sigmund4001's blog

intimacy and love

 abuse

Our intimate relationships are designed to help us get ahead in life. People, who are lucky enough fall in love, come out ahead in terms of their health, wealth, and emotional well-being.

Individuals in close relationships live longer, enjoy better health, obtain more resources, report being happier, and are more satisfied than individuals who fail to find a companion.

In order to obtain the benefits that intimate relationships provide, it is necessary for two people to know each other well. It is not possible to create beneficial outcomes in a relationship without some degree of intimacy (knowledge about each other). Romantic partners need to be “experts” on each other. To create rewards people need to understand their partners “inside and out.”

People gain such knowledge about their partners by spending a lot of time with them, watching how they react in different situations, and by being honest with each other.

People disclose a lot to their spouses. Intimate partners tell each other who they are, what they like and dislike, their hopes and fears, their past experiences, and their future goals. Sharing such knowledge is critical because without it people would not be able to get ahead in life.

Our desire to have a husband or wife understand "who we are" and "where we are coming from" is driven by our emotions. We have a fundamental need to be understood, to have someone know us, get us, and understand us (see, Reis and Shaver). And, these feelings drive us to tell our intimate partners the truth.

Our desire to be understood becomes even more intense as we get closer to each other. The more you tie your fate to someone, the more important it is for that person to understand who you are. There is an important benefit to having someone close to you "know you." The rewards you are able to create in your relationship are tied to being intimate and sharing yourself with a partner (see, Cole and Teboul).

This explains why we get so frustrated and upset when we think that someone close to us does not understand us. Try it out. If you really want to upset a romantic partner, one of the best ways is to pretend that you don’t get where he/she is coming from, that you don’t understand his/her point of view, that you don’t know what he/she is talking about, or that you don’t get his/her jokes. People go absolutely crazy when they think that someone close to them does not "get them."

Overall, enormous benefits come from having a close relational partner know who you are. Accordingly, telling the truth is essential. Simply put, we are designed to share our lives with people and be honest with them.

Without honesty, one cannot have intimacy.. therfore a realtionship is not possible. 

As we get close to another person, we intentionally and unintentionally provide them with a great deal of information about who we are, revealing ourselves through both our words and deeds. As mentioned, creating this kind of intimacy or shared knowledge is critical, as it serves as the foundation for a lot of important rewards.

Because relationships provide so many important rewards, it should come as no surprise that people are inclined to view their romantic partners or spouses in a positive light. We place a lot of trust in our romantic partners. In fact, we think we know them better than we actually do.

But while our trust provides us with a sense of security and comfort, it also lays the ground for deceit. Research show that as we become more trusting, we also become more confident, but less accurate at determining when the truth is being told (see, Levine and McCornack, McCornack and Parks).

Every study shows that lovers are terrible at telling when their partners are lying. Detecting deception with anyone is difficult to do, but lovers manage to take this failure to a spectacular low  "love is blind".

More importantly, lovers are not only terrible lie detectors, but they have a hard time acknowledging this fact. Husbands and wives like to think they can tell when the truth is being told. But, this is simply not the case. It is easier to see this type of behavior with a friend than with yourself. Have you ever noticed how a friend can be so trusting of his or her husband or wife while you have an easier time seeing what is really going on?

When we are in love, we simply become more confident, but less accurate at seeing the truth. To borrow a quote, lovers are "often wrong but rarely in doubt" (see, Griffin and Tversky, 1992). This “truth-bias” or “blind faith” provides the perfect opportunity for romantic partners to engage in deception.

After all, who makes a better victim than someone who is eager and willing to trust everything you have to say?

Not only do close relationships create an opportunity for deception to occur, they also create the need.

While romantic relationships or marriages offer many rewards, they also tend to be overly constrictive. Everyone has felt the constraints of a close relationship from time to time; quite simply you are no longer free to do what you want, when you want, and with whom you want.

So intimacy provides tremendous rewards, but at an enormous cost – the loss of your freedom and autonomy.

Lying to a romantic partner or spouse helps us deal with the constraints that our intimate relationships impose. Quite frankly, deceiving a romantic partner turns out to be the most efficient and effective way of maintaining the rewards we get from our romantic relationships while pursuing extra-relational goals and activities behind a partner’s back.

After years of studying deceptive behavior, we have noticed that people tend to mislead their husbands and wives when unique and valued opportunities can be pursued in a way that imposes a minimal strain on their relationship.

The following example provided by a friend, Steve, helps illustrate this point.

Example of Steve lying to his girlfriend of two years:

On a recent afternoon my friend Brian stopped by my office. Brian wanted to go out for drinks, but there was a problem. My girlfriend doesn’t like it when I spend a lot of time with him because he is not terribly supportive of our relationship. Brian is single and constantly mentions how much fun I used to be, before I settled down. Despite the fact that Brian isn’t overly supportive of my relationship, he is a good friend. My professional life has been greatly enriched through my friendship with Brian; he is in “the know” at work, has all the inside gossip, and introduces me to a lot of people.

So, when Brian drops by my office on the spur of the moment, suggesting we go for drinks, I really want to go. On the other hand, I also know my girlfriend is expecting me to cook dinner and we have plans to spend some time together. What am I to do? Call and explain the situation to her? “Hi. I’d like to come over and spend some time with you as planned, but going out for drinks with Brian also sounds like a lot of fun. Do you mind if I go out with Brian tonight and make it up to you later?” Having such a conversation would take a lot of time, energy, and effort and most likely result in a fight.

And even if I’m lucky enough to avoid an argument, this conversation would undoubtedly come back to haunt me down the road with my girlfriend using this incident against me when she wants to. So, when I find myself in situations like this, I do what comes naturally – I lie. Before you know it, I’m telling her that “My boss wants some last minute revisions, sorry, I’m going to be working late tonight.”

As Steve's example shows, people mislead their romantic partners in order to spend some time doing the things that they really want to do – the things they value doing. If Steve were asked to go out for drinks by someone he disliked, he would be having dinner with his girlfriend.

We are also more likely to cheat when opportunities are unique – the kind that don’t always present themselves. Again, if Steve had the opportunity to go out drinking with Brian every night – then he’d probably just wait until he didn’t have to break a promise to do so. But since it is difficult for Steve to plan things with Brian - Steve took the opportunity when he had the chance.

Finally, we are more likely to cheat when cheating doesn’t put a lot of strain on our relationship; that is, when we can seize opportunities while breaking the fewest commitments and obligations to our partners. Again, Steve's breaking a dinner date is something he thinks he can get away with from time to time – it puts some strain on his relationship, but in this case, not enough to seriously damage it.

So how do we decide when to lie to a romantic partner or spouse?

Well, most of the time we do not intentionally think about misleading our partners. Rather such decisions are governed by our emotions and just seem to happen when the right situation presents itself.

Again, deception, like a lot of other behaviors, "happens in context." Very few of the lies we tell are intentional in nature. Rather most lies "happen in context" - we find ourselves in situations where telling the truth is difficult to do, so we avoid doing it - we deceive.

And just like decisions about our willingness to help others, our cravings sweets, and our fear of snakes, we are designed to deceive our romantic partners when placed in the right situation. Deception is a psychological adaptation - an innate solution to one of life's reoccurring problems.. Our decision to deceive often occurs in the background - outside of our immediate awareness - with little thought, effort, or planning - we lie.

Often a sense of excitement, opportunity, and exhilaration can lead us down paths we had no intention of traveling. A sense of fear, loss, and trepidation, on the other hand, prompt us to cover-up what we’ve done and be more conservative in the short-term.

Luckily our emotions are very good at reading situations and keeping our deceptive behavior within limits. Our emotions prompt us to do things behind our partner's back while also allowing us to maintain the benefits we get from our intimate relationships.

By being honest AND lying, we can "have our cake and eat it, too."

 Because our romantic relationships and marriages are so rewarding, yet so constrictive, we are simultaneously more truthful AND more deceptive with those we love.

• The cruelest lies are often told in silence. -- Robert Louis Stevenson

• We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage. -- Albert Camus

• Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. -- Oscar Wilde

• A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent. -- William Blake

• A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. -- Saki

• Betrayal can only happen if you love. -- John Le Carre

• The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. -- Oscar Wilde

• Never tell a loved one of an infidelity: you would be badly rewarded for your troubles. Although one dislikes being deceived, one likes even less to be undeceived. -- Ninon De Lenclos

• People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty. -- Richard Needham

• Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same. -- Oscar Wilde

• Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage. -- Ambrose Bierce

• One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry. -- Oscar Wilde

• The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe. -- H. L. Mencken

• One is easily fooled by that which one loves. -- Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere

• Those who are faithless know the pleasures of love; it is the faithful who know love's tragedies. -- Oscar Wilde

Filed under: Lifestyle