First, watch this video of Michael introducing this lesson:
Audio of Michael reading the lesson below:
“Why does he lie about the little things?”
“Why won’t he just tell me the truth?”
“How do I get him to be 100% truthful with me?”
“Why do men LIE????!!!!!!!”
–Women’s responses from the Secret Survey
“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?” Alicia sobbed, but Derek just looked at her.
She had tears running down her face. Her voice was vibrating like a surf guitar. She was furious, so far beyond mad.
But all Derek was numb. His vision had narrowed down to a tunnel and his heart raced, but he felt. . . nothing.
“I just don’t understand why you had to lie to me,” Alicia said.
He wanted to hold her. Or maybe he just thought he should want to hold her. Everything was so confused. It was like he was watching this whole fight from under water.
And the truth was, he didn’t really know why he had lied to her.
It wasn’t even about anything serious. He’d just wanted a night out with his best friend from high school to drink beer and talk about girls and bitch about his boss and lust after the 22-year-old waitresses.
But it was Tuesday. It was Glee night, and for some reason Derek couldn’t understand, that was important to her. He knew if he just said he wanted to go out with a friend instead of curling up on the couch with her and watching show tunes she’d freak out.
So he had lied.
“Hey baby,” he’d said. “Listen, it sucks but I need to work late tonight.
We’ve got this deadline on the Hattenberg project and my damn boss is making me stay late. Yeah, yeah. I know. But we’ll watch it on Hulu when I get home.”
And that had been that.
He’d gone out with Tom. They’d knocked back a few, and then a few more. They’d reminisced about their wild days and Derek had talked about what a great girl he had waiting for him at home.
And then it was midnight and he was drunk. He took a cab home. He stumbled in the door. He played sharpshooter with his key and the lock and missed again and again. He fished his phone out of his pocket and saw that she’d been calling and texting and worried.
And when the door opened he’d seen her and she was furious. And suddenly a wave crashed over his head and he couldn’t feel a thing. I don’t remember the first time I lied to a woman. But I know WHO I lied to. It was my Mom.
My mom is an amazing woman. Pretty. Smart. Better than me at board games. And like almost all women, she has access to an arsenal of emotion that used to petrify me.
When my mom was mad or upset it was like nuclear war in our house.
My dad, brother, and I were helpless in the face of her emotional onslaught. Her emotions would hit me like a punch in the gut, scrambling my internal circuits and making me feel as numb and disengaged as a robot. We would all tiptoe around her like mice around a cat, willing to do whatever we could to keep from setting her off, including lying about little things.
In this lesson we’re going to cover one of the biggest questions women asked again and again in the Secret Survey: “Why Do Men LIE To Women?”
(Or, being less polite, “WHY THE @#<$# CAN’T HE JUST TELL ME THE @#$#@ING TRUTH????????”)
The fact is all men lie. . .And all women lie too.
In fact, I’m just going to say it: You are a liar.
If you’re totally honest with yourself, I bet you can come up with dozens of lies big and small that you’ve told:
Telling your parents everything is fine even though you’re torn up inside about something. . .
Running into your old friend Kathy and saying she looks great even though she’s gained twenty pounds and is wearing sweat pants to a dinner party.
Pretending to have a body-quaking orgasm because you know how happy it makes a man to think he’s an absolute stud in bed.
And those are just the “innocent” lies.
So when I say “all men lie,” it’s a lot like saying “the sky is blue.”
And just like the white lies you tell don’t make you a horrible person, guys don’t lie because we’re all “no good sons of bitches.” (Yes, there are some douchebags who just tell women what they want to hear so they can get into your pants, but that’s actually a pretty small percentage of the male population.)
Honestly, most men are good guys who actually care about women and want to have good relationships. And we lie through our teeth to you anyway.
Why?
Well, there are actually three reasons that good men lie to women on a regular and daily basis about all sorts of things big and small.
One of them will probably blow your mind.
One of them will seem obvious.
And the third one just might piss you off.
Reason Men Lie #1: He Doesn’t Think You Want the Truth
Let’s start with the easy one. The first reason men lie to women is because he doesn’t think you actually want the truth. Even if you don’t do it consciously, women test men with dangerous questions all time:
“Do I look fat in this?”
“Do you ever think about other women?,”
“Do you ever wish you were single?”
“Are you still as attracted to me as you were when we met?”
“Do you think Kelly has a nicer butt than I do?”
(My favorite question was one my mom used to ask me when I was twenty-two. “Honey, if you weren’t my son and you were my age, would you date me?”)
Your man lies when you ask these questions because he doesn’t think you’re asking for the actual truth. Instead, to a guy’s mind, you’re asking him to tell you what you want to hear and boost your self esteem.
After all, if your man actually said “yeah, you look fat in that,” would you really take it that well? Or would you explode on him, put him in the dog house, and force him into emotional purgatory for hours and hours to come?
Be honest with yourself here. I think you know the answer.
Reason Men Lie #2: Emotional Overload
(Heh, this is going to be fun.)
The second reason men lie to women is because men are scared of women.
Not physically (not usually, though occasionally you hear of a woman going all Lorena Bobbit on her man).
Nope, men are scared of your emotions. Emotions are actually harder for guys to deal with and recover from than they are for women.
According to Dr. John Gottman at the University of Washington (right here in my hometown of Seattle), women can both enter and recover from extreme emotional states a lot faster than guys can, and extreme emotional states have a tendency to overload or flood men.
We’ve all seen a woman burst into tears one moment only to be totally fine 5 minutes later. But when it comes to emotion, guys are a lot more fragile.
Gottman says it’s because of evolution. Guys were evolved to be singletaskers: to push everything out of their minds except the one thing they’re hunting. Because of that we’re slower to get into an emotional state and MUCH slower to get back out of it once we get there.
I like to think of it like swimming. Getting emotional for a woman is a lot like jumping off a dock into a lake. You get wet, sure. But the dock is right there, and just a few seconds later, you’re safe and dry and ready to do another cannonball.
But for guys, getting emotional is like getting dropped into the middle of the ocean. . . bobbing in the water, surrounded by sharks with land nowhere in sight.
It’s TERRIFYING. And because it’s so terrifying (and because we’re so ill equipped to deal with high levels of emotions), when most guys are confronted by an emotional person or situation, we just switch off. (Which, I know, infuriates you.)
So what does this have to do with lying?
Everything.
From a very young age, guys learn that if we tell women the actual truth you could freak out on us, flood us with those scary emotions, and push us out into the ocean where the sharks are nibbling at our legs and it’ll take hours and hours to recover.
The fact is, guys are SCARED of your emotions because they’re afraid of the emotional state you’re going to push them into. And I gotta tell you from experience, getting pushed out into emotional purgatory sucks, so we do everything we can to avoid it.
In the first lesson we talked about how men aren’t women. Well, women aren’t men either. And to most men, women are beautiful, wonderful, attractive, necessary, crazy people who don’t make much sense at all.
When a guy does the math in his head about telling the truth or telling a little white lie, often telling the truth just isn’t worth it.
Why? Because guys know that if we just come clean and tell you the absolute truth (that we share with our guy friends all the time), we have no idea how you’re going to react and even just a tiny little slip could turn into a major ordeal.
Let me give you peek inside a guy’s mind as an example. Dave and Carol have been together for a few years. Things aren’t perfect in their relationship, but Dave is pretty happy with the way things are and likes having Carol in his life. But her mood swings scare the heck of him and she reacts totally differently to the same situation on different days.
For instance, one day Dave was late getting home from work. Carol came into the kitchen with a smile on her face and said, “Hey, honey, late night at the office?” He took her in his arms and said “Nah, I just stopped off at the bar with Mark for a couple beers. What’s for dinner?”
She gave him a little kiss and they had a great night.
But then a few weeks later, Dave came home a little late and Carol didn’t have a smile on her face. She had her arms crossed over her chest. She was upset about something.
“Where have you been?” she asked lightly.
“I got a beer with a friend,” he said. He tried to act normal, but he knew what was coming next.
And Carol went nuclear about how he SAID he was going to be home on time and this was a SPECIAL night.
And Dave was confused. To him, it was just like the last time he stopped for beers with Mark and came home a little late. So what happens next time Dave stops off for a beer with a friend? Does he tell Carol the truth, which might be fine or might set her off?
Of course not. He lies and says, “My son of a bitch boss made me work late” because it’s just not worth it to tell her the truth.
It’s not that he doesn’t like Carol and it’s not that he doesn’t respect Carol, it’s that he really has no idea how she’s going to react from day to day, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to understand the emotional intricacies of Carol’s inner life, so he takes the safe route and tells a little lie.
Here’s the key: most of the time men aren’t lying to be mean or because they don’t respect you or think you can’t handle the truth. We’re lying because we want you to be happy, because we don’t really understand your emotions, and because we’re pretty terrible at dealing with emotions ourselves.
Reason Men Lie #3: The Myth of Prince Charming
This is the big one, the reason you should be very glad that you’re going through this program.
As you’ll discover when we get into the darker sections of this material and when you dig through the actual survey results, men usually aren’t who women really want them to be.
And a lot of guys walk around under the weight of crazy expectations born from fairy tales and crappy movies starring shirtless vampires. I call that unattainable ideal women have for men “ the myth of Prince Charming.”
If you’re like most women, you have a mental picture of the perfect guy who’s out there waiting for you. The guy who will sweep you off your feet, who only has eyes for you, who will ravish you and take care of you and be truly devoted to you and has a great job and a butler with an awesome accent and. . .well, if you’ve seen a Disney movie you get the idea.
But, I hate to tell you, Prince Charming doesn’t exist for women any more than the Myth of Kim Kardashian actually exists for men. Men are complicated and dark and lusty and dirty and occasionally mean.
In other words we’re human. We’re not Prince Charming and we know you want us to be. We know that if we actually told you the truth about why we do things and what actually goes through our minds (much of which I’m going to reveal in the rest of this program) you’d be devastated, hurt, angry, probably wouldn’t like us so much anymore, and certainly wouldn’t want to sleep with us.
Most guys know that if we told you what we really wanted sexually, you’d be appalled.
If we told you what we were really thinking about when we had that far off stare in our eyes at the supermarket, you’d be disappointed in us. The story you tell yourself about who your man should be would be shattered like the Titanic on an iceberg. And if we told you what really scares us and keeps us up at night, we think you’d lose respect for us.
(Which is often pretty silly, I know.)
So we lie. We pretend to be bigger and better and more like Prince Charming than we actually are, all in an attempt to keep you happy.
So How Do You Get Him to Tell You the 100% Truth All the Time?
Now that we’ve covered the three big reasons men lie, you might be wondering how you get men to stop lying to you. How do you get him to tell you the truth?
I’ve got a very simple answer for you:
You don’t.
I’m not saying there aren’t ways to reduce the number of lies men tell you (and I’ll give you some exercises to accomplish just that at the end of this chapter), but lies are a part of all relationships (hopefully small lies, big ones not so much), and if you think about it, you’ll realize that you lie to the men in your life, too.
So if You Can’t Get Him to Tell You the Truth All the Time, What Do You Do?
Great question.
1. Choose to assume he’s telling you the truth about the little things even when he might be lying through his teeth.
OK, this is a little controversial, but it’ll make you a lot happier.
I once had a roommate named Keith. Keith was a great guy, but he was also a pathological liar. Keith would lie about everything. He’d lie about his past (he had this story about friends of his falling off a mountain when he was on the next rope), he’d lie about girls he was dating (who didn’t actually exist), he’d even lie about what he had for dinner, though nobody could figure out why.
I could have tried to confront Keith on his lying all the time. I could have gotten really angry about it and badmouthed him behind his back.
I could have done any number of things.
But I decided to do something else instead. I decided to believe him.
Every time Keith told me something (and a lot of what he told me were pretty obvious lies) I’d just nod my head, assume he had his reasons for pulling one over my eyes, and just take whatever he said as the truth.
Now, obviously, if he was lying about something life threatening or important, I wouldn’t go that route. But for the everyday stuff, just choosing to believe what Keith said did wonders for my sanity and happiness. I let him have his little lies, and because of that, bigger lies never really entered the equation.
Keith was a pretty extreme example, but if you just let the little unimportant lies go instead of worrying about them all the time, it’ll do wonders for your mental health.
2. Try not to ask questions you don’t actually want the answer to.
We’ll talk about this a bit more in the section where we discuss pornography, but if an answer to a question could make you angry or set you off, you’re really better off not asking it. (So no more “Do I look fat in this?” type questions.)
3. Learn the truth from sources like this program and then demonstrate that you’re actually cool with your guy being a guy.
The more you understand and empathize with the man in your life, the less he’ll feel the need to lie to you.
I personally can’t think of a time I’ve lied to my (awesome) girlfriend, and it’s not because I’m some paragon of virtue who’s more moral and truthful than other men (I’ve certainly lied to other women in my life).
I don’t lie to my girlfriend because I know from experience that she understands who I am and loves me for me (with all my flaws on full display).
Also, I know she’s open and honest with me and I know from experience that when I DO tell her the truth, she can handle it and won’t freak out.
(For instance, we recently had a conversation when she asked me if I ever wished I was single. The safe answer to that question would have been “of course not, honey, I love you and only you and my penis wilts up and crawls back into my body at even the thought of another woman.” But you know what? That would be a lie. So I told her the truth: “Nope, I never wish I were single. But I do occasionally wish I could sleep with other women.” Now, I’m not GOING to sleep with other women, but the fact that my girlfriend didn’t BLOW HER STACK at that statement means I know I can tell her the honest truth about pretty much anything. And she’ll be right there, secure in our love and ready to handle it.)
The Douchebag Exception
Before we finish up here I should take a moment to talk about pathological liars and douchebags. See, the three-part answer I’ve talked about so far really only applies to normal and good guys. But there are some guys out there who are just douchebags who actually ENJOY lying to women and toying with them and manipulating them. Those guys are relatively rare (and you’re probably not dating one) but they do exist. If you catch a guy in BIG lies (rampant cheating, lying about what job he has, pretending to be a high powered executive when he actually works at McDonalds) then all bets are off and I recommend you run away from him as fast as possible. Got it? Good.
Summing Up Lesson 2:
- There are three reasons that men lie to women:
- He lies because he doesn’t think you want the truth. Men are taught from a very young age that women test men and play games with them. By asking loaded questions like “Do I look fat?,” “Do you think she’s pretty?,” “Did you take the garbage out?” you actually encourage men to lie to you.
- He lies because he is afraid of emotional flooding. Men are scared of women’s emotions and women’s unpredictability. Dr. John Gottman teaches us that it’s actually much harder for a man to get into and out of an emotional state than it is for women to do so. Men tell lies because telling the truth (and getting into an argument about it or making you upset) simply isn’t worth it.
- He lies because he knows he can’t live up to the myth of Prince Charming. Men are more complicated, dirtier, and less charming than the prince and know that if we told you the actual truth about what we wanted sexually and emotionally, you’d run for the hills.
- Aiming for 100% honesty is impossible (or close enough). While you can definitely improve the honesty in any relationship, being 100% truthful is difficult if not impossible. And little lies are OK and help us get through the day. Instead of aiming for 100% honesty or brutal honesty in your relationship, you should aim to understand who men really are and to love men for who they really are.
- If you want to be happy with men, you should assume he’s telling the truth about the little things. They’re just not worth getting into a fight over. Yes, there are things a man can lie about that simply aren’t acceptable, but for the little stuff, just let it go.
- The way to get your man to be more honest with you is to learn more about men and show him that you can be OK with his maleness.
- The more you learn about men (and the more you realize that most of what we do has nothing to do with you), the more likely men will be to be open and honest with you in the future.
- All of that said, if you catch a guy lying about BIG things all bets are off. If he lies about stuff that really matters, it means you got a bad fish and you should find somebody else.
Exercises for Lesson 2:
Pick at least one of these exercises to do before moving on to lesson 3.
1. Create a lie journal for a day. OK, this is fun and humbling and a little scary. For one full day, take a notepad or journal with you and mark down every time you catch yourself telling a little lie (or a big lie) and WHY you told that lie. (“I told Melanie I liked her hair because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”)
2. “If he were telling the truth, what would it mean?” My friend Emily who was having issues with a guy she was dating. The guy had told her that he didn’t want to date her anymore, but she kept trying to get him to change his mind. (She even slept with him again, thinking that would bond him to her. It didn’t.) Emily wrote me text after text asking me to help her read into what this guy was doing. “Well, he SAID he didn’t want to date me, but then when we were hanging out he touched my hand and said he was having fun so. . . ” I told her: “Emily, take a deep breath and ask yourself:
If he was actually telling you the 100% truth and if you didn’t start reading into his emotions and assuming he was lying to you, what would it mean?” She came back and told me “It would mean he doesn’t want to date me?” She was hurt in the moment, but it gave her the energy to walk away from that relationship (and got the guy to actually give chase).
Next time you find yourself assuming a guy is lying to you, do that little exercise. Write down what it would actually mean and react accordingly. See how it feels and how he reacts.
3. Does he love you enough to lie to you? Think about five small lies the man in your life has told you. Your gut will probably tell you to assign nefarious reasons to WHY he lied to you, but instead here’s what I want you to do. Think about positive reasons he might lie to you. “He lied to me to spare my feelings” or “He lied to me because he wants me to be happy.”
Up Next: Why Doesn’t He Compliment Me Anymore?
Now head over to lesson 3, where I’ll teach you why “Denying Your Man’s Truth” is basically cutting off his emotional balls. =-)
