Truth in relationships

I recently watched an episode of Criminal Minds where Supervisory Special Agent Morgan (played by Shemar Moore) helped a falsely jailed father prove his innocence and at the end the following quote was given.

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered. The point is to discover them.” Galileo Galilei

You may be asking yourself, “What’s that got to do with relationships ?”. Well, everything.

Early On

When we are in the early stages or our relationships, one of the things that we do is to try to find out what we can about the other person. Their likes, dislikes, their dreams, hopes and aspirations. I would hazard a guess and say that you would expect that the responses and information you were giving and receiving were honest and truthful. I’m sure you would agree that if they weren’t you would feel deceived, misled or just plain lied to.

As we go

Well as we go along in our relationships we quite often fall into some “less than honest habits”. Now for many that may be some “fairly benign” misleading, lying (including white lies) through to the more serious breaches of trust like emotional or physical affairs.

Now while I’m on that last point. How people deal with affairs are wide and varied, some will forgive the betrayer and for others, it’s a deal breaker. Now here’s the interesting bit. An affair doesn’t mean the marriage is over. It can move forward and even be better than before, it comes down to how both people deal with the betrayal and whether it’s something they choose to work through it.

So if you feel you have the capacity that at some time in the future you could forgive the betrayal then don’t close the door because the Greek Chorus says you must. Give it careful consideration, maybe do some discernment counselling to see if you both can and want to repair and rebuild the relationship and if so, (it won’t be easy but) commit to the process and give it a go.

Remember, you don’t have to know how, find a marriage counsellor, accept that it will be a slow and sometimes challenging process but the end result can certainly be well worth it.

So what about the truth ?

So here’s the thing, some say it’s ok to keep secrets from your partner and some say not. Some say it’s ok to tell a little lie and some not. A rule of thumb may be, don’t do it if you would be hurt or upset if your partner did the same thing to you. A great rule of thumb but would still lead to some “wriggle room”.

Here’s an example of what a husband said to his wife in one session we had after we discussed the fact that she felt he didn’t trust her.

Paul & Mary were in counselling because Paul felt he couldn’t trust Mary like he wanted to and Mary complained Paul was controlling.

After some Dreams within Conflict work, Paul disclosed that he felt it was really important to him that he could trust his wife but found that after years of little white lies he found that whilst it wasn’t that he didn’t trust Mary he just found that there was distrust. Yes there is a difference.

If it wasn’t the dress she just bought but said “that old thing” or the shoes she bought “years ago”, through to “I was flat out all day with the kids” but a mutual friend saw her out having coffee with her brother that same day (which of course caused a whole different argument because the friend didn’t know it was her brother).

What Paul finally found the courage to say was, “If you’re going to lie to me about shoes and a dress then why wouldn’t you lie about having and affair after all, you said you were flat out all day with the kids but there you were having coffee with some other guy”. The sound of his voice slowly deflating gave away his feelings, it was then that Mary “got it”. Without realising it, Mary had taught Paul that she was not trustworthy so when the coffee incident came along, it appeared to be just more of the same. Deception.

Yes we can say he’s insecure, controlling maybe but the reality is that lies, no matter what the intent, chew away at trust. Like Henry Winkler says, “Assumptions are the termites of relationships.” Lies are too. They erode trust, they slowly eat away at our willingness to see the best in our partner.

So what’s this all got to do with the quote ?

If Paul & Mary were able to communicate differently, sharing what’s important to them (such as the importance of trust for Paul) things might have been different.

By the way later on in counselling, Mary talked about why she felt it necessary to lie about some things. While growing up, she would watch her mother hide things from her father, to say one thing and do another. Effectively Mary was taught “that’s what people do”. Finding this out helped them both change some patterns of behaviour. After some discussion, Paul said “It doesn’t make it right, it just helps me understand why”.

Why talk about trust (or anything else for that matter), after all trust is a given, isn’t it ? Is it ? We all have different ideas about what’s right & wrong, what’s seen as trustworthy and what’s not.

What is really important is to find out that truth, go looking, ask, make it a priority to really understand your partners inner world. Maybe then you will be in a better position to understand them.