Is Lying to a Partner Ok?
If you were in a 20 year marriage and you cheated on your partner in the middle of it, would you tell them now?
We all tell little white lies.
We’ve all maintained the illusion of Santa Claus for little kids, told a partner that a dress didn’t make them look fat, and fed into a delusion a friend had when they were struggling.
Is lying ever justified?
Maybe in some cases it might be. If you told children the truth, it might not be compelling enough for them to get into good habits.
Telling a child not to fight because they’ll hurt others and regret it afterwards is not as compelling as telling them that God will send them to hell. An obvious exaggeration, but one that highlights the point that lies can be beneficial.
Is it better to tell your 90-year-old grandma suffering from dementia that her husband is dead? Make her cry constantly with the icy coldness of the sobering truth?
For those who have a limited or compromised intellectual capacity, little white lies may save them the pain of understanding the truth in their limited capacity.
But those with healthy mental faculties seem to always benefit from the truth.
For example, you would never withhold the fact that someone’s parent or child died when they were, say, doing a military tour. At a certain point, people can handle the truth.
Even people who have solid rational abilities need to be told white lies. You can’t tell your coworkers everything going on in your life, or they may weaponize it.
This causes us not only to add that lying may be ok in the case of someone who is cognitively impaired, but also someone who is morally deficient (only a morally deficient coworker would use something like this against you).
The conclusion then follows that we should tell people who are in full control of their rational abilities and are morally vetted the truth.
Why? Because they can handle the truth and properly analyze it so that it doesn’t do them any harm and benefits them.
Knowing that a parent died can benefit someone? I would say yes, because death is a part of life, and the rational person acknowledges this. Living in a deathless world would be pure delusion.
In general, it seems like the truth benefits rational and moral people because they can use this information to improve themselves and others. If their parent died, they will mourn and possibly use that experience to touch others.
This leads to a good question, my friend Josh asked me while having breakfast in my apartment on Sunday.
He asked “If you were in a relationship for 20 years, but had cheated at the 13 year mark and then had gone 7 years without cheating, should you now tell your partner?”
This made me wonder if ignorance is bliss. You could now be happy with your partner, and telling them might put a rift in the otherwise healthy relationship. They may decide to leave you with that information.
But if you respect your partner, keeping that information from them would give them inaccurate information as to who you are. You would be taking their agency and free will.
Further, you would be plagued by insecurity and guilt. There would be dissonance between who you are (a cheater) and who you pretend to be (a faithful partner). The guilt would eat you alive, and surely it would come out in nasty subconscious ways.
But Alex, you say, we get away with telling children about the Easter Bunny, but we can’t tell our wives a little white lie?
Sure, if you don’t respect your wife. Suppose you don’t consider her on the same level as you morally and intellectually. But then that wouldn’t be a loving relationship.