The hardest lie to stop telling

The hardest lie to stop telling is the one we believe

I’ve written before about how I’m good at lying to myself when I don’t want to see an inconvenient truth about the desires in my heart. Time and again, I have put my hand on my heart and faithfully sworn things to people that I did not know were untrue.

Uncovering this unconscious automatic self-deception is a big part of the healing journey I’m on. I’ve been trying so hard to be more honest with myself and others. But in certain areas I just keep on failing, because my mind is afraid to look at what’s real and deal with the consequences.

I know I am brave and strong, but I have learned that I am not as brave or as strong as I thought I was. And that’s been a good and helpful lesson.

Today I want to dwell on how that pattern has played out for me with relationships and cohabitation.

A little bit of economic theory to brighten your day

Economists like to talk about “revealed preferences”. These are the things our consumer behaviour indicates that we truly value, regardless of what we might think or say.

For (simplified) example, if we say that we care more about protecting the environment than saving a few dollars, but in practice we’ll accept non-recyclable packaging when it’s cheaper, then our revealed preference is to save a few dollars. Or if we say that we care about avoiding child labour but are unwilling in practice to pay a bit more for goods that are manufactured ethically, then our revealed preference is to allow child labour to save us money. (Often this is down to Social Desirability Bias – the phenomenon whereby we claim to hold nobler values than we truly do, because we want social approval. Or, as Bryan Caplan puts it: “When the truth sounds bad, we lie.”)

In the context of a relationship, our “consumer behaviour” is the set of choices we make about what costs we are willing to incur to achieve various outcomes. Those costs are interpersonal rather than financial. They often take the form of “raising a relational issue in a way that causes discomfort or annoyance to ourselves or our partners”.

It's not all bad to be at least somewhat blind to these costs. Keeping a detailed ledger of who is contributing what or making what compromises is usually an unhealthily transactional thing to do in an intimate partnership. Letting the small stuff go, and both making and accepting meaningful compromises and sacrifices for the sake of those we love, is uplifting and gracious.

But if the “budget” you have to spend within the relationship is very tight – because your ability to absorb costs arising from relational issues is very limited, or the costs that arise are very high because of characteristics of you or your partner – then you can end up in company you can’t afford to keep.

And no matter what you say to yourself about who you are and what you deserve, your revealed preference may be to do nearly anything to avoid incurring those costs.

Window-shopping can be painful when you’re broke

This was my situation, and it’s not an uncommon one. I often found it so psychologically hard to upset or even inconvenience other people, in particular my partners, that I constantly put work into anticipating and accommodating their needs while honestly believing that I was pleasing myself.

Fundamentally this was about feeling fear and seeking safety. Two stories were loud for me, both from childhood:

1. If I placed demands on the people I loved, I might lose them and be left alone, which would be unsafe. So, like, don’t do that.
2. If I showed my preferences to a man I lived with, he’d probably ignore them or even go out of his way to deny me them. So don’t do that either.

My subconscious was driving me to make mad sacrifices of my own comfort in an effort to keep myself safe.

But I had no idea! I’d have denied that strenuously. I’d have said I was assertive and confident, I had great self-esteem, I was securely attached. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

And my partners believed me – why wouldn’t they?! I believed me. Ain’t no better salesperson than one who truly believes in the product.

Home alone

Until I was single and living alone, and faced no interpersonal costs from doing whatever the heck I wanted, I could not access reliable information about my desires.

Here are a few examples, all little mundane domestic things:

• I went to sleep with the bedroom light on for about 15 years because two successive partners wanted to read in bed a lot later than I did. I would have said earnestly and reassuringly that I genuinely didn’t mind at all. But you know what? Any time I went on holiday by myself, I lay in bed in the perfect darkness and thought, I love this. I just wouldn’t let myself hear that or think about what it meant. As soon as anyone else’s preferences were in the frame, I’d sacrifice that pleasure and not even see the sacrifice.
• For a similar number of years I dried myself on a small chamois towel, which could be wrung out rather than hung to dry, instead of a regular cotton bath towel. I’d have told you authentically that this was because I preferred the way it left some moisture in my skin, in a way a cotton towel wouldn’t. That wasn’t true! It was because there was only room in the bathroom for one towel, and that was my partner’s towel. The day he moved out, I switched to a normal towel and I’ve never switched back. It still feels like a treat to dry myself so effortlessly. I hope it always does. A little daily pleasure. (And again, I actually kind of knew this from being on holiday. I just turned away from what it signified.)
• I thought I liked eating a hot meal at around 7pm each day. I didn’t and I don’t. My ex liked this, and when his kids were with us it was a genuinely nice and important daily experience for us to share as a family. But I feel so much better when I don’t eat in the evenings.

I could list a dozen more.

In all these cases, I already had information about what I wanted, because I’d done it before or did it when I was alone or on holiday. But as soon as it created even the possibility of friction, I conveniently just “forgot”, for years at a time.

I just want to say it again: I was not consciously deciding that I was willing to make this small compromise for someone I loved. I truly believed that I was doing what I personally preferred to do. That is how deep it ran, and how little I was able to make space for myself to exist in the context of a partnership.

Your subconscious is both much smarter, and much dumber, than you are

My brain was working overtime to keep me safe. It was really smart about doing this – it realised that not allowing me to see what it was doing was a great move, or I might try and stop it.

But it was also a dumbass, because you know what? It’s not unsafe for me to ask a small favour of someone who loves me. It’s not even unsafe for me to have a disagreement with them about it. And it’s not unsafe for me these days to express preferences to men in my home. These things were sometimes unsafe for me when I was a child, but I’m not a child anymore (though my inner child still is).

And if the extent of my self-deception seems crazy or implausible to you, I’d remind you that people’s subconscious minds can literally render them functionally blind or paralysed in an effort to keep them safe from interpersonal conflict. So a little wilful erasure of domestic preferences is nbd. (If you’re interested in this topic, I recommend the book “It’s All In Your Head” by Suzanne Sullivan, a neurologist specialising in functional disorders.)

Where to from here?

I’m loading my life up with people and things that help my healing. I talk with friends who experience similar challenges and give me insight that I couldn’t find by myself (including when I find myself giving them better advice than I take). I spend time with men who make me feel safe and cared for. I do therapy, when I can afford it. I listen to music and I dance. I sit with myself and do the self-love exercise over and over, every day.

Like a feral kitty hiding under a barn, my true desires will come out when they feel safe. If that means I need to spend another year sitting here quietly with my hand out to them, that’s what I’ll do.