Liars....

Few days back I came across a very good article on Why Women Lie at askmen.com. It was an interesting read. In short it gave the following reasons why women lie:-

1.      She wants to spare your feelings

2      She’s trying to hide her past

3.    She doesn’t want you to worry

4.    She’s protecting herself

5.    She wants to make herself look good

6.    She doesn’t trust you

7.    She’s manipulative

8  . She’s testing you

9.   She wants to keep the upper hand

I am not going into the details of the article since it looks to be more from male oriented point of view and doesn’t give women an equal footing. What I was thinking after reading this article is; this is true with any liar and not only women. We all lie and face liars in day to day life. So what I wanted to write today is how to deal with it since it is something which we will face sooner or later and no matter who is lying to you; it may affect many things and in many ways.

In my opinion you have two choices: - either you confront or you ignore. But for this decision you have to understand why that person lied to you and the intentions can be any of the above 9 which I have mentioned earlier. In cases where a person is considering your feelings or is trying to hide his/her past or don’t want you to worry about something the lie can be ignored considering that the intentions are good.

If someone is lying to protect herself then you have to find out if you can talk to that person about it and bring him/her to a comfort zone where they can open up and tell you about it so that you can help them. If they don’t want to talk about it then we have to leave it at that; but if this incident had hurt you in a way you can tell them indirectly about this.

Now the negative traits of lying; if the person wants to look good or doesn’t trust you or is manipulative then you have to see if confronting this person is more important or saving the relationship. If you think the relationship cannot survive if you don’t get things cleared then you should go ahead and ask for an explanation But If you think this time you can ignore and want to give the person second chance that’s good but watch your back.

If you confront you may get that person to agree that he/she lied to you and you can move on from there and continue or break the relationship based on the impact of the lie. If you ignore then it depends sooner or later you will come to a situation where you will either feel good that you ignored it or will be cheated again and then you will have to put your step down.

Now to the grey shade of lying; If that person is testing you or wants to have an upper hand in conversation. You can’t call it bad since it may depend on the intention of that person if this lie is good or bad. Sometimes it’s good if people force us to see the light or if they want to check our intentions they might lie to test us. In both ways you have to weigh the impact of it and then take a decision.

The most important thing in all this is you have to see the situation at the third person’s point of view if you want to get to a conclusion. Relationship cannot survive if they are built on the foundation of lies. Sooner or later the truth will be revealed.

If you have been in touch with someone who is a habitual liar then it’s better not to trust that person for anything and leave him/her with their lies since one day you may get into a situation where you will make a complete fool of yourself because of this person’s habit and it will be more painful to handle it since you already knew that this person is a liar and still you got stuck in his/her web.

There is a more interesting scenario; what if you are telling truth and people consider it as a lie based on some things which make you a culprit even if you have not done anything like that in past and the worst part you don’t have a solid proof that you are telling the truth. Even if you scream at top of your lungs nobody is going to believe it. Now what will you do. Nothing....believe me you can’t do anything in this situation. This is a situation which I will really not like anybody to be in. It’s really bad since even you can’t help yourself forget anybody else.

So what to do? Well...first thing don’t except mercy from anyone. Stand your ground with your head held high. You have not lied and so you are not going to ask for forgiveness. Let the other person decide what they want to do. Whatever decisions they take agree to it be reiterating that you are not lying. If they break the relationship with you and don’t trust you anymore, so be it. Just help them as and when needed. If they trust you then be grateful of them and never do anything to hurt them. If they take a cautious approach and don’t take a stand. Let it be like that. Don’t push it. You don’t have anything to proof your innocence.

Let time be the real judge. Time reveals everything. If you are proved innocent in future that’s good, if time doesn’t give you that opportunity then some stories is best left without an ending.