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Why do people lie and/or avoid?
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 250033" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>People lie to get out of trouble, or to get out of perceived trouble. Sometimes people lie to avoid hurting other people (which can be the same thing).</p><p></p><p>If mother in law says to me, "I just got my hair cut, I really love it. WHat do you think?" of course I will say something non-committal, or maybe even say I like it even if I think it looks like she's had a pudding basin haircut and I hate those. Because nothing is gained in that situation by being overly frank.</p><p></p><p>I do, however, try to answer truthfully even if I have to think fast to find an ambiguous answer. But truth is always the best policy where possible. "Mum, your haircut looks very tidy, she did a lovely neat job on it. It must be so much cooler to get your hair off your neck."</p><p>I haven't lied and I've (hopefully) managed to slightly change the subject and direction to find something positive to say.</p><p></p><p>When you have Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) in some form on the family, you learn to live with brutal honesty. You learn to avoid ambiguity; for example, if difficult child 3 gave the right answer I wouldn't answer, "Right," I would instead answer, "Correct." "Right" is also a direction and we found very erly on when trying to help difficult child 3 overcome his language delay, that to avoid ambiguity helped speed up his mental processing.</p><p></p><p>The flip side of a lot of this is extreme honesty. difficult child 1 is in hot water at the moment, because he beleives other people to be as honest as he is. Especially people who he beleives are friends. When he was looking to buy a car, a friend told him that his mother was interested in selling her company car. difficult child 1 looked at the car, he said he liked it, he said he would buy it if/when they wanted to sell it. But tey made him wait another six months! In which time, they did no servicing and they let the insurance lapse. difficult child 1 did not know any of this; when he bought the car he was told that the insurnce would "roll over" to the new owner. In actual fact, the car had not been insured for six months.</p><p>difficult child 1 then discovered the car's engine although allegedly new, was in poor shape. He spent more money than he could afford in cleaning it up and repairingthe car. He re-registered it but failed to take out the insurance because he beleived it was already insured. It was not. And when he hit another car just before Christmas, he's incurred a very large bill that he cannot pay. All because in his mind, everyone else is as honest as he is.</p><p></p><p>We were going to dinner last Saturday night in Newcastle with easy child & BF1. It was a mass production buffet dinner, $25 a head for adults, $14 for children 14 and under. As we waited in the queue, easy child said to difficult child 3, "You're still only 14, for tonight."</p><p>difficult child 3 said, "What do you mean?"</p><p>easy child said, "If you say you're 14, and you really still look very young, you will cost us a lot less for dinner."</p><p>difficult child 3 began to look concerned, became increasingly upset. "But I would be lying. Surely you're not asking me to lie, are you? That wouldn't be right. I don't think I could do it. Why do you want me to lie about my age? I AM 15 already, I turned 15 two weeks ago..." and he kept worrying at it so husband & I had to quickly say, "It's OK, you're 15, you don't have to say anything otherwise. DOn't worry, forget easy child said anything about it."</p><p>We paid the full price, and difficult child 3 hardly ate anything anyway. Ironic.</p><p></p><p>I think when it comes to dealing with people you need to remember a number of things:</p><p></p><p>1) People are innately selfish. Thre is no such thing asaltruism - any good things we do, there is always some personal benefit (even if it's a warm inner glow). We always can justify it to ourselves in terms of us getting something out of it. Otherwise we would stop doing it. But this internal justification sometimes even involves us lying to ourselves.</p><p></p><p>2) Part of how we interact with other people is, we try to get what we want form other people which often requires we give back to those other people. If we fail to reciprocate sufficiently, people will become increasingly reluctant to give us what we want. This is cimplicated further because we are not generally very good at telling one another when a give and take relationship is uneven or not working. For example, a woman I knew, the mother of a classmate of easy child 2/difficult child 2's, was a very needy person. She had problems, besides her daughter, she had a son who was profoundly autistic and she was trying to manage on her own. I took pity on her and invited the daughter to spend the weekend with us.</p><p>Now, the payoff for me was, easy child 2/difficult child 2 had a friend visiting and was having fun. My child was getting a social advantage. Plus I had a certain amount of warm inner glow, helping another mother in her time of crisis.</p><p>But very soon the rot set in. Her daughter turned out to be a major behaviour problem and soon fell out with easy child 2/difficult child 2. OK, I could still handle the girl though, but it made me more reluctant to have the girl stay again in the future, because she was more work for me than I had counted on.</p><p>Then I lost the warm inner glow, when I discovered that the mother was not really doing anything worthwhile for her son. Instead of putting her free time to good use, instead of planning her free time and getting her act together, she was instead using every scrap of respite and break from her children to simply go on a mini-holiday. Even that wouldn't bother me, she really did need a break and I was happy to do this for her once or twice, but it was happening too often and there was no consideration being given by her to ME needing a break! She began ringing me up at almost zero notice to organise her daughter coming for a visit and wasn't happy if I said it wasn't convenient. One day she just turned up with her daughter and with her autistic son, and stayed - even though husband was laid up with a sprained ankle and my own doctor had told me I should put myself to bed. Instead of me going to bed as I needed to, I was following her son around my house trying to protect the place from him. She did absolutely nothing to control him, she just sat and talked to husband (captive in his armchair) while I ran myself ragged trying to rescue my son's toys. She hadn't taken 'NO' for an answer when I asked her not to come, she wasn't leaving when I asked her to leave, it was only when her son and difficult child 3 began to fight (they were both tired and difficult child 3 was fed up with his toys being destroyed) that she decided to leave. That was when it became clear to me that she had actually intended to stay the night - absolutely bizarre!</p><p></p><p>So I had to learn to lie to this woman - the next time she turned up out of the blue, I quickly invented "an essential car trip" we were committed to going on. "My in-laws just rang up, my father in law has just been rushed to hospital, we have to go now. So sorry we can't stay and entertain you."</p><p>I hated having to lie, but nothing else would have worked with this woman.</p><p></p><p>I later found, she was what I call a "user". She'd worn out every official available service, she then went from church to church wearing out her welcome. All the local welfare support groups were running scared. She would milk every bit of human kindness she encountered, wring it to the last drop and then only move on when there was no more compassion to be drained. Like a vampire. She would pick up a bloke and then in a desperate rush would look for someone to take the kids so she could go away with the fella for the weekend, with no ties.</p><p></p><p>End result - her son was taken from her (and she was relieved, I think. He certainly was better off) and her daughter became a mother at 15.</p><p></p><p>It's a long-winded story, sorry about that, but what I'm trying to say - the reasons people lie are complex. Sometimes it's because the truth will hurt unnecessarily and we're trying to avoid an unpleasant scene, and sometimes it's because the truth won't work. When someone rings me up to sell me life insurance, I tell them I already have all the life insurance I want. Who knows? Maybe Icould do with more life insurance, but I don't ant to go through long-winded explanations to someone I don't know on the other end of the phone. it's quicker and easier to tell them I already have it, to make them go away in a hurry.</p><p></p><p>I hope this explains it a bit more.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 250033, member: 1991"] People lie to get out of trouble, or to get out of perceived trouble. Sometimes people lie to avoid hurting other people (which can be the same thing). If mother in law says to me, "I just got my hair cut, I really love it. WHat do you think?" of course I will say something non-committal, or maybe even say I like it even if I think it looks like she's had a pudding basin haircut and I hate those. Because nothing is gained in that situation by being overly frank. I do, however, try to answer truthfully even if I have to think fast to find an ambiguous answer. But truth is always the best policy where possible. "Mum, your haircut looks very tidy, she did a lovely neat job on it. It must be so much cooler to get your hair off your neck." I haven't lied and I've (hopefully) managed to slightly change the subject and direction to find something positive to say. When you have Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) in some form on the family, you learn to live with brutal honesty. You learn to avoid ambiguity; for example, if difficult child 3 gave the right answer I wouldn't answer, "Right," I would instead answer, "Correct." "Right" is also a direction and we found very erly on when trying to help difficult child 3 overcome his language delay, that to avoid ambiguity helped speed up his mental processing. The flip side of a lot of this is extreme honesty. difficult child 1 is in hot water at the moment, because he beleives other people to be as honest as he is. Especially people who he beleives are friends. When he was looking to buy a car, a friend told him that his mother was interested in selling her company car. difficult child 1 looked at the car, he said he liked it, he said he would buy it if/when they wanted to sell it. But tey made him wait another six months! In which time, they did no servicing and they let the insurance lapse. difficult child 1 did not know any of this; when he bought the car he was told that the insurnce would "roll over" to the new owner. In actual fact, the car had not been insured for six months. difficult child 1 then discovered the car's engine although allegedly new, was in poor shape. He spent more money than he could afford in cleaning it up and repairingthe car. He re-registered it but failed to take out the insurance because he beleived it was already insured. It was not. And when he hit another car just before Christmas, he's incurred a very large bill that he cannot pay. All because in his mind, everyone else is as honest as he is. We were going to dinner last Saturday night in Newcastle with easy child & BF1. It was a mass production buffet dinner, $25 a head for adults, $14 for children 14 and under. As we waited in the queue, easy child said to difficult child 3, "You're still only 14, for tonight." difficult child 3 said, "What do you mean?" easy child said, "If you say you're 14, and you really still look very young, you will cost us a lot less for dinner." difficult child 3 began to look concerned, became increasingly upset. "But I would be lying. Surely you're not asking me to lie, are you? That wouldn't be right. I don't think I could do it. Why do you want me to lie about my age? I AM 15 already, I turned 15 two weeks ago..." and he kept worrying at it so husband & I had to quickly say, "It's OK, you're 15, you don't have to say anything otherwise. DOn't worry, forget easy child said anything about it." We paid the full price, and difficult child 3 hardly ate anything anyway. Ironic. I think when it comes to dealing with people you need to remember a number of things: 1) People are innately selfish. Thre is no such thing asaltruism - any good things we do, there is always some personal benefit (even if it's a warm inner glow). We always can justify it to ourselves in terms of us getting something out of it. Otherwise we would stop doing it. But this internal justification sometimes even involves us lying to ourselves. 2) Part of how we interact with other people is, we try to get what we want form other people which often requires we give back to those other people. If we fail to reciprocate sufficiently, people will become increasingly reluctant to give us what we want. This is cimplicated further because we are not generally very good at telling one another when a give and take relationship is uneven or not working. For example, a woman I knew, the mother of a classmate of easy child 2/difficult child 2's, was a very needy person. She had problems, besides her daughter, she had a son who was profoundly autistic and she was trying to manage on her own. I took pity on her and invited the daughter to spend the weekend with us. Now, the payoff for me was, easy child 2/difficult child 2 had a friend visiting and was having fun. My child was getting a social advantage. Plus I had a certain amount of warm inner glow, helping another mother in her time of crisis. But very soon the rot set in. Her daughter turned out to be a major behaviour problem and soon fell out with easy child 2/difficult child 2. OK, I could still handle the girl though, but it made me more reluctant to have the girl stay again in the future, because she was more work for me than I had counted on. Then I lost the warm inner glow, when I discovered that the mother was not really doing anything worthwhile for her son. Instead of putting her free time to good use, instead of planning her free time and getting her act together, she was instead using every scrap of respite and break from her children to simply go on a mini-holiday. Even that wouldn't bother me, she really did need a break and I was happy to do this for her once or twice, but it was happening too often and there was no consideration being given by her to ME needing a break! She began ringing me up at almost zero notice to organise her daughter coming for a visit and wasn't happy if I said it wasn't convenient. One day she just turned up with her daughter and with her autistic son, and stayed - even though husband was laid up with a sprained ankle and my own doctor had told me I should put myself to bed. Instead of me going to bed as I needed to, I was following her son around my house trying to protect the place from him. She did absolutely nothing to control him, she just sat and talked to husband (captive in his armchair) while I ran myself ragged trying to rescue my son's toys. She hadn't taken 'NO' for an answer when I asked her not to come, she wasn't leaving when I asked her to leave, it was only when her son and difficult child 3 began to fight (they were both tired and difficult child 3 was fed up with his toys being destroyed) that she decided to leave. That was when it became clear to me that she had actually intended to stay the night - absolutely bizarre! So I had to learn to lie to this woman - the next time she turned up out of the blue, I quickly invented "an essential car trip" we were committed to going on. "My in-laws just rang up, my father in law has just been rushed to hospital, we have to go now. So sorry we can't stay and entertain you." I hated having to lie, but nothing else would have worked with this woman. I later found, she was what I call a "user". She'd worn out every official available service, she then went from church to church wearing out her welcome. All the local welfare support groups were running scared. She would milk every bit of human kindness she encountered, wring it to the last drop and then only move on when there was no more compassion to be drained. Like a vampire. She would pick up a bloke and then in a desperate rush would look for someone to take the kids so she could go away with the fella for the weekend, with no ties. End result - her son was taken from her (and she was relieved, I think. He certainly was better off) and her daughter became a mother at 15. It's a long-winded story, sorry about that, but what I'm trying to say - the reasons people lie are complex. Sometimes it's because the truth will hurt unnecessarily and we're trying to avoid an unpleasant scene, and sometimes it's because the truth won't work. When someone rings me up to sell me life insurance, I tell them I already have all the life insurance I want. Who knows? Maybe Icould do with more life insurance, but I don't ant to go through long-winded explanations to someone I don't know on the other end of the phone. it's quicker and easier to tell them I already have it, to make them go away in a hurry. I hope this explains it a bit more. Marg [/QUOTE]
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