The Tangled Web

BY Renee Crea

I often joke with my mate Raymond about how he’s so like George Costanza from Seinfeld. You know, Jerry’s best friend who constructs a ‘web of lies’ to get himself through any confrontation? It’s funny in the show, but not so funny when you realise it’s your friend who is deceiving you and other mutual friends.

I’ve pulled him up on it a number of times and I don’t think he really means to hurt anyone. The lying did decrease for a while, but recently I heard he relapsed. So what makes an essentially good person lie to the people he cares about?

Earlier this year I made my usual joke about your ‘web of lies’ and for the first time you were actually offended! Did you think you no longer deserved the bad reputation?

No, I was offended more so with the truth of it than anything else. I wanted to shake it.

What made you decide that you weren’t going to lie any more?

The lying wasn’t making me feel happy in any way, wasn’t improving my life at all. It was stressful and it drained me. You lose energy from it because it’s maintaining something that’s not true for so long.

I know recently you started concocting some quite elaborate fabrications to get yourself out of commitments with your girlfriend. What happened?

Well it’s a combination of a few things. It’s me wanting to do what I really want to do, so it’s still for self-interest. I have a lot of issues with confrontation and bringing pain or rejection on another person, but at the same time still want to do what I want to do. So the only way I see myself as able to reach that goal is for them not to know what I’m doing because that will just hurt them or cause an issue. There’s nothing noble about it, I know that.

How do you feel when you’ve crafted a lie so subtle and reasonable that the other person would never suspect it?

No better. I don’t feel exhilarated or positive about it. I would probably disconnect from what I’ve done to allow myself to move on. I see it as a situation that I’ve got away with. It’s served its purpose.

How does it feel when you realised someone has been lying to you, or keeping something from you?

Terrible, like anyone would. I get hurt from it and ask the questions, “Why would you have to lie to me?” or “Am I someone that you would do that to?” I guess I almost relate it to myself, as a fault in intuition that I don’t know something like that could be happening.

Do you consider that someone else might lie to protect your feelings, as you do for others?

Well I’ve had no instances, that I know, of someone doing it as a form of protection. People tell me, and I understand myself, that actually doing the right thing is to tell the truth. Yet, I can never bring myself to do it.

How does it feel when you have worked your way through confrontation without resorting to lies?

Relieving, but I get massive amounts of anxiety from confrontation. I don’t get as much anxiety from fabricating. This could be contradictory but I understand that I have a lot of empathy as well within my personality. So I go through the whole empathic process of hurting someone else’s feelings, and I totally connect with that, more than the lying. Sometimes I’ve confronted things and it’s gone completely fine. But I’ve also experienced the other side as well, and had the pain and had the rejection or the anguish (of the other person) to deal with and thought no, if I can avoid this again I will.

Have you lied in any of the above answers?

No, not a lot of what’s in this is something to be proud of.