Why is lie a bad word

According to the Hebrew Bible, the ninth of God’s Ten Commandments instructs that no person shall bear false witness against their neighbor. In other words, you shouldn’t lie. All mainstream religions agree that lying is wrong.

Sure, you don’t need to have faith in a higher power to understand that telling untruths is both foolish and immoral. There are many logical reasons to avoid telling lies. Here are a few of them:

1. Remembering your lies

How good do you think your memory is? If you tell somebody a lie, you have to be able to remember exactly what you told them. If ever you forget the lie you told, there is a chance that you’ll contradict yourself later on and subsequently get caught.

You may even find you need to tell a second lie to avoid being found out for the first one. Telling numerous lies obviously means even more remembering.

Before you know it, you may find yourself tangled in an intricate web of drama and deceit. Life is so much simpler when you endeavor to be straightforward and tell the truth.

2. Losing people’s trust

When you get caught lying, people tend to mistrust you from that point forward. If you lie habitually, people will become especially wary of you. There may come a point in time when nobody believes anything you have to say, even though you may actually be telling the truth.

When someone mistrusts you, they are unlikely to want to be your friend or have a close relationship with you. Hence, the habitual liar is often a very lonely person.

3. A bad reputation

When people know you for a liar, your reputation is basically ruined. What’s more, it’s human nature to gossip, so news of your lies will quickly spread. Getting caught telling lies is embarrassing, and it makes you look like a light-headed person.

You see when you tell a lie, you assume that you won’t be discovered. Hence, you presume that you’re smarter than the people around you. Only a liar underestimates other peoples’ intelligence. Do you really want others to think you’re a moron because of a lie you told?

4. It’s addictive

At first, lying can seem rewarding. When someone swallows a lie you’ve told and you get your own way, it can provide an addictive feeling of power. Because you got away with lying once, you may feel tempted to lie again to see what you can gain from it.

Before you know it, you’ve told so many lies that it becomes difficult to remember exactly what you said, and that means extra stress. That’s when you start to realize that lying is the same as anything else addictive. There are negative consequences associated with it. Yet once you become hooked on lying, breaking the pattern can be difficult.

More: 8 Worst Habits of Unhappy People and How to Break Them

5. Legal ramifications

While telling the odd white lie is unlikely to get you into trouble with the law, more serious lies could. Perhaps you think you’d never tell one of those more serious lies.

However, when someone gets into the habit of lying, it usually starts with small lies and slowly escalates. The lies you tell today might not get you into trouble with the law, but what about the bigger lies you may tell in the future?

6. Shattered relationships

How do you feel when you find out that somebody else has been lying to you? Most people feel rather angry when they discover they’ve been lied to.

When the person that lied is someone that supposedly loves you, the lies can even cause emotional pain. Many loving relationships between good friends, family members and lovers have been completely ruined because of a lie told by one person to another.

Is telling a lie worth the distress that it could cause the people around you? Is it worth losing a relationship that is valuable to you? Do you want the people who care about you today to dislike you tomorrow? These are questions you should seriously consider before telling a lie to someone you love.

7. Self-esteem

Telling a lot of lies doesn’t just have an impact on the way other people see you. It also has a detrimental effect on the way you see yourself. It is difficult to like the person you are when you dislike what you do.

The more lies you tell, the less respect you will have for yourself. When you don’t believe in yourself, it’s more difficult to reach personal goals and objectives. It also makes it hard for other people to believe in you.

8. Losing your identity

Telling lies is often a complicated business. People will expect you to reflect the picture you have painted of yourself with the lies you have told.

Suppose, for example, that you’ve lied about being wealthy and successful. The people who believed that lie would probably expect you to behave with a little class and decorum.

Hence, when you regularly lie about who you are, you may find that you have to play a different part depending on who you are with at the time. Do you really want to live a life that involves playing different characters instead of just being your natural self? If you are constantly acting because of lies you’ve told, it’s easy to lose track of who you were originally.

More: 7 Ways to Figure Out What You Really Want in Life

If telling lies has made your life difficult, perhaps it is time to start telling the truth. Once you start telling the truth, you will find your life starts to become less complicated. Instead of worrying about a certain person discovering the lie you told, you’ll be able to focus on getting on with your life.

Do you think lying is bad?

Lying is bad because a generally truthful world is a good thing: lying diminishes trust between human beings: if people generally didn’t tell the truth, life would become very difficult, as nobody could be trusted and nothing you heard or read could be trusted – you would have to find everything out for yourself.

Likewise, How lies can destroy a relationship?

Perhaps the most obvious impact that lying has on a relationship is the erosion of trust one person has in the other. … Whether like a storm that causes a landslide, or rain that slowly eats away at rock, lies can utterly change the landscape of a relationship and make it uninhabitable for one or both parties.

Also, Is lying OK?

So while honesty is usually the best policy, there are exceptions. Just about all religions and belief systems, however, extol the virtue of honesty. So while it’s okay to lie, in most cases, it’s better to strive not to.

Secondly, What can dishonesty lead to?

Dishonesty in the workplace includes employee theft, submitting incorrect time sheets, lying to managers and co-workers and unethical conduct such as harassment or drug abuse. When a small business experiences dishonesty in the workplace it can result in lost revenue, a drop in productivity and lower morale.

Furthermore Is hiding the truth lying? A lie is an intent, whether by omission or commission, to deceive or misdirect. Hiding the truth about something with the purpose of deceiving or manipulating a person is a lie.

Should you forgive a liar?

If a person lies, and is unrepentant about it, you are under no obligation to forgive. If the liar is sorry, you still do not have to forgive. Generally it is a good idea to do so, but the choice is yours. Forgiveness is not automatic just because the other person is sorry.

Why do husbands lie?

Why People Lie In Relationships

Trying to protect someone else’s feelings. Avoiding conflict, embarrassment, or having to face the consequences of their behavior. Fear of rejection or losing their spouse. Hiding something they did or did not do.

Who lies most in a relationship?

Men lie more than their partners according to the study, and one in 10 claim to do it regularly. One in three of the 2,000 adults questioned admitted that the lies they tell their partner are serious lies.

What is a good lie?

A « good lie » is an untruth in which the justice of the outcome supersedes the wrong of having lied. Mamere learns the concept in an English class and applies it dramatically. The film leaves a few narrative gaps.

How do u stop lying?

We’ve got some answers to this question that can help.

1. Examine your triggers. …
2. Think about the kind of lies you tell. …
3. Practice setting — and sticking to — your boundaries. …
4. Ask yourself, ‘What’s the worst that can happen? …
5. Take it one day at a time. …
6. You can tell the truth without telling all. …
7. Consider the goal of the lie .

What’s a black lie?

In everyday life, people sometimes tell “black lies”, and sometimes “white lies”. … However, a large difference exists between black lies and white lies: With black lies, the deceiver tries to gain something at the cost of the deceived. In other words, the deceiver exploits the deceived out of self-interest.

How do you deal with a liar?

How to deal with liars.

1. Separate yourself from their behavior. One of the biggest problems we face when encountering a liar is usually that of personalization. …
2. Check and confirm your facts. …
3. Protect yourself. …
4. Ask for the story in reverse. …
5. Call them out. …
6. Hold on to your integrity. …
7. Always reflect. …
8. Accept who they are.

What defines dishonesty?

1 : lack of honesty or integrity : disposition to defraud or deceive. 2 : a dishonest act : fraud. Synonyms & Antonyms Example Sentences Learn More About dishonesty.

Is dishonesty the same as lying?

While dishonesty is more inclusive than lying, it is not equivalent to seeking to cause someone to believe that p when one knows p to be untrue. This is what creates the space for there being something distinctively wrong with dishonest acts (including cases of lying) other than their being attempts to deceive.

Why do husbands lie?

Reasons for lying might include: Trying to protect someone else’s feelings. Avoiding conflict, embarrassment, or having to face the consequences of their behavior. Fear of rejection or losing their spouse.

What are the two meanings of lie?

1 : to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive She was lying when she said she didn’t break the vase. He lied about his past experience. 2 : to create a false or misleading impression Statistics sometimes lie. … 2 : something that misleads or deceives His show of remorse was a lie.

How do you spell lying like a liar?

It’s apparently quite common for people ask themselves “is it spelled lier or liar?” and choose the wrong answer. But lier is a real word—it’s just rarely used. It’s also an agent noun, just like liar, but it comes from the other meaning of the verb lie—to rest in a horizontal position. Remember, that’s lie, not lay.

How do I forgive a liar?

But the best way to forgive a liar is to simply let them go. Letting go will hurt for a while, but don’t be afraid to hold your head up high and walk on. Once you accept that there’s no way to change the past, you can put the lies are behind you, and live your best life.

How do you let go of a liar?

12 Tips to Break a Lying Habit

1. Find triggers.
2. Know your lie type.
3. Set boundaries.
4. Consider the worst.
5. Start small.
6. Maintain privacy.
7. Evaluate the goal.
8. Learn acceptance.

Why do men lie?

Ultimately, men lie because they believe it is a way to protect women (and themselves). When he lies to you, it means he’s aware that the truth about something he’s done or hasn’t done, something he’s thinking about doing, or something he feels has the potential to break you and your relationship. …

What are the 5 signs that someone is lying?

Here are 5 signs someone is lying to you.

• They touch their face, mouth or throat. This subconscious body language may indicate that someone is lying to you. …
• They repeat themselves. …
• They pause before answering. …
• They look toward the door. …
• They don’t blink.

How do you handle a liar?

How to deal with liars.

1. Separate yourself from their behavior. One of the biggest problems we face when encountering a liar is usually that of personalization. …
2. Check and confirm your facts. …
3. Protect yourself. …
4. Ask for the story in reverse. …
5. Call them out. …
6. Hold on to your integrity. …
7. Always reflect. …
8. Accept who they are.

How do you trust someone who lies to you?

Rebuilding trust when you’ve been betrayed

1. Consider the reason behind the lie or betrayal. When you’ve been lied to, you might not care much about the reasons behind it. …
2. Communicate, communicate, communicate. …
3. Practice forgiveness. …
4. Avoid dwelling on the past.

What is dishonesty in a relationship?

Dishonesty is a coping mechanism, according to the late Stan Dale, relationship author and founder of the Human Awareness Institute. … Dishonesty erodes trust, causes distance between partners and ultimately leads to the breakdown of the relationship.

What are white lies in a relationship?

6 White Lies That Are Completely Okay To Tell Your Partner In A Relationship. Little white lies are like ‘compassionate givings’ in a relationship. You want your partner to feel good (or not feel bad) so you say certain things you might not feel.

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Discover

Is it okay to lie? Or do you believe in white lies? A white lie is a lie that is considered harmless or trivial. Such lies are often told to spare hurting someone’s feelings.

The term dates back to the 14th century and is linked to historical color associations that suggest that white symbolizes «morally pure» and that black symbolizes «sinister intent.»

While most people agree that lies are damaging, destructive, and downright wrong, there are times when people tell what they think are harmless lies as a way to prevent further harm. If you’ve ever told a child that Santa Claus was on his way in his sleigh or that you loved the weird socks that your aunt sent as a gift, you lied. But you can let yourself off the hook.

These were more like white lies. With a real lie, the intent is malicious and the consequence is serious. While with a white lie, often more like a harmless bending of the truth, the intent is benign and positive, and usually, the consequence isn’t major.

White Lies vs. Real Lies

The question of whether it is okay to lie often comes down to whether you are telling a white lie or a real lie. White lies are often innocuous. We tell them to create a magical world for our children, or, more often, as a way to be polite and demonstrate social manners. Some examples of white lies include:

• Telling someone they look great in an outfit
• Saying that you are on your way to meet someone so you can’t stay and chat
• Laughing at a joke that wasn’t really funny
• Telling someone that you’ll call them later
• Saying that you didn’t see a text that someone sent you

Overall, white lies are for beneficial purposes. Being totally honest in some cases would create unpleasantness or be offensive. Some view white lies as a sign of civility.

Real lies tend to be more self-serving. They may result in negative consequences for yourself and others.

How White Lies Can Be Good for Us

If you believe in white lies, then you probably feel that such fibs serve an important purpose such as protecting someone’s feelings. If we lie to benefit other people, these are considered white lies. Here’s a good illustration: A student had a hard time his first week at college and told his parents he was doing well so they wouldn’t worry.

In this situation, he was thinking about other people’s feelings and was guided by empathy and kindness. The second week he adjusted and was glad he didn’t upset his parents prematurely.

How Real Lies Can Be Bad for Us

With real lies, the intent is often selfish. These are the most damaging kinds of lies. To find evidence of them, look for falsehoods that promote a person’s self-interests obviously at the expense of others.

To make it clearer, if your best girlfriend asks how she looks in her new dress and you think it’s too tight, but you say she looks great to boost her self-esteem, that’s a white lie. But complimenting her because you want to look better than her at the party, which is competitive and more indicative of selfish intent is a real lie.

Before You Decide If It’s Okay to Lie

Let’s look at what you might want to think about before you decide to tell a white lie or a real lie.

Evaluate the Intention

When someone lies out of altruism to protect others or ease their pain, these lies are considered acceptable white lies. White lies usually benefit the person listening.

For example, if your neighbor is dying of cancer, rather than frighten your young son with his impending death, it’s okay to say he’s not feeling well right now.

Consider the Long-Term Consequences

While white lies are often minor or inconsequential, real lies have far reaching effects. Real lies tend to initially benefit the liar, too.

For example, if Dan took the data his co-worker amassed and presented the project as his own, Dan blatantly lied and acted in a self-serving and clearly untruthful way. When his supervisor learned the truth, Dan was sent to human resources as a consequence.

Overall, it’s important to look at the morality and societal acceptance of the type of life. White lies are acceptable and help our society function. Real lies are deemed to be universally wrong.

Why Do People Lie?

There are many reasons why people lie. Some common motives for lying include:

To Be Considerate

Lying out of consideration can mean protecting someone else’s feelings, for the sake of diplomacy, or to keep stability in our relationships. These are the common white lies that help us maintain harmony with our spouses, family, friends, and neighbors.

For example, if your child just began studying violin and is making a horrible racket, you might tell him he sounds fantastic to encourage him.

To Protect Our Ego and Self-Image

Another reason why we don’t tell the truth is based on psychological compensation: to protect how we’re perceived by others. Rather than admit you lost your job, for example, you might tell your sibling that you quit because it was no longer challenging enough.

To Compensate for Our Sensitivity to Power

For example, rather than question your boss’s new plan which you find shaky, you feel compelled to support it. You respond by saying that you love the plan to protect your job.

The Danger of Telling Too Many Lies

A 2016 study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience showed that the brain adapts to dishonesty. The more participants engaged in self-serving dishonesty, the more likely that behavior would increase with repetition. Small acts escalated into bigger transgressions.

The second danger of telling too many lies might result in not getting the help you need. For example, saying «I’m fine,» which seems like an innocuous fib, masks the fact that you are still struggling on many fronts. This may preclude others from suggesting you get mental health counseling or you yourself from realizing that you could benefit from therapy.

Benefits of Honesty

You must always be honest with yourself about what you’re doing and why. Then you must try to be as honest as you can be with loved ones. We are all human, but that should be the goal.

So is it ever okay to lie to your significant other? There are times when you might tell a white lie to protect your partner, but as in other cases, telling the truth is generally the best policy. Telling lies, particularly those that involve serious deception, can erode the trust and intimacy in your relationship.

Intimacy demands vulnerability and honesty. You might also be depriving your family of the chance to show you that they see you for all your foibles and accept and love you as you are.

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Less Lying Has Been Linked to Better Health

Evidence shows that Americans average about 11 lies per week. Another reason to strive to tell the truth and reduce lies? Anita E. Kelly, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame discovered during her research that participants who reduced lies and tried to live more honestly actually reported improved relationships and better mental and physical health.

When It’s Necessary to Lie

So what is a good reason to lie? Sometimes the stakes are high and lies are necessary to safeguard someone’s well-being. In these types of situations, lying for the sake of protecting yourself or loved ones is deemed acceptable:

1. Lying to an abuser to escape from or protect someone from domestic abuse.
2. Lying to an abuser to protect children from child abuse.
3. Lying to someone who is playing with weapons.
4. Lying to someone who seems intoxicated or on drugs.
5. Lying to someone who seems to be experiencing a mental health issue.

Lying to Our Loved Ones

What if our relatives are grappling with mental health problems or impairment? And it’s not an emergency situation, but it’s clear there is an ongoing problem. Sometimes lies are necessary to help them.

Meredith Gordon Resnick, LCSW, says, “Studies show that for people with severe dementia, sometimes telling an untruth, and doing it carefully and mindfully so as not to undermine trust, may be appropriate.»

«Challenging someone with severe memory impairment to ‘face the truth’ of certain situations—even those that seem benign to someone else—can cause agitation and fear, and can break trust, too. It’s a delicate, individual balance,» she also notes.

A Word From Verywell

So while honesty is usually the best policy, there are exceptions. Just about all religions and belief systems, however, extol the virtue of honesty. So while it’s okay to lie, in most cases, it’s better to strive not to.

We all know that lying isn’t the best thing to do. It’s a universally acknowledged truth. So why do we do it in the first place? We spoke to our head psychotherapist, Natalija and these are the meaningful truths she shared with us…

Why do we lie?

Lying allows a person to establish perceived control over a situation by manipulating it. It’s a defence mechanism that (seemingly) prevents them from being vulnerable, that is, to not open up and reveal their true self to another person. To do so comes with the chance of the other person rejecting, criticising or feeling disappointed with you. And for a deeply insecure person, this can be unbearable. When someone is lying and is rejected there’s a sense of there being a reason for the rejection. By comparison, when a person opens up and is rejected, this feels to them as though they’re fundamentally disliked, which negatively affects their self-esteem.

Sometimes people reenact early dynamics by acting in a certain way. Lying and making others check on, or distrust them, might be an unconscious behaviour that gets repeated as a result of past experiences. In other words, the person hasn’t learnt how to relate to people differently. For example, they may have faced difficulties in their upbringing such as violent parents so they had to create a world of their own (often lying to themselves or developing a habit of lying to others).

In a sense as an extension of the defence mechanism mentioned earlier. People will also occasionally lie to avoid difficult situations and ‘bury’ the feelings that come with them such as guilt, depression, sadness and anxiety. A weaker ego (low self-confidence) makes it more difficult to bear these feelings. Lying enables people to avoid situations in which they would have to confront these overwhelming feelings, in the short-term. It’s important to note that suppressing our thoughts and feelings into our subconscious is not a solution and they will affect you affect you in the long term – this is unavoidable and is the basis of psychoanalytic therapy.

Fear of hurting or letting a person down is another common reason why people lie. Some people find it extremely difficult to bear the feelings that come with disappointing another person. We can say that this is a selfish reason because it centres around protecting oneself from taking responsibility for the disappointment. The victim usually wants to know the truth whatever it is.

When does lying become unhealthy?

In terms of lying becoming unhealthy, when the other person senses that you’re lying or have been repeatedly lying – no matter how significant the lie or the reasoning behind it – this affects their ability to trust you. Similarly, if they see through your lies, in terms of insecurity or a lack of confidence, this may affect their overall judgement of and respect for you. Generally speaking, people are more accepting of others’ imperfections when that person is open and transparent about them. In other words, they own their imperfections. Often this is in fact very endearing to us as humans. It’s also liberating and can be a release for us as individuals when we come clean about our weaknesses and mistakes.

When is lying acceptable, when is it not?

Of course lying to plan a surprise for someone is acknowledged as acceptable. Perhaps lying might also be acceptable when it means saving someone’s life. But this is more to do with morals and ethics than psychotherapy. For mental wellbeing, it’s best to strive not to tell lies. In a relationship being honest means really getting to know each other and obtaining honest feedback, which helps to improve ourselves and our relationships. Often when we are honest, the other person can help us to overcome our insecurities, as well as coming to understand us better. If we hide things from them they cannot do this.

Perhaps it’s also important to talk about how we can handle the truth better? Work wise, being honest helps to highlight organisational problems, learn and avoid mistakes. We can do this in trusting relationships with friends, family and colleagues.  

Are white lies good or bad?

It’s not ok to tell lies even if they’re “little” or “white” lies. It’s still a lie and misleads a person. Lying – however big or small – creates a gap between you and the other person: you aren’t showing what you really think or what you really did. In this way, you’re missing out on an opportunity to get to know each other on a deeper, more intimate level.

What personality type commonly falls victim to being lied to?

Liars do not target anyone in particular, it’s simply the way they relate to people. (Narcissists and psychopaths, on the other hand, do target people who can be useful to them.) That said, if people are consistently lied to, it may suggest that either, they’re not very in touch with themselves or really want to believe the lie instead of facing the truth. That’s why they don’t (or can’t) pick up on clues or signals that a liar always subconsciously shows. In my experience, it nearly always takes two people, one is lying and another allowing themselves to be lied to.

When might you be dealing with a personality disorder or other mental illness?

Lying doesn’t necessarily mean that they have a personality disorder. Nearly all people lie now and then, but when a person is lying on a regular basis, (unnecessarily or in order to further their own interests at someone else’s expense) the question may be raised about their psychological state. Being a compulsive liar can indicate issues concerning an individual’s self esteem, their understanding of what distinguishes right from wrong, or a lack of a strong sense of self.