The previous two posts, Lying is Developmental Parts One and Two, describe the normal development of two people who ended up in love and married to each other. Both had normal families. There was no extraordinary abuse or psychosis, yet what both learned was self-presentation more than self-revelation. This is a universal, developmental reality. We can’t stop our preference for self-presentation from happening. It is how human beings form a self and, by these inherent natural processes, certain predictable dilemmas occur in our marriages. (I know that was a mouthful. Read that last sentence again.)

It takes what is generally accepted as good practice in marriage counseling to disrupt this natural process and really screw us up! When we buy the popular message that what John and Jennifer have is a failure to communicate, we entirely lose the dilemma (and thereby the solution) at hand.

The dilemma has nothing to do with communication and everything to do with integrity and formation of self in relationship that results in self-revelation rather than self-presentation.  It is the difference between and adult and a child – a mature adult prefers self-revelation.

John and Jennifer had yet to reveal the truth about themselves. They kept it hidden, neatly packed away and after many years the truth had gotten lost in the fire and smoke of the blame game.

After a few sessions John revealed his need for freedom, his covert and rebellious tactics to get it, and he revealed for the first time that the freedom he was achieving by drinking and flirting was a pseudo freedom and not very satisfying.

After John settled down and stopped his subtle ‘screw you’ messages to Jennifer he showed up in a way he never had in his relationship. He stopped going for the mercy fucking she was offering and he let her know he wanted so much more. He let Jennifer see him and he stopped backing down when she would complain about what he wasn’t doing for her.

Finally, Jennifer started to get honest about the fact that she fundamentally mistrusts men and while she may have a fantasy of being taken care of by one, there’s no way she would ever put herself in that position. She acknowledged feeling angry with John in ways that were really unfair. She began to deal with herself and the ways she pushed not only John away, but most others as well. She found this self-confrontation freeing and she felt open to John for the first time in years. With pretense and blame gone, she could reveal herself for the first time in her life.

Again, this is not because John and Jennifer had abusive childhoods to get over. What is being described here is universal because it is how we develop as human beings. When there are abusive dynamics growing up, the process is just intensified. We dig our heels in harder. We more rigidly hold to our comfort zones, hidden behind a false self.

If things feel like they’re going wrong in your relationship, I invite you to reconsider. I’ve never met a couple where anything had gone wrong. Problems, even severe ones, in marriage are a fact of the institution. They are a fact of life. Formation of a self takes a lifetime and your marriage, by its very nature, will push you along that way.

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Part Two

In the previous post you learned about the fact that lying is developmental and an integral part of how we form (or sometimes don’t form) a self. You learned how a person can learn to present a self rather than reveal a self in close relationships. You learned specifically about a boy named Johnny who learned to present a self so well that he never really developed an authentic self, but rather a highly sophisticated façade. In today’s post I want to talk about the woman he married, Jennifer.

Jennifer

Jennifer also grew up learning to present a self more than learning to reveal a self. Her family was different from Johnny’s in that her experiments with lying went unchecked. There were no lectures or angry glares or tighter leashes. Her lies simply went unnoticed. Her dad was largely absent (working) and Mom was too (naïve, meek). Jennifer was the oldest of three, super responsible, and had the kind of special connection with Dad typical of oldest daughters. She admired his strength and independence and she longed to get his approval whenever he was home. He oscillated between holding her in high esteem and seeming annoyed that she was buzzing around his head wanting to interrupt his reading of the paper.  He would go between that and saying things like “You are so fantastic, amazing! I’m so proud of you!” or “You are the smartest girl!” Jennifer felt confused and frustrated by Dad’s changing temperament, but undeterred in her attempts to please him and get his attention. She just never quite felt she could do it.

What scientists understand now is that the brain is literally formed or changed via relationship interactions – particularly the more emotional ones.  Jennifer was forming a self in relationship, little by little, each time she had one of these confusing or frustrating interactions with Dad. Specifically, her brain was, in a sense, getting accustomed to a way of interacting with men. It rooted her in a stance that at once had her looking for approval while understanding that she wasn’t going to get it (and if she did it wasn’t going to be meaningful or it wasn’t going to last) – a stance that had her presenting a self that seemed to like men, while not revealing the part of her that fundamentally mistrusted them. (She didn’t just have these formative interactions with Dad. She had them with boyfriends, her first love, and her first boss.)

Low and behold Jennifer meets Johnny and the two fall in love. How? You may wonder after reading the last post. Ahhh…love is a many splendored thing. As my father used to say, “Love is blind, but the neighbors ain’t.” Johnny was fun and adventuresome. He didn’t mind taking risks and, actually, the financial risks he had taken as a young man had paid wonderful dividends. He was that strong, independent man that Jennifer had so idealized growing up. Jennifer was so sweet and she seemed to admire him and he really needed to know that he could be loved and that there was sweetness yet left in the world.

Everything went wonderfully for a while after they were married, but then the twins came along and Johnny lost his job.  Jennifer continued to do it all – to be the breadwinner, the super capable mom, and the social liaison for the family – the one Johnny could count on – but the sweet exterior began to melt away as she got more and more burned out and frustrated.

For Johnny’s part, being a stay at home dad was fulfilling – and he threw himself into the job – but he longed to work around adult types again. He missed Jennifer, her sweetness, her brightness, and the intimate sexual connection they used to share. He knew she was tired and had lost all interest in sex so he didn’t complain when it was quite clear she wanted him to get it over with.

As time went by, he noticed that she was more and more stressed and that she did little else other than complain about her work, the pressure, and more and more, the way he did things with their girls. He began to feel that no matter what he did it would never be enough for her. As more time went by, his frustration grew to anger and he began staying out late with friends, drinking more than he knew she’d like, and even beginning a flirtation with a woman he used to work with. The rebel had reemerged with a vengeance as Johnny began to abandon all else for that pseudo sense of freedom he knew as a teen, despite the mental, emotional, and spiritual cost he’d pay.

What’s the answer for this couple? Stay tuned for next week’s post Is This a Failure to Communicate?

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(That means we ALL do it!)

Johnny

Did you know that lying is developmental – an integral part of how we form and/or don’t form a self? Did you know that good lying is associated with higher intelligence in kids? The implications for our marriages are profound. If we take the above premise to be true (and there’s a lot of research to support it in more than one field of study!) that lying and various ways of stretching the truth are developmental – then lying is not only normal, it’s who we are. Perhaps you think I go too far. Let’s start at the beginning and I’ll tell you how I came to this.

Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman co-wrote a wonderful resource for parents called Nurture Shock in 2009. It is a compilation of research relevant to sticky parenting issues including talking about race with our children, bullying, “gifted” children, and lying. There is no moralizing or offering helpful hints for parents, but rather, straight talk about how kids’ development really works and how what we do as parents, educators, mentors, and politicians fits (or doesn’t fit) in. The chapter on lying was one of the most influential for me as a parent and even as a marriage counselor.

What I learned first was, as I stated above, that lying is developmental, (despite parents’ wishes to not believe so!) and it has everything to do with desire. Here’s what I mean.

Johnny is 6 years old and he’s on his way out the door to school. Dad asks Johnny, “Did you remember to turn your lights off?”

Johnny, who has no desire to walk back upstairs to turn off his lights and who wants to please his dad says, “Yes!”

Dad believes him and they walk out the door. Johnny develops the understanding that his father is capable of holding a false belief. Johnny gets his desire met (to not walk up the stairs and please Dad in the moment). Johnny gets his first successful experience with lying to get something he wants. Innocent. Harmless.

But Johnny has a problem. He just told a lie that he will get caught at. Dad will come home from dropping Johnny off at school and see that Johnny lied. Dad will talk to Johnny when he returns home. Johnny must learn to lie better to get what he wants next time. For example, when Johnny is 8, he begins to understand that Dad forgets things a lot – little things, like what Johnny wore to school the day before or whether he gave Johnny lunch money. Johnny has learned that not only can his father hold a false belief but he can also be forgetful – which can come in handy when Johnny wants to use it to get another desire met. The next time Dad asks Johnny why he lied about…whatever…Johnny can simply tell Dad that he did do X, Y, or Z and that Dad just forgot. (This works the first time. Dad isn’t a dummy.) And it goes on and on…and Johnny gets better and better at lying.

This is a highly sophisticated brain process, by the way. Johnny gets it down to such a science that he knows when to be quiet and fly under the radar and when and just how he needs to come up with a story. Girls, in particular, might use crying or weepiness to create a pity story to get out of responsibilities. The variations are endless.

Notice, though, that Johnny is not a “bad kid” nor is his father neglectful. These are just normal, unavoidable developments in the life of a human family. But let’s take a really reactive family wherein when Johnny is caught lying, Dad goes ballistic. He makes Johnny look in his eyes when he’s talking to him and he lectures and points his finger and has an angry face. Maybe he even spanks Johnny and sends him to bed without dinner. Johnny learns, by the time he’s 16, to turn his damn lights off and do all the other things Dad asks him to do around the house. He starts looking at least neutral to Dad, but when Dad isn’t around, Johnny drinks and drives, he has unprotected sex, and he does a little pot every now and then. But the work is done; Dad is fooled. Johnny has learned to paint a false picture of himself and in return he gets his desires met for rebellion, a sense of freedom, and even vindication or revenge. His emotional energy is wholly wrapped up in presentation – not revelation or discovery. He has to keep Dad guessing and at a distance.

If we look at this in terms of brain formation (which doesn’t end until late adolescence) what has been formed in Johnny is a strong desire for freedom – a pseudo freedom based in rebellion because he’ll take it no matter the cost to him or anyone else. These brain pathways don’t just melt away when Johnny falls in love later. He doesn’t just spontaneously learn to play it straight in his closer relationships. He might look like it for a while, especially if he’s in love, but when that phase passes, the reality of his level of development begins to become apparent.

What happens when Johnny gets married? Has his own kids? Stay tuned for the next post on Jennifer – the lucky woman who marries him!

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