How to Teach The One You Love to Lie
The short answer
Sometimes the lies a loved one tells you start because of your own actions, and then they escalate. That doesn’t justify their lies, because every person is responsible for their own decisions. In this episode, Dr. Joe Beam explains why people lie, how your actions may provoke it, and how to interact with people in a way most likely to draw out the truth.
Key takeaways
- Being lied to hurts deeply, and many betrayed spouses say the lying hurt even more than the affair.
- Not every lie is a response to something you did, and each person is responsible for their own choices.
- Some lies do start in response to how you react, and once they start they tend to grow.
- Learning to draw out the truth works far better than doing things that push someone you love toward lying.
Whether it’s done by your best friend, your child, or your spouse, it hurts when we discover that we’ve been lied to, doesn’t it?
No one that I know of likes being deceived. Even in affairs, I often hear the spouse who was cheated on say something such as “As much as the affair hurt, it hurt me even more that s/he lied to me!”
Would it surprise you to know that sometimes the person who lied to you did so because you taught him/her to lie to you?
Yes. It happens.
No, not every lie a person tells you is in response to your actions. Sometimes people lie. Sometimes they lie with those huge life-altering falsehoods that devastate you. Even so, sometimes the lies start because of your own actions. Then the lies escalate. They can become ultimately destructive.
This program isn’t about “beating you up” and saying that the wrong things done by people you love are your fault. Every person is responsible for his/her own decisions and actions. Yet, this program is about learning the things you do that may be teaching someone you care about to lie to you. It doesn’t justify their lies…but learning how to evoke the truth from others is FAR better than doing things that may provoke their lying to you.
In this program, Dr. Joe Beam discusses briefly why people lie. Then he explains how your actions may be facilitating or provoking those lies. Finally, he teaches how to interact with people in a manner most likely to promote their telling you the truth.
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Common questions
Is it my fault my spouse lied to me?
No. Every person is responsible for their own decisions and actions, and not every lie is a response to something you did. Still, it helps to learn whether anything you do may be making it harder for your spouse to tell you the truth.
Why does the lying hurt more than the affair?
No one likes being deceived. Many spouses who were cheated on say that as much as the affair hurt, the lying hurt even more.
How can I get my spouse to tell me the truth?
Learning to evoke the truth is far better than doing things that may provoke lies. Dr. Joe Beam teaches how to interact with the people you love in the way most likely to promote their honesty.