Admit Your Responsibility In Being Lied To...

I’ve caught people lying to me in the past, and I got frustrated until I realised that I was partly responsible. Hear me out…

First, how do you know they are lying to you? Are you certain that they are lying to you? Sure, you can never be certain they are telling you the truth either. This is the kind of humility you need before you can address a lie: the humility of knowing that there isn’t much you can know for certain.

Understand that people lie because they are afraid of your reaction to the truth. And you too lie all the time for the same reason. We lie because we fear people’s reaction to the truth. And people are responsible for giving us the impression that they would react badly to whatever we need to lie about.

Ask yourself: Do you deserve to be lied to? Have you shown to them that you will react badly to certain things, so that they feel terrified to be the messenger of bad news? Have you shown intolerance to something? Maybe that something is what they want to hide from you, and they’d be right to lie to you in that case.

In the end, if you are being lied to, it is often your fault because you made people feel afraid to give you the truth. This way, you don’t deserve the truth. You have shown intolerance, inflexibility, arrogance, obnoxiousness, irritability, threat, and a general propensity to make people feel uncomfortable with you about certain topics.

If you want to be told the truth always, you have to prove to people that you can be understanding and accepting no matter what happens, or what they tell you. Be humble, be compassionate, and be empathetic so that the people around you feel that they can tell you anything without you losing your shit, and without you withholding your approval of them.

And this is why people usually lie: they fear that the truth will cost them your approval. So you need to show that your approval of them does not rely on the things that you don’t want to be lied to about. For example, if your friend lied to you about whom they voted for, it means you’ve shown them that your approval depends on what people vote; and that’s on you as much as it is on them. You’ve shown your preference for a comforting lie, and they have shown their cowardice and neediness of your blackmailing approval.

Of course this doesn’t apply to liars who want to deceive and manipulate you. In that case, you don’t deserve the lie, but you do have some responsibility if you allow yourself to be manipulated. All lies are bad because they are the product of cowardice. But don’t deceive yourself: many times, you deserve to be lied to.

Once you understand your potential complicity in the lie, you can talk to the person who is lying to you. Start by saying that you understand how you may have provoked them to lie to you. Then promise that you will not overreact or respond negatively to the truth, because the truth is what you want right now.

Incentivize them to give you the truth: Tell them you’d appreciate them if they respected you enough to acknowledge that you can handle the harsh truth, rather than needing a comforting lie instead. If they lie to you, it means they don’t respect you enough; they only respect you enough to fear your reactions. And meaningful respect is earned. This is your best chance of getting the truth from them.