#39: Relationship dishonesty: is it a big deal to lie to your partner?

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We're going to be talking about relationship dishonesty today.

Oh, or said another way, maybe lying.

Is it a big deal to lie to your partner? I mean, after all, lying is a huge topic in the work that Tom and I do. When it comes to love, typically we ask ourselves, or when we stop to pause and ask each other what's most important in our relationships, honesty is usually near the top of the list. When we're dating, we can spend a lot of time discerning whether someone is lying to us or not. And if we have been in a long, long term relationship, it's one of our greatest fears. And by the way, I don't want to give anything away, but it's inevitable that at some point in time your partner is going to lie to you. Now, if that lie gets caught, it creates this sense of betrayal. Right? It's, oh my gosh, this must be a problem. But listen, have you ever stopped to wondered why it is we lie as people, as human beings? I'm going to be the bearer of bad news here and I'm going to share with you right here and now that everyone lies. Yes, even you. Some people simply lie more than others. And if I were to point out that lying is usually a sweetheart message, you would probably think that I'm crazy and have no idea what I'm talking about because everyone can relate to the pain of being lied to. Well, I'm not going to ask you to take it from me. We have an incredible guest who just happens to be a lie detective and expert on the matter. And we're gonna come back in just a moment after our quick break and have him join us with the show and he's going to tell you all about it. So join us for Is honesty in your relationship a big deal? I don't know. You'll have to join us to find out. We'll be right back.

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Welcome welcome back everybody. We are your host Tom and Stacy Bartley. Thanks so much for being with us along with our awesome engineer Eric Rider at the spaceship KKNW up in Seattle, we so appreciate him. Makes it all look easy on the front of this.

Yeah. And we have a special guest sitting in the back room that we can't wait to spring on you here. He's the lie detector that's going to help us have a Rover robust conversation.

Let me just remind you, we're going to open up our phone line. So if you have some questions about lying or just what it brings up or whatever, I'm going to encourage you to reach out to us because guess what? We will answer your question and help you take your next best step. There's no judgment. There's no blame and shame. Again, we are, what we like to say, as neutral and objective as we can be. And that number is 425-373-5527. And just so you know, you can just jump right. Our Eric's going to answer the phone and just jump right into what your question is. You don't even to say who you are or where you're from.

Yeah, 425-373-5527. In case you were thinking, oh, I wish they'd say that number again. So we're going to be talking about relationship dishonesty today. It's a big deal. And is it a big deal to lie to your partner? Typically when we ask ourselves what's most important in our relationships, honesty or the importance of honesty is going to be really near the top. And I know that this is because we all know what it feels like to be lied to and the pain and the confusion that that can set in within ourselves. And so honesty usually is something we, oh, they got to be honest, right? If they're a liar, they're out here, can't take it. And so when we're dating, we're typically kind of trying to filter, are they lying, Are they telling the truth, Are they genuine, Are they authentic? Those are all wonderful keywords that we use to try and identify who would be a great match for me and who wouldn't. If I'm in a relationship long term, I'm trying to get over perhaps some lies in some places of misstep and messes that we have made in our relationships. And sometimes, depending on how big or small they are, I have a difficult time letting go of that. So the idea of honesty and lying becomes essentially very important. But the reality is, is we all lie. And we're going to help you understand why that is and maybe create some peace on a new perspective around that today. And you don't have to take my word for it. We have an incredible expert expert to join us here today in the love shack. It's our lie detective, Mike Gordet, who happens to have a master's degree in forensic psychology, backed by over 20 years of experience working in the field of psychology. And he assists those with addiction and mental health and disability areas. Some really heavy lifting in the field that we work in. And in addition to which, get this, this is why he's here to talk to us about Lyme. He has specialized training and certifications in facial express and muscle movement. He also happens to know a lot about hypnosis. We share that in common. And body language, which gives him additional insights into what drives our human behavior. We know he is the perfect person to have this conversation with. And may I add, he joins Nathan Mum on a sister show right here on KKNW called techtime Radio. So he. He has that beautiful background as well. And we want to give a shout out to TechTime Radio and let them know how much we appreciate them as well. Mike, welcome to the show. It's great to have you for this very juicy conversation.

Hi, all.

I bet you don't.

How are you?

We are good. I bet you don't get asked out to lunch much.

Don't tell anybody.

Once we hear credentials like that, it's like, oh, heck no, I can't be going.

Yeah, I get a lot of questions about that. And that. That does make a lot of people nervous when they find out about my background. So, yeah, it can. And I don't really think of myself as a lie detector. I've just studied that as part of my. As part of my overall human behavior studies. But thank you for that compliment.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, when I was writing the description for the show, it kind of made me chuckle a little bit. I said, honey, we're gonna call him the lie detective.

Yeah, Nathan calls me the lie to me guy all the time. And he's. He's always trying to stump me to.

See if you can catch him in a lie or not.

Yeah, yeah, he's figured out how to do it, though.

Oh, that's hilarious.

I'll let you in a little bit on that a little later.

Okay, that sounds good. We actually have a family member who likes to throw out lies. And he laughs and it's so funny. And so. Yeah, you're right. We'll have to. We'll have to talk about why that's funny and. And get to that.

And I just. I'm just having a thought. And Mike's expertise I mean, if you know my brother well enough, if you're in, in his sphere, you can. His body language and things, I said, oh God, here comes a lie.

And.

So if you're around him enough, he has had some people that are strangers. And of course, every time we invite a friend or a guest into our family circle, he's on them. Right. Just trying to get him to believe he's a Navy SEAL and former Air Force pilot.

Is it. How believable is he?

Very believable. Know the nuances.

Yeah. And if you don't have enough experience in getting to know him and his, you know, his various bodily things and, and tonalities and those types of things. Things, you know. Yeah, he hold real people in bad.

I mean, bad.

It's great. So let's, let's. Okay, let's start with the conversation of Mike, why do we lie? Like, where does this come from? And do we always understand where we lie? So let's break that down into the first question. Why do we lie?

Okay, so as we talked about yesterday, this is a, this is kind of a complex system, but it's sort of a simple answer. We lie to protect ourselves. And ultimately, even when we're lying to protect someone else, we are somehow protecting ourselves. It's a survival response. And it's also something that social. That society needs for us to be cohesive. Interestingly enough, and I'm talking about social lies.

Tell us a little bit about socialize. Because that's my second question is what are the different types of lies and how do they plowed in our life? And by the way, if I may, I said in the beginning, in our intro, and I just want to make sure that there's some clarity here. Lies or sweetheart messages. Because I'm either protecting myself or am I protecting someone else? Right, right. Which is protecting me at the end of the day. That's why we call them that.

Yeah, yeah. We, we tend to do. We tend to all. Most of our behavior tends to come from these points of survival. It's the same thing as, you know, I, man, my survival mechanism just triggered a response. I need more coffee. Yeah, it's telling me to drink water. Right. So when we lie, the social lie is stuff that we already know. Like, how are you doing today? What's your response gonna be?

Fine, Mike. I'm so good.

Right. And then we engage in some chit chat. Right? What's, what's, what's the worst thing that can happen normally when you ask that question and somebody what's Somebody starts spilling their guts right there.

Yeah.

You would not believe the day I had today. Let me tell you all about it. And you just, you're like, oh, no. Oh, no. The alarm bells just go off. Right?

I don't have that kind of time, my friend.

Yeah. So we do this all the time. And in, in studies, in the first 10 minutes of a conversation, we've already lied two or three times. Right. That's. And because, because we do this and, and so we tend to put these on a spectrum. There's. We call these white lies or socialize. They're not really, they're not really considered to be bad. They're just, they're just sort of neutral. Because a lying, a lie takes two people. You have the person that's, that's contributing to the lie, and then there's the person that's either accepting or rejecting the lie. And we're doing this all the time. We do this with image engineering where we are, like in dating, you know, we're trying to put our best foot forward. So we are shining up and showing us, showing each other the most positive aspects that we think are going to attract the, the mate. And we all know that everybody has dirt on the bottoms of their feet. Right? So. So this is a, this is a participatory lie. You know, I'm going to tell you I'm awesome. You're going to agree that I'm awesome, but know that I'm not, and I'm gonna do the same for you.

Yes. Right.

And then, and then we move and we move on down the spectrum where we're talking about lies. And this is where, this is sort of where we get to the meat of the matter is lies are when I perpetrate an misinformation or concealment from you without your participation in it. So that means, that means. Right. I'm going to tell you, oh, I'm a Navy SEAL and string you along. Or in the case of relationships, no, I'm not cheating or no, I'm not doing whatever. I didn't spend all that money. No. You know, so porn, Right. Right. I'm not watching porn. All, you know, there's. And we do that because what happens, what happens if I admit that, you know, part of us is going, well, I'm going to really hurt that person that I'm telling. Right. And that's, that's something that we consider, but ultimately it's there go. It's. They're going to know that I'm not a good person or I'M going to feel guilty or I'm going to be responsible for this pain, and I don't want to deal with that.

And it kind of goes into this idea of, I don't want you to think less of me.

Yeah.

You know, there's the perspective I have of myself, but there's also the perspective I want you to have of me.

Right. Because one of our greatest drives in life is to belong. We. We need. We need relationships. And it's an interesting thing when we think about it in terms of, like, political parties fighting each other and everything. We still desire each other's needs. Right. We still desire those people to accept us, but when they don't and they reject us, we get angry and we start firing back because we want them. We want them to accept our way of thinking, and vice versa. That's how we get into these conflicts. So you're seeing. You're seeing this across every human facet where we're. Where we're doing these sort of, I want to be acceptable to you. I don't want to be rejected by you. And then. So we have that social piece, and then the other piece is a hierarchical piece. Right. We desire individuality. We want. We want to do things that are seen as positive, and we have a need for some sort of power and influence over other people. So, you know, like chickens, we. We try to find our pecking order.

We.

Trying to figure out where we belong in these social schemas. And part of those. Part of those schemas is lying.

Well, if. To. To get, you know, the. To convince you that what I'm doing is okay. To convince you that who I am is okay. To convince you that how this is affecting our relationship is okay. Right. So that I can continue to do what it is I want to do.

Right. Right. And that's. That's the generation of it. We are. We are trying to protect ourselves and make ourselves look good. Mm.

As I protect you, simply as I.

Can possibly put it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I want to protect you, too, because it's not that I don't. I think it's important for us to highlight here. I don't lie because I want to hurt you. I actually lie because I want to protect you. I know how you're going to feel about this thing that I don't feel is wrong, but I. I know that you're going to judge me and reject me and not accept me, so. To protect myself and you, because I know it's going to hurt you and create problems in Our relationship. I'm going to lie to protect you as well.

Yeah, There. There is that component, yes.

How about it? How about if you know your choice is not positive, it's not. Not good for you or for others, and you still lie, where does that fall on the spectrum?

Addiction, maybe?

Well, and I think this is really important because it's a coping skill for me. Right? It's. It's a real coping skill for me because I feel like I need it. And then I. I create the story that you just don't understand where I'm coming from. You don't understand me, and I disassociate from you now. And I make a story up in my head that I know this is going to hurt you, but you just don't understand why I need to do this. So I'm going to do this in secret, and I'm going to continue to show up as the person that you've expected me to be in our relationship and just cross my fingers and hope that this is going to go well.

Right. Right. And that's why. That's why when we're talking about interpersonal relationships, we want to be as authentic as we possibly can. But, you know, as we discussed, my version of reality is not yours. So even, even. Even our realities are perceptually different. So that there is always going to be a lack of understanding. And one of the. One of the things that we were talking about is that I could look out the side and say. And see green as the color of the sky. And I know that everybody else sees.

Blue, because that's what they've told me.

Because. Yeah, because that's what they've told me. That's what. That's what all the history books say. That's what everything says. Doesn't matter what we say. The. The fact of the matter is, is if I look out and I see green, that's my reality. And then it depends on how I'm going to function in my reality compared to other realities. Right? So if I want to be acceptable by blues, I'm going to lie, say that I see blue. If I want to stand out from the blues, I'm going to say I see green. And then they're going to treat me differently. And so that's. That's sort of the simple, very simple formula that we kind of go through. Is this going to create pleasure in my life or is this going to create pain in my life? And depending on which one that my brain predicts will happen, I act accordingly.

I agree because those. That's as difficult and as hard as it all is. Right. When the human motivation, emotional body kicks in, is this going to take me to where it is I think I want to go, or is it going to prevent me from where it is I want to go? And we can make up all kinds of stories about whether to go or not go. I call it the start or not stop. You know, start or stop. I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Start or stop. It's the hardest thing we ever do. Start something or stop something.

Yeah, that's. That's where. That's where our consciousness really plays a really large part in. In how we move through our environment. Right. So if I. If I decide to stand on the green color, that means I have to consciously defend that and I have to consciously continue to say that that screen, even though my emotion responses are going up and down and back and forward and all this other stuff, it's the same thing with, you know, with love. Right. How do we define that? We often define that as a feeling, but there's. There's these deeper concepts of love that we have to define through a conscious frame.

Right.

I love this person even though I'm really pissed off at them. Right. We have to consciously be able to do that because if we let our emotions go. And this is one of the problems with some of these emotional dysregulation problems like abuse is that I am letting my emotions dictate how I'm going to treat someone I love.

Yeah. And when somebody is mistreating somebody that they say they love, do you feel like that's really genuine? What are your thoughts on there?

Say that again.

If I'm mistreating somebody that I say I genuinely love and that I care about, do I really love them?

Well, you know, you're just all into these comments. I mean, this is. This is so. This is like we figured out yesterday. Lying is a very complicated system.

It is.

I'm saying I love you, but I'm treating you differently. And there's the incongruence. Right. There's the proverbial lie. When my actions and what's coming out of my mouth are congruent, we know that there's a lie present. Right. But do I believe I love you even though I'm taking my pain out on you?

Well, let's. We can take this into different contexts, Right. And this is one of the most important pieces we talked about yesterday was context, Right. From that person's point of view, that person may not understand that what the Definition of love is. And that's the only way they understand it. Because either they were treated that way or they were learned it through their childhood or whatever. There's a lot of experiences that go into that. So one of the reasons why we do things like that is because again, we go back to the relational aspect of acceptance and compliance. When I, like with my children, right. Or with any child, when they step out of line, we punish them. Right. The reason why we punish them is that we want their compliance back into what we believe is the right path. So we often do that out of love. Right? Don't. Don't look before you cross the road, right? If you. If you cross the road one more time, I'm gonna spank you, or I'm gonna put you in the corner, or I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put you in a timeout or whatever it is that we're gonna take your Xbox away. I don't know. Whatever that is you are doing, you were basically harming them. You know, you are giving them some pain in order them. In order to get them to understand that there's a bigger issue. So is that love?

Exactly right.

But again, here we have this thing because if I. If I decide or if I was raised that you haul off and hit them to get their compliance, can I just. Can I say that that is love and see how. See how these same two situations become incredibly different looking from different perspectives. So we have to first define what love is. And that's a difficult thing to define, as we all know. And then we have to consciously, consciously live to that ideal. And that's hard because our emotions don't want to live to an ideal. That's why being human is so fun all the time, is because we have these concepts of idealized living and morality and things like that versus our animal nature, which once. I want this, I want it right now, and I will do whatever I can to get it. And if that means I'm going to smack you around or yell and holler and pitch a fit or whatever it is, or lie profusely until you. Until you comply with my wishes, that's. That's natural and normal, but it's not moral or conscious. So.

So I love that you create that distinction, Mike, because, you know, when we become lied to or, or in a sense betrayed, or we're experiencing some form of verbal or physical abuse in our relationship, we're not saying it's okay, but what we are saying is that if we were to drill down on it it begins to all kind of make some, some crazy sort of sense if we learn the stories behind it. Right.

Yeah. In no way am I, in no way am I condoning that kind of behavior. If you're, if you're, you know, if you're in a relationship that relies on that version of love.

Right.

I would say get the hell out of there.

Yes.

And that even. That is a very difficult proposition because a lot of, A lot of people in abusive relationships continue to return to those relations.

Well, and it's, and it's usually because I don't have the skills to like, advocate for myself. I don't have the skills to feel like I'm worthy of something better. I'm confused about what love is for myself. I don't have a lot of like, self appreciation or worthiness with, inside of myself. I hate to use the word self love because it's such a cliche. And I remember being so frustrated by that when I was like starting out my journey like 30 years ago.

Like self love.

Yeah. Just love yourself. Oh, it's gonna be great. Just, if you'll just learn to love yourself, everything will be fine. And I go, oh, God, I don't. So what am I supposed to do? And how do I go about that? So it's, it's learning an appreciation for yourself that you're worthy to feel the way you feel and see it the way you see it. And that's where we begin. Right. And yeah.

All right, go ahead. Here's the irony of all that. We're trying to find these simple, simple ways of thinking because that's the way our brain works. But when we do that, we shortchange what we're doing.

So give me an example.

Well, some of the self Just love yourself. What is it? What does that even mean? Yeah, right. What does that mean? Does that mean that I take showers every day? Does that mean that I.

Buy the expensive lotion?

Yeah. What does self love mean? Right. And what I, what I said, one of, one of my biggest sayings when we talk about lying is the biggest lies that we tell are the ones we often tell ourselves. Right. And that's part of. That's part of that, that dynamic where my brain, your brain, all of our brains are built around this idea that if I do things, if I do things that are morally objectionable or, or not. Right. Compared to whatever social rules I'm compared against or my own belief system or anything like that, I'm going to get bad feelings. So I' experience pain. And so my Brain, my thinking brain will then work to justify what I've done. And we do this all the time. We talked about denial. There are other things called reaction formation, displacement and all these other things. Blame shifting, right? So it's not. When we have a relational problem, you know, like somebody in the relationship is feeling neglected and the person that is doing the neglect will justify the behavior, right. Irrespective of the person's feelings. He's like, I don't feel like you love me anymore. I totally love you. I just have a lot of work to do. I have to get this done by this certain amount of time. What do you want me to do? Just drop everything? Right. So I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to shift that blame back onto that person and then I'm going to make it their responsibility. And it's the same thing. It's the same thing that if you're being needy, right? You don't love me. I need you to love me. Love me, love me, love me. You can't love me, right? I'm saying that's your problem. When it's actually my insecurity that's saying, I don't feel like this person can love me or, or I need something from this person. I don't know how to articulate it.

Or I don't know how to give this to myself, or I don't know how to validate myself. I don't add up these conversations with myself, right? I believe that I'm going to be okay if you tell me that you love me or that you reassure me that I'm okay.

Right? So we tell them, oh, just love yourself and you'll be okay. And you know, and then they go, oh yeah, I'll just do that. And then they go out into the world and they, they receive like 20,000 bajillion messages that they're not good enough because they watch TV or they listen to the radio and everything says, oh, don't let your. Don't get old. Use this product. Don't look ragged. Use this stuff to clean your clothes. Wear this type of, you know, you have to look like this, you have to smell like this, you have to act like this, you have to do this. And so we have a society that has deterministic abilities to put us into these holes of non self worth. And we pay attention to it because that's, that's our, that's our human need to belong. So when somebody can is continually telling you don't belong, you don't belong, you know? Well, how do I belong? How do I belong? Well, you need to brush your teeth with this, and you have to wash your clothes with that. And you can't get fat. You can't get too thin, you know, and even it crosses all kinds of different lines. You can't be this color. You can't be that ethnic group is. It's kind of stupid. But that's the way we build our culture around these ideas. And we spend a lot of time using psychological tools in order to get people to buy stuff. And we don't take time to recognize that we're actually doing a disservice to folks by creating these pain points or accentuating pain points that they already feel.

Yeah, I so glad you brought that up. One of the things that makes me crazy about marketing, especially in the relationship space, is something to get everybody's attention is, say this one line, and they'll stay with you forever.

Yeah.

And I just go, oh, how come people can't see through that? That's ridiculous. There's not one line that's ever going to see you through anything. Right. Logically, that makes no sense, but emotionally, that feels really good. You're like, what's the one line? I got to know what the one line is.

I got to know the answer. And that's. That's our drive. If you look at. If you look at everything do we do technologically, we do socially, everything is about finding the simple answer to a problem. And so we isolate that problem. And when. Then we try to work to answer that problem as simply as possible, because that's the way our human drive is. We want simple. We want something that's easy because that's our. That's our perfect survival mechanism. And then we. We fail to realize that when we. When we solve that one problem, we create other problems because this problem is related to this one, which is related to this one. This one, this one. So. So we. We have this natural drive to figure things out, but we're creating all these problems trying to figure it out. Look at the technology. Last time we talked about how technology is. Is creating all this weird stuff, right?

And then we. I was just going to say, you know, when we were putting the show together yesterday, which was so wonderful, by the way. Thank you. So much we spent. I couldn't believe it. We got off the phone and it was like two hours later, and I'm like, oh, my gosh. Holy. But it's always so great to connect with you. But on a different note, you Restored a story with me that I think would be appropriate right here in the show where you decided to step in and be a car salesman. And what did you discover about lying when you.

Oh, boy. That's a dark part of my history that.

Okay, I'll hold your hand. We got this.

All right, I'll give you the lowdown. Okay. So when I was coming to Seattle, I was trying to look for a job, and I worked, and I work in the field of. Of psychology. And at the time I was working with youth, with addictions. And so I found an organization up here which served that population. And I got an interview and I got a. I got a job offer. And in the interim of getting everything set up to move here, that position was out budgeted. They. They took that position out because they couldn't afford to pay it anymore. And they neglected to tell me that when they offered me the job. So. So here. Right. And again, we can look at this as. Was that a lie? It could have been or not. And they failed. They failed to recognize that I would be placed in a. In a bad position or it. Or they didn't know it. And it just sort of surprised them. So here I was, adrift, no job, technically homeless. And I just bought a car so that I could move up here. And I was like, oh, crap, what the hell do I do? And I just bought a car. And one of the things that I had done while I was buying that car is I. I don't know if anybody has bought cars here before. And the painful experience that that can be while you're waiting around for everybody because they keep you waiting. And that's a purposeful thing. So you go. You go to a dealership. You go to a dealership to buy a car. And regardless of the fact if you've. You've landed on a car you like, they will still draw that time out. Just making it ins. It's just insufferable. And there's a reason behind that.

So my brain wants to know.

It's. It's really to have. It's. It's really. It's really to emotionally dysregulate you so that you're more amenable to what they want you to do. Do. Ah, right. So if you're upset or, or getting tired and anything they're going to be able to suggest, well, you need undercoat. And it's only going to cost as much a month. Okay, Just put it in the damn contract. I want to get the hell out of here.

Yeah, I Got it.

And I don't. I don't know that they know this consciously because this is such an unconscious process. But one of the things that I did was I was peppering the salesman. Just questions after question after question after question. What do you like doing? You like it? What do you do? Do you live by yourself? What a bl. So I was faced with this thing where I either had to stay where I was or move. Move to Seattle. And I decided I was gonna. I was gonna move regardless. And so I started calling all the local dealerships and asking them what it was like to sell cars. And like, I. Like, I told you, I got a lot of cussing out and I got a lot of hanging up because I wasn't interested in buying a car. But I got two. I got two people that told me what it was like. And the second guy offered me a job. I was like. I was like, okay, I'll do that. So here I am. I come to Seattle, and I'm a car salesman. I. I figure I'm. I'm a psychology student of psychology. I should know how to do this. I'm a pretty honest guy. I really, really do like people and. And want. Want to help them. So I think all this is going to be my thing. So I get here, I engage in this process, and I am really given a huge slap in the face because none of that stuff, none of that stuff seems to work. In fact, the more I try to be nice, the more people think I'm a liar, and the less I didn't sell anything. And then I started watching all the other salesmen and learning sales techniques and things like that. The more vague I could be, the more I could sell cars. And that's. That's where we were talking about context coming into this. This piece is that the context is buying a car is like being in a really bad marriage that nobody wants to get out of. Everybody distrust everybody, and. And there's a lot of animosity, and it's an adversarial type of relationship. And so they were coming in and they were putting a template on me as the used car salesman. And if I didn't live up to that, which is an interesting, ironic statement, if I didn't live up to being the used car salesman, they completely distrusted me. But the minute I started being that guy, the used car salesman, they responded the way they were supposed to respond. And this is. This is how social programs work. Work. Did you hear any of that?

Crazy. Yes. That is so wild, isn't that wild. Like you actually sold more cars because you were congruent with what people expected you to be instead of what you were trying to do, which was help them and serve them. So this starts to kind of point to the idea of we really want people to lie to us. Like in certain contexts, we really want people to lie to us. Right?

Yeah. We don't talk, we don't talk a lot about context, but context is one of the most important pieces of things because our brain, our brain with a lack of information will put that information in there in the narrative. And it's, it's almost always negative. Like, if I text somebody that I care about and they don't text me back, my immediate response, regardless, is, what, what's going on? What's wrong? Is it me? Is it, are they cheating on me? Are they, are they in a ditch somewhere and I need to help them? You know, there's all kinds of this negative information that our brains input and that's, that's our survival mechanism at work because it's, it's the idea that you need it, not have it, but have it, not need it.

You know, in our body of work, we teach this as the movie framework. Right. We all have this movie where we're connecting dots and we have whole scenes and narratives that are playing out and left with no information. It's a get your popcorn, get your coke. Things are about to turn like into a horror movie. Like, so get.

Here we go.

Well, I would say that. And guess what? We think everyone is at our same movie and we're the only ones at the dang movie is us.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's called illusory superiority bias. I love that.

That's a wonderful term. As we kind of bring this into landing this conversation, let's talk about some things that we can do. If maybe I find somebody that I'm in a relations relationship with or somebody that I'm potentially thinking about being in a relationship with, how do I navigate maybe some lies that are going on? How do I also do some self reflection in regards to, oh, gosh, so if everybody lies, am I lying? And at what point in time in that lie do I need to clean it up? Right? Do I need to clean up a mess?

Well, you're coming from the, the liar perspective. You know, the obvious answer is don't do it. I mean, there's always going to be this, the social lies. How are you doing today? I'm fine. How do I look? How do I look in this dress or how do I look in these jeans? Right. We talk. This is, this is the perfect idea about what, how, how do we navigate this? Do I lie? Do I tell the truth? Do I tell my version of the truth? Am I brutally honest? What do I do?

Yeah.

Right. So from that perspective, the, the person that's given the opportunity to lie, it's really comes down to understanding and being able to identify the motivation for it and then not doing it. And then if you have done it, cleaning it up, that, that the quicker you do that, the better. And I say there's a bell curve there. You know, you can, you can, you can have a lie and there's a certain amount of time that can go by that you maintain that lie. And maybe it doesn't matter to that person anymore. Right? But you don't, you don't get to determine what that bell curve is. So when I, when, if I lie to somebody that I care about, the best thing for me to do is come clean as soon as possible, because that, that shows them that a. I, I do care about them enough to be honest with them. I'm not trying to hurt their feelings. And by doing so, generally speaking, somebody is going to respect the fact that I told them sooner rather than later.

And finding out by the person who has lied to you is so much better than finding out some other way.

Yeah, because they always surface, right?

They always. My mom used to have a saying that it all comes out in the wash, and it really does. It's only a matter of time before we give ourselves away. Because I think at the end of the day, just energetically, emotionally, if we get into like, universal physics and quantum physics, my soul, myself, really wants me to be in alignment with who it is I have the capacity to be. And in spite of our thinking or our logic, right, or our minds, we give ourselves away. And Freud, I love this, this quote by Freud that says, no mortal can keep a secret if his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips. And I believe that this is why, because the self, the soul, whatever we want to call that aspect of ourselves is constantly trying to get us to align with who it is we are and who it is we have the capacity to be. That is the point, right, of this expression or this experience on the planet. And so it's so much better if we can, we can take that leap on our own. So I, I think what you said there, there's a couple things that, as we land this episode, I want to make highlight of, and it would be Fun. If each of us kind of take a takeaway from this conversation today that we really feel like is the highlight. Right. Because we've all had three different perspectives, three different movies, three different understandings of even the conversation that we are trying to share with our audience. I think it's powerful to say, okay, what was your takeaway? What do you feel like is the most important part?

Blah, blah, blah.

We'd love to do that every, every episode. But the, but the thing that I really want to drive home is, number one, we all lie. If somebody has lied to you, take a pause and don't say, you're such a liar, because that's going to create a fight. A better way to say is, you know, that just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Can you elaborate or help me understand? I feel like there's some incongruence here. Could you elaborate on this? I really want to understand where you're coming from or what motivated you to do X, Y and Z. And I want to be in your corner. Right. Help me be part of the solution instead of calling you on the carpet so that I can feel better or I can feel more powerful or I can feel in control. Yeah. It's not so much what you say, but how you say it. Right, right.

And this comes down to learning how to communicate with somebody, because we all have, we all have different levels of, of understanding and communication ability. So learning how to communicate is a, that's, it's a process, and it's a lifelong process.

Exactly. That we get better and better at over time. So, yeah, let's, let's, let's voice some takeaways. So, Tom, you've not spoke a lot on this episode. You know, you've been listening and kind.

Of taking, haven't had a whole lot of opportunity. No, that's not a lie. No, I, I, it's fascinating. I just think number one is let's just all come clean. You know, we all, we all lie. But before we, you know, then just such, you know, tear ourselves apart and down, you know, none of us can punish the pain out of any of us, including ourselves, is, you know, a lot of it is done for reasons. But I really like what Mike said. You know, if you have someone you really care for and you've, and you, you've shared, you've had a mistruth, you've told a lie, I would say the faster you clean that up from when that took place, I would wholeheartedly agree with Mike, the better, because these things And m. Experience, you know, they'll. They'll eat at you. You know they will. And in our body of work, we say the most intimate, most. The greatest place to create it or the greatest way to create intimacy. Excuse me, I was tongue tied. There is to create a place and sense and experience of permission and safety. So when we have the courage to share something that we know is difficult, we're not going to get our head taken off.

Right.

I mean, there's a lot to the environment of which will promote less lies.

Yeah, that's so true. And we have a difficult time, especially when we're being lied to, to understand, well, why does somebody feel like they need to lie to me? Am I making it safe? Am I. Is there space to have them come clean? Or am I creating an environment where they know it's going to be punitive, and if it's going to be punitive, then they're going to probably continue to lie to me? Right.

You see that? You see the dual nature of. Of. Of the liar and the lie. You know, I may be creating a situation that. That somebody is going to lie to me because they know if they do or they don't, they tell me the truth, I'm going to fly off the handle and do stupid stuff, so.

Yeah, exactly. So what's your takeaway, Mike?

Don't share about my dark car sales.

All right, fine.

No, that's okay.

That's just the. That's just a very interesting experience that I had. Yeah, yeah.

Adds to the depth of your resume, sir.

And I want to leave our listener with the idea of gifts, herself and others. Some Grace. We all lie, and we're all really trying to do the very best that we can. And if I'm lying, I'm protecting myself or I'm protecting you or both. And so we need to learn some skills about how to turn this communication thing around. Remember, it's not what you say, but how you say it. That's everything. Right. That's going to make or break the difference. So, Mike, thank you. Go ahead.

I was gonna just. I was just gonna say that. That my biggest thing is you learn. Learn why we do things. Things. And understand why that we do. When we learn and understand why we do these things, we are less likely to repeat them. And we're more likely to give other people grace when we notice what they're doing. I love that.

So we didn't want to miss that. That's a huge takeaway. Yes. Thank you so much. It's always such a pleasure we look forward to having you again on the show.

It's our. It's our. It's our lie detector expert.

Yeah, we'll have him back. Yeah.

So you look to talk about lying forever?

Yes. And so where do people find out other than obviously you're co hosting on techtime radio? Where else, Mike, can people find you?

You can find me on www.mikegorday.com. and I think it's J. Michael Gorde and Facebook book. Sweet. Love it.

Thanks so much, Mike. Big squeeze to you.

All right. Thanks for having me again.

You betcha. We'll see you soon.

Okay, take care. All right. Bye.

Bye.

Bye, bye.

Hey, we're gonna jump into Follow the Fun. So we do an episode on Follow the Fun because it is the way we emotionally refuel and recharge. And let's be honest, you know, with all this conversation about, you know, lying.

Yeah, man, I've gotta.

I gotta wipe my brow on that one, baby.

I know.

I kind of makes us all sweat. So we're gonna change the station so.

We can go from line to Follow the Fun. That's a beautiful transition, ladies and gentlemen.

And we can. And this week's Follow the Fun is a trinket gift hunt. All right.

Trinket gift hunt.

Yeah. So here's how it works. For 20 bucks and 30 minutes, you need to take somebody that you want to connect deeper with. It could be your lover, it could be your friend. It could be a daughter, a son, a brother, a sister, anybody that you want to create a connection point with with. Take them to your local store, whether that be a mall or a Target.

But now, do you take them or you go ahead of time?

No, no.

You go together or you go together?

Yeah.

Okay. All right.

And the purpose is to find and purchase as many different fun, crazy, significant, or silly trinket gifts as possible with your $20 for the person that is with you.

So the person you're. You have the $20 and you're going in the. The significant person in your life is with you. And then you're just. They're. They're kind of shadowing you.

No, no, no. You're going to divide and conquer. So it's like 1, 2, 3. You go get what you think would.

Be fun, and the other person does the same.

And then we meet back. Whether we meet at the center of the mall to do this, or we go home and share our favorite beverage, we give our gifts in the little sack or multiple sacks, and as we pull them out, share each gift and why it is. You chose this gift for the person.

So what, what did you, what did you get me?

Well, I got you some razors because I know you love a sharp razor to shave that beautiful bald head of yours.

There's a lot of razor activity here, ladies and gentlemen. If you're watching us, if you're, if you're, if you're listening to us, I'm.

I'm bald, by the way.

But yes. So he loves a really good clean.

Yeah, you gotta have, I mean, this is important. There's a lot of, a lot of skin to, to take care of.

And of course you love chocolate. So I got you a little chocolate bar.

Dark chocolate. Not, not, not like you know, 90 cow kale. Cacao, cacao, cacao. You know, you know, 70ish percentage. Otherwise it gets a little bitter.

Okay.

Just so you know.

And I also got you a little button that when you push it, it makes us laugh because Tom can get kind of serious and every now and again I gotta shake him up a little bit. And so when he hits the button, there's this variety of like, different things that go. And so when he's sitting in there all serious and stuff, I'll push the button and oft times I get the look of like really right now. And then he'll laugh. Inevitably, I can get a laugh out of him. So those were my three things. And you're gonna have to go through my three things really fast because we're.

Certain actually only got you two. And that was, that was at two. I. I've got you the best $10 bottle of wine. It's the Italian bottle of wine that we just experienced enjoyed earlier this week. That's from Italian, a wonderful Colombian coffee. Because we love wine.

We love coffee. Yes. So let me ask you, are you stuck because there's nothing to be done or are you stuck because you won't allow yourself to try something new? If you will do the follow the fun moments that we share with you each week on this episode, I promise it will change not only the experience with inside of yourself, but it will change the experiences that you have have with others.

And, and you know, this is a really easy thing. Oh, that, that sounds cute. That sounds wonderful. But there's nothing like participation. Participation like something a tongue tied there. Nothing like a participating again. Stacy and I, look, we, we do this because it's important for us. It's important for any of us. And it really does change up and it's, it's really not that big. We think it's a big deal. But if you would just step in and do it, it really, really can create a really unique new experience.

Yeah, for sure. So if you're not already on our fun list, go ahead and get on there. We give you weekly fun tips as well as we do a giveaway each month. We just did it for July, so go ahead and do that here at the end when we do our intro, it'll give you all the juicy details about how to do that. And as we land this episode today, we now have given you a lot to think about and we want to give you something to feel. So each week we choose a theme and there's nothing to help us feel more than music. Music puts us into a different place with inside of our human experience. Experience where we get to feel the conversation that we've actually talked about. And as we've talked about lying today, this song I think sums it up perfectly because they're saying I love you, I remember you. And if I were to ask you if you love me, please lie to me. Tell me that you do because that's going to help me feel better knowing that we all lie and that we have these places where we're trying to sort it out for ourselves. I want you to give yourself some grace and maybe somebody that you love some grace face and to as you're sharing our lies or our messes and we're in an effort of trying to clean them up, may we all seek for understanding instead of the shame and the guilt and the beat up that is traditional around this conversation of lying. You can check out this week's song along with all the other songs from my past episodes by going to our website@stacybartley.com and clicking on the podcast link. And there you will see a beautiful Spotify link that has all of our previous shows with all of the songs that are associated and I would just.

Share because I'm Tom the detailed guy every episode. Correct me if I'm wrong, Mrs. Bartley. The song for that episode is listed.

In the show notes.

Yes, yes. And why we chose it. Oh, and I forgot to tell you what the song is. For God's sakes. It's five sos Lie to Me.

Awesome. Well, you know what? We're gonna wrap land this episode. Thank you so much for being here. That that takes care of this week. We will see you the same day, same time if you're listening to us live next Thursday, 1pm Pacific Standard Time. Otherwise you can catch us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Yeah. And thank you so much, Mike or Day.

Thank you, Eric Rider, our incredible engineer.

See you next week.

Thanks for joining us today in the love show Shack. We hope you came away with something that made your toes tingle. To learn more about everything you heard on today's show, go to stacybartley.com podcast Love the Show. Help us spread the love by sharing the show with others. Okay, everybody, time to go. We gotta close the doors to the Love Shack for this week. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Come back next week, though, and join us for another edition of Love Shack Live with Tom and Stacey Bartley.