I understand sometimes people lie to avoid hurting someone, but a lot of the time it seems unnecessary. When something really important happens and honesty matters, people still choose to lie instead of just telling the truth.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 54 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Very often it's conflict avoidance

Like if your parent / teacher / boss goes ballistic because you fucked up, you're not likely to tell them you fucked up again. If this pattern starts when you're younger especially it tends to ripple out through the rest of your life

This can be frustrating because it appears irrational. Then again, so is life

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago

    Totally agree with the conflict-avoidance answer. A small reframing: making mistakes is perfectly normal. A lie is usually an attempt to skip owning one.

    What makes you a mature person is:

    • Acknowledge it to yourself: nobody is perfect.
    • Plan the recovery: there’s a fix for everything but death. An honest apology is often most of it.
    • Own the fix: you dropped the bricks, so you pick them up. Don’t wait for someone else to do it.
    • Learn from it: making a mistake is fine, repeating it isn’t.

    A lie turns one mistake into two, and the second one is harder to undo.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

    That's me. I absolutely fear being judged and getting involved in any conflict thanks to my childhood, and this sometimes - especially if i have to answer quickly and don't have time to reflect - makes me lie before i really even think about it. Lying at home about pretty much everything was the only way i was able to have a semi-normal life in my teenage years, and it becomes a second nature if you have to do it on the regular.

    Nowadays i try to take my time, to give myself the breathing room and space i need to feel safe enough to be honest. Wouldn't work without years of therapy. But if someone pressures me out of the blue, what they hear first will probably not be the truth. In these cases, i tend to still tell people the truth in the same convo if the talk goes long enough and i don't feel too threatened anymore - someone who talks calmly will get the truth as a revision, while aggressive people will never hear it.

  • source
  • parent