Relationships rely on mutual trust and communication. Lying in a relationship or being untruthful can lead to jealousy, doubt, and distrust.
There are some things you should absolutely never lie about, which can be particularly damaging to a healthy relationship.
Here are the five top things to avoid lying about in your relationship:
1. How you really feel
Especially in a new relationship, it is easy to be swept up in the tide of emotions and excitement and perhaps not be completely truthful about how you feel. However, lying about the extent of your feelings is a sure-fire to cause problems in a relationship further down the line.
Likewise, in a long term relationship, as emotions become less intense with time it is all too easy to fall into a routine and forget the importance of communication. Talking about and sharing our feelings is essential to remain happy and content. Bottling things up will take a strain on your mental health.
Opening up and expressing your desires and dreams is the best way to stay in tune with your wellbeing. This ensures you are both heading in the same direction and can discuss and talk through any differences you may have.
Sometimes couples grow apart and need to move on, but ignoring your feelings and hoping they will ‘go away’ will only make the tension worse.
2. Cheating
Loyalty and trust are the cornerstones to a successful partnership. Many people do stray away from their partner, even if they are in a perfectly happy union. This can happy for many reasons such as boredom, craving excitement or just a silly move on the spur of the moment.
If you have been unfaithful to your partner, there is a strong chance they will find out. Finding out from a third party is likely to be even more disastrous for your relationship than finding out you had been lying about it all along.
Infidelity can break the strongest of relationships, and it can take a huge amount of work, focus, compromise, and mutual understanding to be able to overcome it. If you haven’t come clean about cheating and your partner has found out through somebody else, the chance of achieving this is small.
3. Finances
Being part of a couple involves practicalities as well as romance. If you are looking to spend your life with another person, you will need to have an understanding of each other’s careers, aspirations, lifestyle expectations and style of living.
Having one extravagant and irresponsible partner and another who is diligent and careful with money is sure to cause friction. It is important to be open and honest about your finances and your expectations.
Lying in a relationship about your spending, earnings or outgoings is a fundamental breach of trust and could cause a void between you which is too large to overcome. You should be working together as a team to achieve your mutual goals. So, having open and honest discussions about your finances – no matter how boring you might find it – is essential.
4. Your future ideals
This could apply to any big decisions in life, but most often refers to children. Wanting a family and never wanting to have children are often decisions that people make fairly early in life. These perspectives are often influenced by their culture, upbringing and own maternal or paternal feelings.
Lying about whether or not you want kids is only going to cause tears. A person who has always wanted a huge family and a person who can’t stand the idea of the responsibility of parenthood have vastly different ideas and expectations for their future lifestyle.
Even though it might not be a topic for discussion on a first date, make sure to have an open dialogue about your plans for the future. That could include your aspirations involving family, living situation or whether you expect to be traveling the globe in the next five years!
Sharing your aspirations and ideals could inspire you to try new things, and will mean you are on the same page before things move along any further.
5. Your marital status
We have all seen someone who does this; they fancy a little excitement and take off their wedding ring for a night out with their friends. Alternatively, there are separate people who although still technically married consider themselves single.
This is all well and good, but it is vital, to be honest, and lying in a new relationship about your previous partner or marital status will start a new relationship on a foundation of dishonesty.
If you are still married but plan to divorce, there is no stigma in explaining this. It is far better to be open and explain what your situation is. If your prospective new partner finds this to be a turn-off, then they clearly aren’t the right person for you.
Any new relationship which has a chance of becoming something more serious needs to be formed on the right basis. Being attracted to someone is the first step, but you need to know, understand and appreciate every aspect of one another’s lives if you are to spend many happy years together.
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