Why Men Lie Up and Women Lie Down

[jumpy]

Originally Posted by Vendor

Yes, could be a likely explanation

For my own experience and observation, it is easy to lie to people you don't know - they mean nothing to you so why should they matter? Lying to strangers is easy and probably quite commonplace. Motivation varies from self preservation to self interest, generally superficial in nature with little in the way of personal consequences for either party.

Lying to someone you know is more complex. For friends, it varies in severity but still matches lying to strangers in motivation and consequences, offset by knowledge of the person and how much the social bonds could be damaged as a result.

Lying to someone you love is a flagrant denial of those feelings from either side of the relationship (ie loving someone, or being loved yourself). For me it is something I cannot do and never have been able to, even when perhaps it would have been to my advantage to do so.

I don't mean those superficial 'white lies' that serve merely to grease the social wheels and in effect more clearly delineate your bonds in a relationship -
her: does my bum look big in this?
him: no.
She looks for reassurance from someone who's opinion is important to her, but the truth is less so than the response, whilst he thinks the question is empty but responds with a positive because he knows that is what she wants to hear from him.

The 'Lie of Omission' is probably the worst in a relationship - it undermines the very best of the other person and bolsters the self-righteousness of the reasoning for the lie in the first place.
Omitting to tell the truth is still just a lie, the only difference is that it is more subtle and complete a lie than the others - the lie is simultaneous: you lie to the other person and yourself.

Perhaps it is because I'm a bloke - and therefore have no intimate experience of being involved with another bloke, thus my reasoning is skewed by only seeing this in women - but women lie more often and more completely than men, particularly when they believe a relationship has failed - it can be months before they will act on their belief and in the mean time the lie of omission is king. Motivation is simple and starts at the beginning - self preservation and self interest.

For this, I believe the old stereotypes are correct - men are basically quite simple in their nature and interest, whilst women are the exact opposite.

But I can simplify this: people lie /end.