The Truth about Lying Page 8
Men’s sexuality is simple in that it goes through three stages: erection, ejaculation, temporary impotence. So, one man is all men. Women’s sexuality is multiple, non-measurable, maybe even mystical, certainly more complicated than men’s. Men’s sexuality is that of the masturbator. For men, sex is mostly masturbation with a real partner (Woody Allen: ‘Don’t knock masturbation, it’s sex with someone I love’). Men desire that the Other be dead in relation to desire (which they experience as demand). Men and women complement each other – but only at the level of their symptoms.
Men barter marriage for sex; women barter sex for marriage. Men ‘have sex’ while women ‘make love’. Men can separate these two in a way women can’t. For men, two’s a crowd; for women, three’s a couple. If women are bitches in love, men are bastards in heat. Men parade (they are cocky) just as women masquerade (wear more masks). Men are pimps; women are prostitutes. Men hear but don’t listen; women listen but don’t hear. Listening, however, is a rarely practised art-form. A man’s question is articulated in terms of ‘how’ – how to be a man. A woman’s question concerns ‘what’ – what does it mean to be a woman. Women want to be accepted and admired; men want to be envied. Women want relationships (love); men want respect (loyalty). Men are more logical (‘left-brained’), while women are more loving (‘right-brained’). What do men desire? Part-objects: some just want a safe place to put their penis. What do women want? Their partner: the whole world. Him entire – everything, so. The woman does not really exist for man as a real subject but only as a fantasy object. Woman cannot function sexually as woman but only as mother. The woman doesn’t exist, just as the father is always uncertain.
When in surveys relating to infidelity women are asked if they would prefer their partner to make love with someone else and think about them, the majority of women said that they would prefer if their partner slept with another woman while thinking of them. Men, on the contrary, said they would prefer if their partner slept with them while thinking of another man. Women, it would seem, want the love of the man (not his body). Women, by remaining (physically) faithful to a man, ultimately deceives him, because what she loves is a phantom, a ghost.
Antoine Tudal, the French director, philosophised thus:
‘Between man and love, there is woman. Between man and woman, there is a world. Between man and the world, there is a wall.’
Madame de Staël, the Swiss writer, for her part, proclaimed:
‘The desire of the man is for the woman. The desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.’
How Men and Women Lie in Different Ways
Now we come to address what is our central concern – how men and women lie. In lying, men are more direct while women are more devious (which can be taken as a compliment!) and indirect. Men are more deflective while women are more deceptive. Men are honest liars – they give themselves alibis; their lies are straightforward, simple even; women’s are more contorted, convoluted and clever.
Women lie with their lip line. Men lie with their wallets. Women lie about their age and their orgasms just as men lie about their money and their members. Men lie about their earnings and their height. Women lie about their age and their weight. Both sexes lie about the number of sexual partners they have had. Men lie about love (‘I love you; of course I do’) – they will say anything to get women into bed; women lie about sex (‘You were great’; ‘Honestly, it isn’t a problem’). Women want to be lied to but only in accordance with their desire. Men like to be lied to but in accordance with their egos.
Women lie when they say they would never change anything about you. They also lie about liking your friends. Women lie when they say they like spending time with your family; they lie about it not being a problem when you want to watch soccer on TV or drink with your mates. And if you tell her she looks great in that dress, she’ll accuse you of lying! Women lie when they say that they don’t mind you looking at other women, or when they say that they don’t care about a man’s bank account (they seek financial stability and security, so of course they care). Women lie with their bodies in that they can present to men a complete falseness in that they may have fake boobs, fake hair, fake eyelashes, facelifts, and fake orgasms (50 per cent of women lie about having had an orgasm). Women can fake cry in order to emotionally control men. Men are at war with women – they always have been, not to mention with each other.
Men lie when they say to a woman, ‘I’ll call you’! ‘Tell me lies,’ as the Fleetwood Mac lyrics go. When women say, ‘I just want you to be honest,’ they lie. Similarly, when a woman says, ‘I’m not angry at you,’ she usually is. Because many women have been hurt by men, this phrase is used as an emotional defence. She will pretend she doesn’t really care and erect the flimsiest façade to indicate otherwise, followed by the ‘silent treatment’.
Women lie in order to make the company around them feel more comfortable. Men lie by trying to create a better image about themselves. The question is: Why do women lie? (Well, why does anybody do anything?). Probably because they don’t feel safe. Women also lie for the sake of peace and harmony in the household; they tell their male partners that the handbag they purchased was on sale and they got it at a reduced price (‘oh that old thing, I’ve always had it’; ‘they were practically giving it away’).
Both men and women lie in approximately a fifth of their social exchanges lasting ten minutes or more. Over the course of a week they deceive about 30 per cent of those with whom they interact. Relationships between parents and teenagers are notorious magnets for deception. College students lie to their mothers in one out of two conversations (excluding mindless pleasantries and polite equivocations such as saying, ‘I’m fine, thanks’ when they are in fact feeling lousy). Eighty-five per cent of couples in one study reported that one or both partners had lied about past relationships and recent indiscretions. Courting couples lie in about a third of their interactions. Marriage seems to offer some protection against deception: spouses lie to each other in about ten per cent of their major conversations. Eighty-three per cent (in one study) of both men and women said they could tell if their partner was lying. A quarter of women lie about who the father of their child is. Psychological experiments carried out have shown that new acquaintances lie to each other at least three times within the first ten minutes of meeting.
Big lies can become toxic but little lies serve as a harmless social lubricant. There are kind lies: ‘Your cakes are the best.’ So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll lie (‘you’re saying I’m fat so? God, there’s no need to be that honest’).
Men lie because they see it as ‘normal’ and unimportant; they lie for the fun of it – being able to lie is felt to be a guarantee of their freedom. Men lie because they think women won’t understand. It’s based on a fear that she won’t see his point of view. Men think that women can’t face the truth. Men lie to avoid conflict (lying as an easy option) and confrontation. Men will exaggerate, distort and delete certain truths in the combative world of dating and relationships. Women lie to make others feel better: ‘This dinner is simply delicious, a gastronomical delight,’ as they gag on every mouthful. By contrast, at the heart of men’s lies is the male ego. Men lie to build themselves up, to enhance themselves rather than the Other, as is the case with women. ‘Yes, dear, I’ll be there in a second,’ as he continues to read the newspaper (there’s no argument to ‘yes’); few things annoy men more than women’s ‘nagging’, so he lies to avoid a scene. Just as few things annoy women more than calling their husbands (or any alternative) by their names and them not responding. I asked earlier, who is better at lying, men or women? We can see from the above analysis that lying is an equal opportunity employer. Perhaps women are better at it, though men get in more practice (four to five times more if statistics are to be believed). Some UK studies have found that men lie twice as much as women with six fibs a day compared to women’s three or four, but studies in the US claim we lie on average about 11
times a week. So there are marked discrepancies in the studies.
Men lie upwards. In other words, men pretend they make more money than they actually do, they pretend that they are taller than they actually are and that they have had more sexual partners than they did. Women lie downwards. In other words, women pretend that they are younger than they actually are; they pretend that they are lighter than they actually are and that they have had fewer sexual partners than is the case. Men lie and pretend to be what they will be in the future (or in their fantasy) while women lie and pretend to be what they used to be before in the past.
The top lies men tell: ‘I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong.’ ‘Coming dear.’ ‘I’ll have one last pint for the road.’ ‘I’d no signal.’ ‘My battery died.’ ‘I didn’t drink too much.’ ‘I’m on my way now’ or ‘I’ll be there in a second.’ ‘I’m stuck in traffic.’ ‘The cheque’s in the post.’ ‘It will never happen again.’ ‘It didn’t mean anything.’ ‘I don’t fancy her.’ ‘I am paying attention; don’t I always?’
The top lies women tell: ‘I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong.’ ‘This isn’t new – I’ve had it for years.’ ‘It wasn’t that expensive’ or ‘I got it in the sales.’ ‘I’m on my way now.’ ‘I don’t know where they are – I never touched your stuff.’ ‘I’ve a headache.’ ‘I didn’t throw it away.’ ‘We’re just friends.’ Women think they lie more cleverly than men. Often they do. Women lie about important issues; men lie about more insignificant things.
If lying is bad for your health and stresses the deceiver out physically and psychologically, why do we lie? Men think that lies are not very important, that it’s a part of their freedom, as I said earlier; most men lie because they think women won’t see their side of the story. They think that by lying things will go on as before but lies grow wings and truth has an uncanny way of getting out. Both sexes lie about their alleged loyalty, especially in matters of love. For few people are fully faithful. Where, dear reader, do your loyalties lie?
The unconscious can answer that. In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, Lacan says the following:
‘… it is as establishing itself in, and even by, a certain lie, that we set up the dimension of truth, in which respect it is not, strictly speaking, shaken, since the lie as such is itself posited in this dimension of truth.’
In other words, a too formal logic introduces absurdities. For example, to say, ‘I am lying’ is to tell the truth. ‘I am lying’ … about which ‘everyone knows there is no such thing’. Lacan explains: ‘It is quite wrong to reply to this I am lying – If you say, I am lying, you are telling the truth, and therefore you are not lying, and so on. It is quite clear that the I am lying, despite its paradox, is perfectly valid.’
To say ‘I am lying’ is not always the declaration of the intention of deceiving; it may operate in the dimension of truth. To say, ‘I am deceiving you’ is to send out a message in inverted form. It is to say, ‘I am telling you the truth’. In the way of deception one is telling the truth. Putting that another way, the (unconscious) truth stumbles in the (conscious) lie.
In summary: Men lie under the pretext of truth. What does this mean? At the level of factual accuracy, men’s statements are true, as a rule. Men use factual accuracy to dissimulate the truth about their desire. Žižek gives this example: when my enemy has a car accident due to a brake malfunction, men go to great lengths to explain to everyone that they were never near his car and aren’t responsible for the brake malfunction. While this is true, this ‘truth’ is propagated in order to conceal the fact that the accident realised their desire. By contrast, women tell the truth in the guise of a lie; the truth of women’s desire articulates itself in the very distortions of the factual accuracy of her speech. Women’s lies unknowingly articulate the truth about their desire; there is a difference, more so for women than men, between factual truth and subjective truth. For women, all truth is subjective.
Lacan once said: ‘I, truth, will speak.’ The truth will out when the Other of the unconscious speaks, since what it says is not nothing. The unconscious speaks at the margins of meaning – in puns, allusions, jokes, lapsus, logical contradictions, and language games. In all these, glimpses of the truth emerge. We see the world through language. Take this example: ‘This is not a pipe’ (‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’).
The words were written by René Magritte under his painting of a pipe. (The camera always lies and mirrors too). But it looks like a pipe. So why isn’t it a pipe? Well, because it’s a painting. The truth of the unconscious reveals itself through errors and lies. These, then, are our truth.
Cultural Lies
I cited a French painter above. There are cultural lies: the Irish, because we are storytellers and perhaps due to the English colonisation of us as a race, have a peculiar relationship to the truth. We Irish are more circuitous, more circumlocutious with our language which makes truth-telling more problematic. We love to exaggerate and embellish. Of course the laws of libel and slander in each country ensure that this doesn’t go too far; after all, some people’s reputations may be at stake.
The lies of childhood catch up on us all. They make us creative. It was Karl Popper, the British philosopher, who equated the capacity to lie with the ability to imagine. We have seen how Kant forbade all lying (except to children); if one lies one denies one’s right to one’s own truthfulness. David Hume, by contrast, understood much better that we all need to lie culturally, sociologically, just to get through the day; he pragmatically permitted the lie in order to allow for smooth social functioning. Few philosophers were prepared to go all the way with Voltaire who, in 1736, wrote:
‘A lie is a vice only when it does harm; it is a very great virtue when it does good. So, be more virtuous than ever. You must lie like a devil, not timidly, but for a while, but boldly, and persistently … Lie, my friends, lie, I shall repay you when I get the chance.’
(This is reminiscent of Martin Luther’s injunction to sin boldly). To the question: what if everyone were to lie? Groucho Marx responds: ‘Then I’d be a fool not to!’ It is the lie more than the laugh that is constitutive of man. Lying is as old as language. As humans we have been brought up to know the etiquette of this particular language game and to be able to distinguish between white lies and lovers’ lies. The question is: is there such a thing as the ‘perfect lie’? Proust has this to say in volume three of Remembrance of Things Past:
‘The lie, the perfect lie, about people we know, about the relations we have had with them, about our motive for some action, formulated in totally different terms, the lie as to what we are, whom we love, what we feel with regard to people who love us and believe that they have fashioned us in their own image because they keep on kissing us morning, noon and night – that lie is one of the few things in the world that can open windows for us on to what is new and unknown, that can awaken in us sleeping senses for the contemplation of universes that otherwise we should have never known.’
In short, our lies bespeak our truth.
The Unconscious
Throughout this book I have frequently mentioned ‘the unconscious’. However, in a sense ‘the unconscious’ doesn’t exist. Rather, to be more precise, there are unconscious mental processes. ‘The unconscious’ is best considered in terms of an event rather than an entity, as an adjective rather than a substantive noun. I want to end this book just as I began it, with a definition, perhaps more of a description, of ‘the unconscious’, by distinguishing four terms. These are:
1: Known knowns (things we know that we know)
2: Known unknowns (things we know we don’t know)
3: Unknown unknowns (things we don’t know we don’t know)
4: Unknown knowns (things we don’t know we know).
This fourth one is the (Freudian) unconscious. It is best brought out by way of a story concerning a worker (in some versions he is a prisoner) who was suspected of stealing. Every evening, when he was leaving the factory, the wheelba
rrow which he was pushing in front of him was carefully inspected but was always found to be empty until, finally, the guards realised that the worker was stealing the wheelbarrows themselves! Now the unconscious is not what’s in the wheelbarrow; it’s the wheelbarrow itself. The unconscious is an unknown knowledge. That’s the truth of it. The unconscious never lies.
Postscript
This book has attempted to answer the question as to how men and women lie in different ways and to adduce why this is the case, though I spent more time on an analysis of the former than the latter. We have seen that there are different types of lies and that hardly a single day goes by in which we don’t lie for whatever reason: to bolster our fragile egos, to compensate for an imagined or real hurt or damage done to our prestige or sense of self, to make the other person feel good or better about themselves, to hurt and harm the other, out of maliciousness or melodrama, from wanton cruelty or ethical kindness, to pass the time or simply for the sheer fun of it.