confrontations with others? And if it’s the latter, is their behavior justifiable?

We all know that, whether we can “justify” such behavior or not, it isn’t good or moral. We feel the greasy discomfort in our guts but carry on with it because we feel we have no choice. But is that really true? Why can’t we face sharing unpleasant news with loved ones? What’s the worst that can happen?

Cross Examination

There are several unpleasant possibilities that the actual truth might trigger. Possibly one of the most challenging to deal with is the confrontation of our personal choices: “You did WHAT? Why would you do THAT? What is WRONG with you?” We don’t want to hear from others that we’ve made poor choices. We feel defensive either because we agree we’ve made an error and we feel ashamed or because, although we still believe we were doing the best we could despite negative consequences, we don’t want to have to explain or justify our decisions to someone who clearly won’t understand.