Does true love require complete honesty between you and your partner?
“A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie.” – Charles Edward Montague, Disenchantment
By Dr Lisa Love
Recently, I picked up a great book, Act Like A Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey. Overall, I love the book except one part of it gave me pause and made me reflect. It was in the chapter about “Why Men Cheat” on their wives, girlfriends, etc. Harvey’s basic answers are:
1. They Can.
2. They Think They Can Get Away With It.
3. He Hasn’t Become Who He Wants and Needs to Be or Found Who He Truly Wants.
4. What’s Happening at Home Isn’t Happening Like it Used To.
5. There’s Always a Woman Out There Willing to Cheat With Him.
And, ultimately he explains the man hasn’t got his priorities straight especially in having a real and meaningful spiritual practice in his life.
Ok. So far, so good. And, I also agree with what Harvey says regarding why a man is able to get away with his cheating and lying behavior with the women he is with. One reason this happens Harvey explains (using my paraphrase of what he says not his exact words now) is because any woman he is with hasn’t set high enough standards in her life to respect and love herself enough to see what is going on right in front of her and take a stand about it. She basically colludes in the notion that denial is good for you. After all, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” And, since her denial lets him get away with what he wants to, he is happy to join in on the denial party with her. But, denial is not good for you and it feeds one of my four major love myths I discuss in my Attracting Real Love course — love is blind. Wrong! Real love actually requires 20 – 20 vision because you only know how to really love yourself and others when you are seeing what you need to see clearly.
Which is why when I read this in Harvey’s book I decided I couldn’t disagree more. He says if a woman starts to catch on to a man’s cheating and lying behavior and starts to ask questions a man is going to just do more of his lying and denying game. Why? Harvey says men will do this “if we care about you. But, if not — if a man doesn’t see you fitting into his life plan — he won’t even bother with all of the covering up.” WHOA!!! Come on, Steve! I know the rest of your book also says that a man who really loves a woman won’t cheat, but let’s clear this up right now! Le’t not make it seem like somebody is cheating and hiding the truth from someone out of love. No way, no how!
So, why do we lie?
Plain and simple We’re afraid. Period. Why are we afraid? We don’t love ourselves or the people around us enough to live in truth. And, real love requires the truth. Not some blunt rude make people feel stupid and horrible version of truth. But, truth nonetheless! The most loving relationship exists between people who can live in truth completely. They love and respect each other so much they want to be honest with them. They care about not hurting them. They care about being loved and respected in return for who they are, flaws and all. They want a partner who can hear the truth and help bring it all into the realm of consciousness in a loving way and heal any fear in the realm of love. That means the more a couple lies to each other, the more they actually are in fear of each other, which means love really isn’t very present at all.
Now, why do we refuse to live in truth with our partner?
It’s simple. We are thinking more about ourselves and coming from our egos. We simply don’t want to have to face the consequences of what we are doing and be forced to change our hurtful behaviours. We don’t want to feel bad about ourselves by having to see what is really going on. Or, to share another quote, We tell lies when we are afraid… afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger. ~Tad Williams. In short, we are afraid to love and feed fear in our lives instead.
Ok, I don’t expect people to be perfect. But, try this on for size. Next time you catch yourself or other people telling lies ask yourself this, “What am I afraid of and how does this reflect a lack of love in myself or a lack of love regarding the people I am with?” Then, ask this, “What would it be like to love myself and others enough to be willing to take the scrape, instead of give one?”
Notice this as well. Despite what people say finding out the truth doesn’t hurt! What hurts is discovering how much there was a lack of love and how real love was replaced by deception and fear. Remember, real love heals it doesn’t hurt. And, though it may hurt to find out about lies, shedding them actually opens you up to attracting more real love in your life creating space for the rapture described in the quote above — for yourself and the people around you.
Article source: ArticlesBase.com About the authro: Dr. Lisa Love is the founder of LoveMovies! and a best-selling author. Decades of coaching and counseling experience combined with my extensive training and work with clients from all backgrounds help my clients make shifts in a rapid way.
