Tell me sweet little lies

We’re taught that honesty is the best policy, yet it’s undeniable that the truth often hurts. So what happens when we sacrifice little white lies in favour of radical honesty? Rob Crossan investigates

What happens when we sacrifice little white lies in favour of radical honesty? Rob Crossan investigates

IT’S 10.01am and I’ve already lied three times since I woke up. More distressingly, the first fib was made up of the first words that came out of my mouth. My girlfriend asked me if I’d slept well. I said I had. I’d actually just had a nightmare about talking scorpions, but I really didn’t want to bother her with it. Moments later, she asked me if her hair smelled like it needed a wash. It did. I said it didn’t because, frankly, it seemed easier to say one untrue yet positive statement, rather than a dozen kind yet negative words.

Later on, the guy behind the counter at W. H. Smith asked me how I’m doing today. I replied: ‘Good mate.’ Actually, I think I’ve got a cold coming on and the egg-yolk stain on his sweater is making me feel a bit queasy.

Okay, none of these lies are porkies on the ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman’ or promising not to invade Czechoslovakia scale, but I’ve been reading about a school of thought that argues even the whitest of lies contributes to the sum of human stress. Brad Blanton’s radical-honesty theory, now documented in almost 10 books, makes the case for never lying again.

The Washington Dc-based clinical psychologist states that ‘radical honesty is about delivering yourself from that constant worrisome preoccupation of, “Oh my god. How am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing?” Then you can pay attention to what’s going on in your body and in the world and even pay attention to what’s going on in your mind’.

Surely not? How can a life of actually saying what you think make me, or anyone else, happier? As much as I love Larry David’s complete lack of internal filter in Curb Your Enthusiasm, the reality of telling my friends that, yes, they are going bald, telling my parents that, yes, they do look ancient or telling my girlfriend that, no, her hair doesn’t smell of rosewater this morning sounds borderline sociopathic in its wrongness.

I turn to an NHS psychologist for urgent advice. ‘I think the key word here isn’t “honesty”, but “best”. Best for whom? When? To what end?’ he responds. ‘Perhaps being radically honest all the time feels bracing and invigorating, but I think it’s potentially quite a selfish act.

‘In effect, it’s saying: “The most important thing here is me and my feelings.” If a friend is devastated about a recent break-up and you want to comfort them, being radically honest about your ambivalent feelings towards their ex might make you feel better, but is unlikely to achieve the desired outcome.’ I’m warming towards his theories. However, the contrarian in me can’t help but wonder if it might be possible to create a ‘lie-proof’ man who can avoid being beaten up in the street.

The burden certainly seems to be on my chromosome should I decide to embrace the idea of thinning out my fabrications. A 2010 American study by Marilyn Boltz, a professor of psychology at Haverford College, showed that the intersection of gender with speech patterns and deception shows that people perceive women to lie less than men and that men and women are perceived to tell different kinds of lies. Not only that, but the study also found that the kind of lies men tell tend to be bigger.

Prof Boltz refers to male falsehoods as ‘self-lies’, meaning that the bull benefits the liar. Women tell and are told more ‘other-lies’, which tend to benefit other people.

It’s essentially the difference between a woman telling a downbeat, soon-to-befired colleague that they’re great at their job and a male wannabe singer who can’t wait to tell an entire bar full of people that a fictitious A&R man from Sony came to his band’s pub gig last night. As a man, it

It’s 10.01am and I’ve already lied three times since I woke up

How can a life of saying what you think make anyone happier?

feels like some form of action is imperative. Perhaps some wisdom from the greats could help with this conundrum?

Immanuel Kant was certainly on the radically honest side of things when he wrote: ‘By a lie a man throws away and as it were annihilates his dignity as a man.’ Kant was the man who invented the ‘murderer at the door’ theory of ethics, whereby, upon answering the door to an axe-wielding maniac, you shouldn’t lie about the intended victim’s whereabouts, should the homicidal one enquire. I think we would all agree that this is too much.

Freud isn’t about to let me off the hook, either. One of his central insights into psychotherapy was the quest to make the unconscious conscious, by gradually peeling away the layers or defences and allowing us to achieve greater awareness of all the things that we think and feel, however difficult and uncomfortable.

Even Shakespeare seems to like the idea of radical honesty, when he has Polonius tell Hamlet: ‘This above all: to thine own self be true,/and it must follow, as the night the day,/thou canst not then be false to any man.’ In an effort to avoid potential death by poisoned sword, I decide I need real-time, contemporary solutions. I therefore sign up to an evening at the Rebel Wisdom workshop, one of a burgeoning clutch of male-only groups in the UK that offers talks, retreats and discussions. Can it offer some answers on how to be more truthful?

The community hall in Islington fills with two dozen remarkably ordinary-looking men, aged about 25 to 45. For 2½ hours, a bearded, amiable man named David leads us in a succession of breathing exercises, before asking us to walk around the room, stopping and staring into the eyes of the other men. ‘You must love your truth,’ he tells the group, before we begin ‘enquiries’. This means breaking off into smaller groups, where we speak for four minutes each on how we’re feeling and what’s going through our minds at this very moment.

When it comes to my turn, I find myself releasing a torrent of genuine worries about the world of bullshit that I think I may be drowning in. What, I implore, with more emotion than I expect of myself, can I do to be a more honest person without hurting those I care about? It feels great to have my words listened to, but, as it turns out, this isn’t a space in which I’m going to be challenged. The point of Rebel Wisdom seems to be getting things off our chests, rather than being taken to task or being given advice on what to actually do with our concerns.