Why Do We Keep Falling For Their Lies?
A close male friend once told me, “All men lie to women.” Say what?! I didn’t believe him. Not outright, anyway. I mean, sure, some men lie. Sometimes. Some women lie, too. Sometimes. But the way it was presented to me made it seem like a never-ending, epidemic string of lies men are constantly telling us, and that we constantly keep falling for. That’s not true. Right?
Then I came across a recent article from our friends at askmen.com called Top 10 Reasons Men Lie To Women. I read through the list. I became a little ruffled. Then a lot annoyed. Because if you read through this list, it seems as if women are nothing but incredibly irritating, demanding and irrational human beings from whom the only survival mechanism for men is to lie and lie often. Tell them what we want to hear and not – heaven forbid! – the truth. Because, as Jack Nicholson pointedly shouts in A Few Good Men, “you can’t handle the truth!”
In this case it’s we women who allegedly can’t handle the truth. That’s pretty much, anyway, what the askmen.com article suggested. It was so annoying, quite frankly, that I couldn’t decide whether the writer was doing a tongue-in-cheek piece or if he was actually serious. Right off the bat he says that lying is a “fundamental” part of a guy’s life. Sheesh. O-kaaaay. Then he goes on to proclaim that women are too “sensitive” to handle knowing when our guy does something his way, that we’re “mood-changing” and “confusing,” and that ultimately they lie to us to please us.
Although this justification makes us sound like unreasonable idiots who are impossible to live with, I can accept that a little of it is fair. For example, we really should never, ever ask whether an article of clothing makes us look fat. I mean, let’s be real, what’s the guy supposed to say? Certainly not yes. Even if it’s, you know, the truth. He’s between a rock and a potentially enraged woman, is our guy. So to save himself, he lies. That’s pretty much what the askmen.com article is saying. It’s just too damn difficult to tell us women the truth so among a guy’s arsenal, he includes lying to his gal as a useful – and frequently used – tool. Basically, guys just don’t want drama.
As I dug a little deeper around the whole “why do men lie” question, a lot of the information mirrored the askmen article. Men lie because they don’t want to hurt our feelings, they want to get out of doing stuff, they can’t deal with drama around the truth, and they want to impress us. But one article offered up another reason that I thought was interesting: Men lie to women because there’s no perceived upside to telling us the truth. Here’s exactly what the author wrote: “If you want the truth and honesty, find a way to reward that behavior, not punish it by putting him through hell.”
I’ve been told repeatedly by men that guys are really very simple creatures, not the complicated, mysterious beings that we women are. And it doesn’t justify their tall tales, their fibs, their damn lying. But I have to ask, knowing what we do, that if men often and repeatedly lie to us, why do we – intelligent humans that we are – keep falling for it? Is it at all possible that we want to be lied to? That, in fact, we actually can’t handle the truth?
What do you think? Male and female perspectives wanted. Really, I’m not lying. I’m also not lying about telling you all the fun reads you’ll get from following us at Lady Smut, so don’t forget to hit that follow button.
