No, actually, you do want me to lie to you

The truth is the most overrated thing in the world when it comes to relationships. This fact permeates all the stages of a relationship, from the courtship and honeymoon period, to the stage of “showing one’s behind” and even to the unfortunate, though mostly inevitable end to these necessarily doomed engagements.

Throughout all these stages, either one or both parties involved have to engage in a measured amount of untruths about themselves, the relationship and significant other — with good intentions of course — in order to foster and strengthen the relationship.

But of course when woman are asked what they desire most in a partner (and this is where the fabrications are born) they always mention “honesty” among the prime qualities that a potential suitor should possess. But if people are in fact honest from the onset, I will venture that not many relationships would get past the first date or encounter, and yes, this would probably have a positive effect on the population growth figures and the rate of transfer of STIs, but these are hardly in consideration during the inception of a relationship, are they?

In my experience, the courtship concern of the potential lovers at the beginning of the engagement is to get the other party hooked on you in a manner that they will over the next few days, weeks feel intimate enough with you to take off their clothes for you and let you have your jolly fat way with them. Honesty is administered in very measured dosages at the beginning of a relationship if at all. Because traditionally it should be the man that should be the pursuer. It is the man who is required to do all or most of the fabricating — it is a necessary and accepted evil, one that will be to the benefit of both parties should the relationship be successful.

Women want to be in relationships, we all want to be in a relationship for sure, but I think it is easier for men to accept themselves as unattractive and they are happy to wait for a woman desperate enough to have them. You see, men want sex, ultimately, and will get into a relationship to guarantee themselves that intercourse (all the trauma of a relationship is quite a price to pay but there often is no other way).

Women know what men want and if they are still single even though they possess that which men will so singularly pursue, then they feel there must be something really horrible with them and the only way to make that right is to get a man — if they can’t, their egos will take a bashing and they will slip into a perpetually morbid state (I have some female friends and have been told this).

So I say again: Women WANT us to pursue them so they can pick and choose their partner and live happily ever after and since lying is a necessary requirement to foster a relationship, then I venture that women WANT us to lie to them!

Women WANT us men to lie to them at the inception of a relationship! Yes, you do, ladies! As an exercise, examine your past and failed relationships before you scorn me for articulating this uncomfortable truth. Examine how much of what you thought about your partner and more importantly what you believed your partner thought of you and which lead you to enter the relationship actually turned out to be pure and baseless lies, but which without them, the relationship would have likely been doomed.

Imagine this very honest hypothetical conversation between two individuals on a blind date and tell me if this conversation would have lead to the engagement between them culminating in a happy, sweaty ending for both parties. I will use myself as a lab rat in this hypothetical exchange and will base the conversation on a real blind date I went on, with my now two ex-girlfriends. I lied through the date, which lead to many happy endings and because we remained friends, we were later able to learn the truth about what we thought of each other when we first met, but chose not to articulate the truths for reasons of capturing the others affections.

We met at a trendy restaurant on a summer afternoon with both parties dressed to impress. A good Samaritan friend of mine had hooked up the meeting to help me get a girlfriend after I had relocated from Durban. Now, if the conversation went this way:

Woman: Well, do you like me at all? I mean do you see potential for us?
Sumo: No, actually, I thought I was explicitly clear with our mutual friend that I do not like big woman.

W: That’s kinda rich coming from you …
S: Well, yeah, I know I am not exactly Denzel, but I do have my standards. I draw the line at about 60kg, really and no offence to you.

W: None taken, thanks for your honesty. I still like you though.
S: I know, I can tell by your nipple-stand that you are excited by The Sumo. Do you want to have meaningless sex for a couple of months and then I will disappear without a trace or explanation?

W: Sure, why not. I ain’t getting any from nobody at the moment anyway.
S: Your spot or mine?… I’ll get the bill …

It is very unlikely that the last two lines would have precipitated from that conversation; so you see what I mean. Contrary to the above conversation and for everyone’s benefit at the beginning, I had to embellish the truth when probed by this woman (in this hypothetical encounter) in order for me to get to a place where I could accept the less than perfect things about her and she had to lie and look past most of me (there is quite a bit of me, you see) to find the gentleman within that she would come to like and want to know even after the physical relationship had run its short course and had panted to a collapse.

Of course I am not the first to come to know of this constant and necessary dance of falsehoods that is the building block of most healthy infant relationships. I quote for you Shakespeare below and his realisation of the necessity of lies in keeping him and his love in a state of happiness and together for as long as it still suited them both and unto their relationship’s natural end:

CXXXVIII
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor’d youth,
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
O! love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love, loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.

We accept lies, knowing the truth, in order for us to find some level of happiness and we have been doing this since forever, I would suspect.

So why is it so hard for us to accept what we have known for centuries to be true, why can’t we all just accept the necessity of lies in our relationships? Well, I believe it is what makes us human and we would rather believe that our objects of desire are intrinsically good, just, fair, honest, yet we implore them never to be honest with us. We do this in the way we react to honesty that is counter to our own beliefs of ourselves and how we want the world to see us.

So to all and sundry who will be engaging in any form of courtship in the near future (winter draws ever nearer) I submit that most of what you will come to know as your relationship at the beginning will be based on lies, lies that will crumble away in time and as you unravel the true nature of your significant other. The survival of your relationship will depend on whether the untruths the other has been perpetuating are acceptable to you or not – if not, then that will be the end, but if you can accept them, then they will be the foundation of otherwise healthy relationships.

All based on dishonesty.

I rest.