In counseling hundreds
of antagonistic family adults since 1981, I've often heard one or
both accuse the other of lying, deception, dishonesty,
or "being incapable of telling the truth." This is often part of a litany of
other failings: like being unreliable, malicious, hopeless,
childish, irresponsible, addicted, selfish, a poor parent, insensitive,
self-centered, inconsistent, and so on.
Some co-parents complain they
can't tell their ex some truths because "s/he'll call the lawyer," "go
bonkers," "block visitation," "explode again," or some other calamity. This
results in
which sap self-respect, promote suspicion and
distrust, and are emotional land mines. From the receiver's point of view,
withholding the truth can be the same as "lying."
Shading, distorting, or
withholding the truth between any two adults or kids always indicates...
-
significant
plus...
-
ignorance of effective-communication
basics and
and...
-
the secret-keeper feeling
unsafe to tell their truth. S/He can fear high
discomfort from a mix of guilt, shame, scorn, ridicule, punishment,
misunderstanding, conflict, or rejection. Secondary fears can relate to
children - i.e. loss of visitation, child support, or respect.
Secrets and lying between ex mates
are surface problems. The real problems are (a) what causes the
need for secrecy, (b) how this need is being managed, and (c) the impacts of
secrecy on personal self-respect and co-parental trust and cooperation. Many
unaware self-helpers fruitlessly urge ex mates to have “open and
honest communications.” If typical ex mates were motivated to learn how to
do that, they might not have divorced!
This Solutions article offers
(a) perspective on
honesty between ex mates, and (b) options toward increasing truth-telling by your making it
safe to do so.
# Status check: To make this more
relevant, learn about yourself. “On a scale of 1 (never honest) to 5
(always honest), I’d rank…
My recent honesty with my ex as a ___.
My ex mate’s recent honesty with
me as a ___.
My recent honesty with myself as a ___. (Self-dishonesty
is
My ex mate’s recent self-honesty is a ___.
Answer these with True, False, or “?" (I'm not sure):
My ex mate and I have no serious problems with shading or
withholding the truth from each other. (T F ?)
When either of us doubts the other’s honesty, we have an
effective way of resolving that now.
(T F ?)
I feel safe enough disclosing relevant co-parenting,
family, and financial information to my ex mate now. I never have the
feeling of "walking on eggshells" with her or him. (T F ?)
I’m not doing anything that would make my former partner fear to tell
me relevant personal, co-parenting, family, and financial information.
(T F ?)
Neither of us needs to deny or repress anything important at
this time; or if we do, we have an effective way of resolving that. (T F
?)
I’m comfortable _ showing my answers here to my ex mate, and _
asking him or her to answer these items and discuss the results with me now. (T F ?)
I feel a mix of calm, centered, energized,
"light," focused, resilient, "up,"
grounded, relaxed, alert, aware, serene, purposeful,
compassionate, focused, alive, confidant, and clear, so
my
is probably leading my
now. (T F ?)
Pause and notice what your
are
now, and what you feel. If you just learned
something, can you describe it?
Perspective
All adults and kids lie
occasionally. Our lies range from "shading the truth" to protect someone's
feelings (“white lies”), to withholding information ("lying by omission"),
to intentional major deceptions. We lie with words and/or with our
faces, bodies, voice tones, and silences. We (our agitated, distrustful
subselves) also tell ourselves small to major lies, from delusions
and distortions, through denials and repressions, to hallucinations and
paranoias.
In my clinical experience
since 1981, most divorced partners and stepfamily mates seem to have
low-
childhoods. That often means we have excessive
and
which combine to promote local or chronic dishonesty with
ourselves (e.g.
and others. A common protective self-lie is “I’m not
and
I don’t lie.”
As we had to as scared kids,
we adults intentionally withhold, shade, or distort our truth when we
believe it's too unsafe to do otherwise. Our past experience teaches that if
we're too truthful, someone will probably cause us significant pain. The
someone can be our own
(subself), who
causes acid thoughts
like "You worthless, pitiful, scumbag!", or someone who's approval
matters, or someone we depend on to fill key needs.
|
From this view,
overt
or covert lying is not a character defect, "weakness," or a
despicable moral "failing." It's a symptom of the normal human need for
security and comfort.
|
So if you want people (including kids) to
tell you their truth, take responsibility for making it safe enough for them
to do so. If they don't feel safe enough internally (from
excessive shame, guilt, and fear), that's beyond your
You can
control how you react to them.
Safe from what? From the
discomfort of criticism or disagreement, disdain, discounting, interruption,
scorn, threats, scoffs, smirks, jeers, ridicule, rejection, labels, and the
myriad other ways we cause ourselves and each other
# Reality
check: think of the last person you lied to, and identify the
discomfort you wanted to avoid. Now recall the last adult or child who lied to you,
including a child: what discomfort did they (probably) fear? Do you respect
their right to protect themselves from pain as much as your right?
Premise: protecting
another from "hurt feelings" can be (a) caring or (b) self-serving. Do you agree? If
you choose to tell the truth and see that it hurts your listener, I doubt
that your
praises you as a wonderful human being.
Protecting others from honesty's hurt or fear is often self-serving: it
helps us avoid guilt, shame, and remorse!
is hindering someone from admitting and changing a self-harmful condition
like an addic-tion, self-neglect, or false-self dominance, by not confronting
them respectfully. The line between short-term compassion and long-term
enabling can be hard to see. Has anyone ever impeded your growth by
withholding something important about how they saw or experienced you?
This article exists because
you and your ex mate have probably needed to lie occasionally or often to each
other. You may also lie to yourself, including lying about your lies.
Overdone, either of these dynamics destroys self or mutual
trust and integrity.
That cripples self and mutual
respect and good will,
which inexorably corrodes personal
and your
co-parenting
I suspect that personal and mutual dishonesty (i.e. fear
and unawareness)
plays a key role in most unhappy relationships. Has that been true in your
life?
A related problem is
what
happens to kids raised by caregivers that model, condone, or encourage
dishonesty - specially if they preach truth-telling, but don't always
do it.
Most families have their own and
ancestral secrets, ranging from harmless to
toxic. How you co-parents handle your families' secrets can significantly
affect the emotional climate of your homes and relationships by fostering
trust, pride, and security; or blame, distrust, anxiety, doubt, and even dread.
Did
the way your ancestors handled family secrets ("We don't tell strangers
our family business!”) affect you and any siblings or cousins? If you're
choosing to pass the need for secrets on, what shamed, guilty, and/or fearful
subselves control you?
I assume you're reading this
because you feel that you and/or your former mate have a significant
dishonesty problem like one of these:
You're afraid to tell your ex something important, and feel
guilty, ashamed, and anxious about the deception; or...
You fear telling someone else the truth (like your partner or a
child), because of how you
imagine that would affect your ex (e.g. significant fear, embarrassment,
guilt, anger, loss,...); or...
You're vaguely or clearly afraid to realize and act on your own
truth with your ex (denial or repression), or...
You're stressed because you feel that your ex is lying to you
and/or themselves, a child, or a relative, about something
important; or...
Your ex accuses you of lying when you're really speaking
your truth.
If one or more of these is happening and you're courting or re/married,
your partner's needs and values will often complicate "dishonesty" problems
like these. For example:
|
You
believe your ex mate isn't being honest with you about an addiction / a
health problem / money / a parenting behavior / breaking a confidence or
promise / or something else. |
 |
|
You hint or confront your ex on this, and s/he
denies it. S/He (her or his false self) may "punish you" for this accusation
by getting passive-aggressive, claiming you're dishonest about
(whatever), threaten to withhold visitation or money, blaming you ["I
can't talk to you about ___ because then you'll (create some big problem)"],
badmouthing you to your child/ren or relatives, or similar. |
|
|
|
You repress your
frustration, and drop the issue - and your partner criticizes or loses
respect for you for doing so ["How can
you let (your ex) get away with that?"]. |
|
|
|
This creates a classic
relationship
and may cause
you to withhold information from your partner. |
In this
common three-way scenario, there are a group of concurrent problems:
-
the ex may be denying s/he's
,
and/or...
-
s/he fears telling you the truth for various
reasons and can't say so; and/or...
-
s/he does say so, but you get defensive and fight, rather than
and
and/or...
-
you may be ruled by subselves who
(misjudge your ex);
and/or...
-
your confrontation feels
to your ex, rather than "=/=" (mutually respectful); and/or...
-
you and your mate aren't clear on what s/he
from you here;
and/or...
-
you partners don't know how to problem-solve in general, or unhook from
in particular; and/or...
-
something else...
As you see, it's easy to over-focus on the ex mate's "dishonesty" as the
problem and ignore or minimize the underlying stressors.
An effective alternative is to for you mates to patiently (a) acknowledge
you have a marital (vs. ex-mate) problem; (b)
to identify the multiple
problems (unmet needs), (c) prioritize them as teammates (vs. opponents). Then
(d) resolve them one at a time using shared Project-2 commu-nication
The best place
to start is to see whether each of you is guided by your
or
"some-one else."
Common Primary Problems
If "dishonesty" is hindering
co-parenting teamwork with an ex mate, some or all of these seven primary factors are probably
contributing:
1) You
and/or your ex
aren't aware that your co-parenting relationship is largely shaped by short-sighted
false selves
– specially in conflicts. Your
are controlled by
subselves dedicated to avoiding
pain from
and/or
of...
-
agonizing conflict,
-
rejection and
abandonment,
-
the (painful) unknown, and/or...
-
overwhelm from intense emotions.
Your
wise, empathic true Selves are
probably often
paralyzed and overwhelmed, and neither of you knows that. Added to this…
2) One or both of you
are
denying that blaming or shaming behavior (implication:
causes the other
to feel too unsafe to tell the truth. If the blamer admits their critical
attitude, s/he may declare "Your irresponsibility (or something)
makes me blame you (so it's not my fault!)"
Denials like
this protect your
subself against the familiar agony of
feeling
inept and wrong (i.e. bad). Avoiding this pain blocks your awareness
of the real problem: a
and significant
3) Like
many ex mates,
neither of
you knows how to
your
or mutual conflicts effectively. You’re each
unaware of...
Your combined ignorances leave your subselves dissatisfied (“upset”).
That causes them to deny, explain, argue, squabble, and/or withdraw and
avoid, rather than do win-win problem-solving as respectful co-parenting
partners.
More common primary problems
promoting ex-mate "dishonesty"...
4) One or both of you are
of your (a)
attitudes and
your (b) inner and mutual relationship rules
(shoulds, oughts and musts), and (c) your habitual coping strategies to manage fear
of pain. You also don't know that you can help each other safely learn these
things, and how to use your
fears to identify primary needs and fill them.
5) If one
or both of you fear
telling the truth to the other, you feel increasing
and
resignation or resentment as your deceptions and denials accumulate and
erode your integrity. You may also feel powerless and hopeless, discounted,
and enraged, or all of
these. And/or...
6) One or both of you
may withhold some truth because you feel your former mate is too fragile to hear
it. This often promotes
not personal growth.
It is
inherently disrespectful ("I don't think you can manage your life.")
Your ruling subselves’ real
motives are usually self-protection (e.g. from a strong reaction from your
ex), costumed as “kindness.”
7) One or both of you interpret all feedback about their behavior
as “excuses” and/or unjustified counter-blame. You or s/he deny,
defend ("explain"), and counterattack, vs. asking
"How can I make it safer for
you to tell me the truth?"
If you do ask this, the response may be (a) biased criticism (blame) from your
ex's false self, or (b) respectful honesty, misinterpreted as disapproval or
“defensiveness”
by your false self.
These are seven common
primary
problems underlying ex-mate "dishonesty."
Usually several of these occur at once.
Pause and reflect - does what you just read makes sense? What are your (subselves)
now? Are any of these
seven factors promoting
significant dishonesty in your relationship with your ex mate? If your false self answers, expect
a distorted response.
Continue with options to
reduce any of these factors that stress your stepfamily life now.
The Web address of this
two-page article is http://sfhelp.org/Rx/ex/dishonesty.htm