Nancy Slotnick: True Lies

One of my husband’s favorite movies is True Lies.  (You must say it with the Ahrnold accent.)  Of course the irony of the casting of that film didn’t become so readily apparent until recently.  I saw Arnold interviewed about how he lied about his audio malfunctioning when Matt Lauer once asked him a question that he didn’t want to answer.  Even though he admitted to this lie in his recent memoir, he still didn’t want to own up to the lie when asked about it on Meet the Press.  And they had video footage!  A lie wrapped in an enigma wrapped in fudge factor.   It’s called acting I guess.

Of course, everyone lies in some form or another.  I had this conversation with my 7 year old the other day. (yes, Mom, I flossed my teeth.)  But when someone flat out lies about everything, blanketly denying things that they have already admitted to be true, then that is someone you don’t want to date.  Or vote for, in my opinion.

How can you tell?  If someone like Maria Shriver, an extremely smart and astute woman, can be fooled, then how on earth can the rest of us figure it out?

Well, you can start by avoiding the worst kind of lie- lying to yourself.  A first date can tell you about 80% of what you need to know about a person if you pay attention.  And a month of dating someone bumps it up to 90%.  But how well can you listen when they tell?

You get this feeling, in the pit of your stomach and you can’t make sense of it.  So you ignore it and do what feels good.   We all do this and I’m not trying to say that you can’t be human and act on impulse.  But before you do, try to make sense of that sinking feeling- it has 2 distinct heads to it that you can try to decipher.  And then when you act, act deliberately with the cognizance of whether you are making a decision for 4 hours or 4 years.

Ugly head 1: Anxiety- You get that sinking feeling because the guy tells you that he lied about his age on his profile and he is really 41 not 39.  He knew that a lot of women cut off their search criteria at 40 and he comes clean on the first date.  The feeling makes you want to run the other way, but in this case it is probably your own anxiety talking.  This kind of lie does not make the guy a liar and you should try to override it to see if you like the rest of what he’s about.

Ugly head 2: Instinct- You get that sinking feeling when the guy tells you that he is still living with his wife, but they are technically “separated” even though he hasn’t moved out yet.  He is really attractive and very forward about telling you how sexy you look so you don’t listen to the feeling.  This is the time when your instinct is talking; you should listen to the feeling but you don’t want to because he’s so cute.  You give in to him when he invites himself over to your apartment saying that he “just wants to use your bathroom,” and you end up letting things go way too far on the first date.  In this case you are quite probably dealing with a liar, but you are having too much fun and don’t want to listen.  You commit that worst kind of lie; you lie to yourself.  There is a way to enjoy this scenario; you don’t have to ignore your visceral impulses.  Just tell yourself the truth- i.e. that you want to have fun for the night too and you don’t really care if he’s lying.

You can have your cake and eat it too.  But if you decide to eat the cake then just don’t expect it to keep you nourished for 4 years.  You’ll have to find a new slice the next day to replace the one that’s gone in 60 seconds.