When you first meet someone, it might be very tempting to bend the truth. If you want to impress a potential employer, you might pad your resume. And if you want to win over a date, you may pretend to be more confident than you actually are.
But eventually, the truth always comes out. One woman learned this lesson the hard way after lying about her age for an entire year. Now, her boyfriend is reaching out for advice on the internet and wondering if their relationship is worth trying to save.
This man was perfectly happy with where his relationship was at
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But after finding out that his girlfriend is pregnant, another huge secret came to the surface
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Honesty is crucial in any healthy relationship
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Almost everyone keeps some secrets. Whether you don’t want your kids to know that you had a chocolate chip cookie without them, or you pretend to love your mother-in-law in front of your husband, you’re probably not 100% honest all the time. And that’s perfectly normal.
A study from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse found that most people tell between zero and two lies per day, and nearly 90% of these lies are harmless. But 79% of lies are told face-to-face, so apparently, you can never know for sure whether someone is telling the truth or not.
When it comes to whom people lie to the most, the majority of people admit that they lie to their friends. After that, family, school/business colleagues, strangers, and casual acquaintances are told the most fibs.
One person who’s always going to expect you to tell them the truth is your partner. But according to a survey from Superdrug, 73.4% of people admit that they’ve lied to their significant other before. This doesn’t necessarily hurt their relationship satisfaction, though, as nearly 86% of people who have lied to their partner are also happy in their relationship.
When it comes to what kinds of lies people tell their partner, women are most likely to fib about gifts they receive, their opinions of their partner’s family, their partner’s cooking, their partner’s technique during intimacy, and their partner’s weight.
On the other hand, men are most likely to lie about their partner’s weight, their partner’s gifts, their partner’s cooking, their partner’s haircut, and their partner’s taste in clothing. Interestingly, women are also slightly more likely to deceive their partners, in general.
Keeping lies is common, but over time, it can erode your partner's trust
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The majority of people, both men and women, aren’t likely to confess to the lies that they tell. But everyone is much less likely to confess big lies (such as infidelity, debt, frequency of alcohol intake) than little white lies.
Meanwhile, the majority of both men and women say that confessing both little and big lies can strengthen a relationship. And unsurprisingly, keeping too many secrets can take a toll on a relationship.
The Carey Center notes that there are hidden costs that come along with lying to your partner. These lies might include omitting information, minimizing situations, gaslighting, passive dishonesty, and delayed disclosure, along with telling blatant lies, of course.
These seemingly harmless lies can destroy intimacy in a relationship by eroding trust. If two people can’t be vulnerable and honest with one another, they’ll never be able to have a strong, meaningful connection. And by deceiving your partner, you create distance between the two of you.
Over time, this will destroy your partner’s trust, your own peace of mind, the ability to create a shared future with your partner, the respect and safety necessary for emotional intimacy, and likely, the relationship itself.
The author of this story is now left wondering: if his girlfriend could lie about her age, what else could she be lying about? He’ll never be able to feel comfortable around someone whom he can’t trust.
We would love to hear your thoughts on this situation in the comments below, pandas. How would you have responded to this news if you were in the author’s shoes? Feel free to weigh in, and then, you can find another article discussing similar relationship drama right here.
Concerned readers warned the author not to trust his girlfriend again, and he joined in on the conversation to share more details
