Lies and Love

Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic as an exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

Today’s Topic:  Does Lying a Good Marriage Make?

Today’s topic was inspired by this article, which Whitney found and sent to me last week.

“Marriage cannot exist without dishonesty.” ????!!!!  Really?!  As a soon-to-be-married person, I was rather taken aback by this statement.  Obviously I don’t have all the answers, since I’m not married yet, but this did not seem like the type of advice one normally listens to.   And so I had to think about what a lie really is, and what it means, before I could decide how I felt about this article.

Here is what I found:

The Dictionary.com definition of “lie”

1. A false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood
2. Something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture
3. An inaccurate or false statement
4. The charge or accusation of lying

Then there is the lie of omission, whereby you omit an important fact and deliberately leave another person with a misconception.

This is interesting because my fiancee and I disagree on whether or not lies of omission are truly lies.  He says if you haven’t actually said something that’s untrue, it’s not a lie.  I say if you leave something out that will give a different view or understanding, it is a lie.  You can be the judge, since the definition of lie is directly above this paragraph.  But it’s interesting that a committed couple would argue about lying, and if it’s good or bad in this manner.  Which happens to fall right into what this article is talking about!

I always thought the key to a good marriage – and really any relationship – is open and honest communication.  It seems to me that lying to decidedly not open and honest.  So my initial reaction to this article was to think it was a load of crap.  Don’t tell me the way to make my marriage work will be to tell lies to my husband!  I most certainly do not want him telling lies to me – like saying he likes my meatballs if he really doesn’t.  **Note, I am not accusing Alex of disliking my meatballs, this is merely an example.**  That would mean he is doomed to a life of eating meals he doesn’t want!

(As a side note, this makes me think of a funny story.  In college, one of my roommates (Jessica) and I had another roommate who was not the greatest at cooking.  She had a boyfriend who came over a lot, and he was too polite to tell her he didn’t like her meals.  I remember one time in particular when she had made chicken and biscuits out of a box, and served it to all of us.  It was terrible.  Jessica and I made up a story about needing to go get tampons at the store and left, but really we were going to Taco Bell.  The poor guy had to stay and pretend to like the food, then putz around the kitchen late that night looking for something else to eat because he couldn’t tell her the truth!  I do not want this for Alex.)

So, like I said, initially I thought this article was irritatingly bad advice.  But… then I thought of a piece of advice I’ve been given a lot over the last couple of years: you have to pick your battles.  This is, I believe, key to making a relationship work.  Something the author of this article wrote is quite true – when you spend the amount of time with a person that you spend with your spouse, they are going to get on your nerves.  No one is 100% thrilled about everything about their significant other 100% of the time.  But if you were to point out every little thing honestly, you’d fight all the time, and your partner would be left wondering why you’re with them at all.  Which makes me have to conclude that a part of this article is true. It is important to tell the whole truth to your spouse, but sometimes, when it’s just not that important, it is better to let it go and keep your opinion to yourself.  I don’t think there is a formula to this.  But, I don’t think in any equation you’d find room for lying about big things, like how you want to raise kids or where you spent the night.  As awful as the concept of lying to your spouse seems, the concept of getting divorced over which way the toilet paper should hang seems infinitely more terrible.

If you’d like to read Whitney’s take on this article, you can read it here!