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Sara 00:00

Empowered people make informed decisions that lead to living a life without regret. This is Sara Khaki and Shawna Woods from Atlanta Divorce Law Group. And this is the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. Welcome to the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. I am Sara Khaki with the Atlanta Divorce Law Group and I’m joined by our very own managing partner, Shawna Woods. Shawna, today’s episode is really presented in the form of a question. And this is a question that we get from our clients.

I heard it from friends, family members, people in my circle that keep revisiting the same pattern in their relationships and friendships. And they get to a point with great anguish, they ask, Why do people keep lying to me? WHen I usually hear them ask this, it’s sometimes it’s a place of just frustration of what’s wrong with people. But a lot of times also a place of like,

Wanting to actually get some feedback of why me.

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Shawna 01:06

Yes, I know exactly what you’re talking about. Just had a meeting with a client the other day and she was describing how she’s known her husband’s been lying to her for five years and she outlined the lies and we almost had a jovial moment because we’re kind of laughing about how elaborate and how silly the lies were. They’re very other that he’s lying and it goes both ways. Know, either spouse can be lying, but you have to get to the point of

Why is it this person feels comfortable to continue to lie to me? Are they comfortable in lying to everyone? Or is it just me in particular? Is it a subset of group they’re comfortable in lying to?

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Sara 01:50

Are they just a liar or are you inviting in the lie? So talking specifically, specifically going back to that client, we see this a lot in marriages who are falling apart, which is there was a lie. There was a series of lies that might’ve kept something going in the marriage, right? It could have been that you’re he or she is aware of the other person’s having an affair and they maintain that lie. Might’ve been.

This is a very common one. We’re going to touch this later in our financial infidelity one, a lie of how much money is actually in the household and financial responsibility. And One person just lets the other spouse lie about money because it keeps things going in status quo and letting the other spouse lie about money or extramarital affairs. Keeps things. It keeps the BS running in the household so the household can keep running.

And at some point, all of a you, the person who has been receiving the lie decides that this no longer serves me. This lies no longer to my benefit, you know? And they’re all of going to get very upset about the lie or they’re all of going to be calling out the lies when they have trained the quote unquote liar to keep lying to them.

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Shawna 03:12

Absolutely. And I think one of the things that I like to talk about with people is if you don’t call out somebody on their lie the first or second time that they’ve lied to you. There’s a lot of reasons we don’t do that. It may not be worth our effort. We may want to buy into the lie. We may not to present the lie to other people as yes, this is the truth because that’s what you really want to believe. But if you know it’s a lie and you do not call it out.

The person who is lying then feels empowered because they think they’re getting away with it. They think you believe them and they must be a really good liar. And so they’re gonna keep doing this because it’s beneficial to them.

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Sara 03:55

Right. So this episode’s not at all meant to give a way out to the liar. It’s not meant to excuse the liar or make it okay to lie. That is a big value issue for me. And it’s a big value issue in our firm. Whatever our values integrity. This episode is meant to give tools.

Of awareness for the person who feels that they’re not, consistently put in a spot where they’re not receiving the truth. And what I think it comes down to two things. One is the situation, Shawna, that we’re describing right now, Where you consistently show up with the willful blindness towards the truth and you don’t ever really dig into the truth. You don’t ever ask the tough questions. You don’t ask the follow-up questions. And people do that with their children all the time.

They do that with their teenagers all the time where they don’t want to confront what’s really going on. Right?

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Shawna 04:54

Absolutely, and part of it is If I confront this person, is this relationship gonna last? Or is it going to fall apart? And there’s part of it where, again, going back to is it worth it to me to confront this? Because what happens if I confront it, what’s the next step?

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Sara 05:14

What am I going to do about it? I I think there’s a lot of transactional relationships we have that might not be intimate relationships, but working relationships, working with vendors, working with contractors, working with just everyday people in our lives where we ask a question and the answer made us feel good. It was a superficial answer and we don’t ask the follow-up questions. I’ve caught myself do this a bit when I almost want somebody to sell it to

Right. And just give me the emotional MO to move forward. And I’m not even digging deeper to get beyond the surface level to get to the truth. So that point, think it’s a matter of, we, do we really want to know the truth? Are we really seeking the truth? And I think that’s the question to ask. Are you actually seeking the truth?

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Shawna 06:04

I think that’s a great question to ask. And what would you do? What are you going to do with that truth? Is that truth going to be harsh? Is somebody going to tell you something negative about yourself or about your relationship or about how you’ve treated them? And I think there, of course, there’s all these different levels of lying. You have your surface level lie where somebody doesn’t tell you, you look tired today. They were, hey, that’s a great dress when they just want to make you feel good. I think that…

Is absolutely lovely. Really do. I think there’s a certain level of kindness.

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Sara 06:39

Yes, sometimes you have the EQ where you’re like, what does this person actually ask you?

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Shawna 06:44

Right. And then there’s the what I call the fish stores, which I personally don’t mind. You know, if you want to tell me you caught a 12 foot shark on your fishing trip when you really didn’t, more power to you. Just make it a good story. Right. Right. But I think when it gets to heart of the lie that really becomes harmful, right, is how much of this lie do you buy into before it becomes the truth?

To others around you and maybe even to yourself.

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Sara 07:16

And now you’ve completely enrolled yourself and everybody around you into a complete false reality.

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Shawna 07:22

To a false reality, right? And when you’re presenting that reality to the world, what happens when you decide, I’m no longer buying into this lie, and you try to come out and say, this has been a lie? Right.

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Sara 07:36

So let’s dig into that because this is important for specifically our divorce court. Yes. And we’re dealing with a case similar to this situation. An example of this situation is when you are perhaps married to an abuser, whether it’s substance abuse or somebody that’s physically abusive or mentally abusive. And the worst is when it’s happening to the children. Yes. And children are dealing.

But you’re putting on this social media facade. You’re putting on this world, out world facade that we are the perfect family. He’s the perfect father or the perfect spouse and the children were all great. And you’ve enrolled everybody around in this lie so that you can get the family to function and go on. And then when.

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Shawna 08:28

Absolutely.

And then what happens and Just to go a little bit deeper into that, you know, know, perhaps that they are going to be violent again, or you know that they have been drinking when they said they haven’t or been using when they said they haven’t. And you go along with their lie and you’re presenting their lie to other people. There’s two things that can happen. One, other people are seeing it.

And they are seeing you in this line. Seeing you complicit in this lie and your ability to be able to tell the truth. Those people goes away. Right. So that’s one scenario. The other scenario that happens a lot when you’re presenting this and people don’t know that it’s a lie is when they step out of this lie and they say, I need to get my children away from this abuse. Right. No one’s believing.

Mm-hmm. Right? And it’s really hard to show the court that there’s reasons to have the children not spend a whole lot of time with this abuser, this liar, when you’ve been buying into it. Right. Yes. Everyone around you is saying, no, no, this person was perfect and they told me so.

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Sara 09:43

That part of the story.

Well, I also think even outside of the technical legal world and the divorce law, when you consistently show up with the willful blindness towards the truth and you don’t dig in and you don’t ask follow up questions and you present as anything given to you with all, any answer given to you with all the holes in it, you keep receiving that.

You’re almost sending out a spiritual message to the universe that you don’t want the truth. You’re blocking the truth from being received. So that spills over everywhere in your life. Absolutely. You start embodying a person who actually does not want to receive the truth. ANd I think it’s an energetic thing. You can very much tell when you’re face to face with somebody that almost looks frail and meek from the truth versus somebody that looks at you and you’re like,

I could really give this person the love of the truth.

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Shawna 10:51

Absolutely. And I think it goes back to something that you and I have talked about previously. We talked about niceness versus kindness. And the difference that we have talked about is that Nice is I’m going to put a fresh coat of paint on that and there’s no hole in the wall, right? Because it looks nice. Kind is saying there’s a hole in the wall and we need to address how it

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Sara 10:57

Yes.

100%. And you know, that’s so funny because you say, I love that you brought up the niceness versus kindness because nice to me is always, I view it as manipulative. It’s trying to, you’re acting nice so that I’ll like you and you’ll tell me anything, true or not, in order to get that likeness and appreciation from me versus kindness, you’re giving me love and you’re going to tell me the truth, even if I’m not going to like you in the moment for it. And so usually when I’m

Receiving somebody as being nice towards me, then my mind makes the assumption that this person wants the same in return. So if you have somebody that’s just over-complimentary, over-compliments that don’t even make sense and they don’t seem to be true and they’re just working really hard of being loved and appreciated by you, I’m not able to receive that person as somebody that probably wants to be once kind truth from.

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Shawna 12:08

Yes.

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Sara 12:08

So, and I don’t want to play along in the manipulative word of kindness, I’m sorry, niceness. So I repel that.

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Shawna 12:15

Absolutely. I think that’s a very common thing that we have. It does go, and I think that’s something that people who live in truth and live vigorous honesty actually do repel back from not necessarily the liar, but also the one who buying into the lie and selling the lie. You know, I’ve met with people before where they’re sitting there telling me and they’ve, they’re, the lie has become the truth to them. And when they sit there and they start telling me,

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Sara 12:40

All

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Shawna 12:43

And it’s almost like they’ve told me this whole catfish story, right? Well, he said he had all this money, but then this is what happened. And he said he had a big house, but this is what happened. And I really think that you really need to look at them, especially if they’re asking for your help and say, does this make sense to you?

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Sara 13:03

So this is like, I’m sure you’ve heard this quote too. I don’t even know where the source is, but I’ve heard so many times when people tell you who they are the first time. Absolutely. And this is a common theme, right? Where when you listen to somebody telling you all the series of lies that have been told and by multiple people, and you, you start seeing signs of people, they’re actually have tried to show you a few times who they were and you didn’t believe them.

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Shawna 13:10

Believe them.

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Sara 13:32

So this is very much the, going back to what I said, I think there’s two situations this comes up. One is the willful blindness. The other one is being a person who creates space for the truth. I think that’s a different situation.

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Shawna 13:52

That’s a really interesting way of saying it because there is a lot of times where someone will not feel comfortable in sharing that truth because you don’t want to hear it.

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Sara 14:05

And your behavior is not safe and secure for the person who wants to tell the truth and doesn’t believe you’re able to receive it. Right.

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Shawna 14:17

And yes, and I think there are, and I do want to make a distinction, tHere are times when your safety is at stake, that you are going to lie and there’s nothing wrong with

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Sara 14:28

We see that all the time. Absolutely. See that all the time in domestic violence situations.

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Shawna 14:32

In

Domestic and other abuse situations. But we are talking about that lie that when you say make it safe.

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Sara 14:41

Explore

That. Elaborate on that.

Allowing, creating space for somebody to tell the truth means you create a calm, a calmness and patience to let them get it out. They may not, if they’re telling you something that is uncomfortable for them, something that they’re still digesting on their own, but they know something needs to be spelled out for you to jump in and finish their sentences or

Attack them and every word that they’re saying, make personal attacks at them or make them feel that before they even get to finish what they’re telling you everything, they’ve already been judged on 50 other things or everything they tell you is later going to be used and twisted against them. You’re not creating space for them to be honest with you. I am not saying that if somebody comes to you and shares with you a truth that is hurtful to you and

Harms you or, you know, like if a spouse comes and tells the other spouse, I was unfaithful that you should just sit there and be a doormat and receive all that without any feelings. But you do have to look at yourself and say, am I a person who is able and historically in my relationship with my spouse, I’ve been able to receive the truth because it takes two to tango. And I think that people think

The truth, telling the truth is a one man dance, but I believe it’s a two people dance. There is the person who gives it and the person who’s able to receive it. Cause part of receiving it is also hearing it. Sometimes you’re telling somebody the truth and they’re not even really listening to what you’re saying. And they’re still running on their own story in their head. And the example of, for instance, the infidelity, if you could it be, I’m not saying this is always the case, but could it be?

That multiple times your spouse wanted to create a moment with you where you could truly listen to him or her about how they were feeling about the marriage, how they were feeling about intimacy, how they were feeling about their needs and your needs. And you never, and you lashed at them or you judged them or you made them feel silly, right? Or you made them feel needy for what they were so painfully trying to share about their truth.

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Shawna 17:10

I’m ashamed.

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Sara 17:11

Or shame them or disconnected from them and blew up on them, right? And disturbed the entire household because of it, that it led to a point that something that could possibly break the marriage, like infidelity happened and now where do we go from there? And that would be another episode. That’s, are you a person who can, the truth is, you can, let me put that, rephrase that.

Are you a person that’s safe to tell the truth to?

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Shawna 17:44

I think it’s a great question. And I know we’re saying spouse, we’re talking about sometimes friendships, it’s here. I think it’s really important for parents in that as well to be that safe person for their children to tell the truth to. And it’s really hard to hear your truth from the children sometimes. It’s especially important when they’re minor children, but it’s very important when they’re adult children too. And they’re telling their truth, right? May not mesh with what you believe.

Happened or what you think happened or should happen, but you still need to hold that space for the children to be able to tell you their truth. Or you’re going to turn them into people who naturally lie because they’re going to tell you what you want to hear.

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Sara 18:29

Man, the children one is so good, especially I think of teenagers. I don’t have teenagers yet, but I can go back to myself as a teenager and I can tell you experiencing both scenarios, the scenario where your parents ask you a tough question and then internally you think, do they want the truth or do they want a validation of some sort? And I mean, I got this question from my parents a lot when we first moved to America and I was a teenager and they’re like,

How are you? I’m great, doing great. Loving it. I’m fine. Middle school. This is wonderful. Versus like when they would ask a tough question and I’m like, they actually want the truth. Can they handle the truth? Thankfully my parents usually could, but I think we don’t give enough credit to how in tune young adults are when they’re asked tough questions. They’re actually paying attention energetically of

Which truth do they want? The real truth or the one that validates and makes things just easier right now.

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Shawna 19:36

Absolutely, and it goes both ways because if you lie to your children, they will absolutely understand that’s the way this goes.

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Sara 19:46

Yep.

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Shawna 19:48

And you mentioned teenagers, right? But I always see, also talked earlier about your daughter and her coming home and sharing things just openly with you about her day. Obviously you’ve created this space where she feels very comfortable telling you the minute truth. How do you do that?

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Sara 20:06

Yes. At the stage. She’s trained

Me. Yeah. She’s trained me. I’m not kidding. I’ll tell you just an example that kind of gets to the heart of how she’s trained me. The other day, Sham’s been out of town for corporate travel. So he’s her soccer coach. He’s a team soccer coach. So I have to step in as a soccer coach. And Ted Lasso is probably a better soccer coach than I am.

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Shawna 20:33

I’m trying not to laugh.

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Sara 20:35

Well,

You should. It’s very laughable. And on the way home from practice, was like, all right, Hannah, like, give me some feedback. How did I do? And I’m like, hard. Was I’m not sure if I wanted the truth, you guys. Think I might have I might have wanted validation on this one because it was pretty bad. And she was like, OK, OK, I am going to tell you this. I am going to tell you how you did, but you’re going to have to listen and you’re not going to.

You’re not going to interrupt me and you’re not going to talk back and she’s giving me very specific instructions and you’re not going to feel and you’re not going to get hurt. I’m like, okay, okay, let’s go.

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Shawna 21:15

I’m going to tell you how you’re not allowed to feel.

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Sara 21:18

Yes. And I’m like, okay, let’s go. They’ve trained me and I do ask my kids for feedback a lot. And I create an environment where they can poke fun at me, you know, and I sometimes it’s, it’s where you listen to the feedback of how you’re doing. I don’t always do a great job. There’s times when, you know, they tell me something that just like gets hurts me for them, like something that’s going on in school. And I just want to blow up and I catch myself. Like, I’m going to lose.

I can’t lose them having me as an audience. So I’m gonna stay being an audience and just listen and let them get it all out. But yeah, I think if we pay attention, our kids will train us.

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Shawna 21:59

Well, they do. You know, my daughter has grown now. Have a different, obviously we can be truthful with each other, but we also have some kind of don’t ask, don’t tell about certain subjects. Those are called boundaries, as we’ve discussed before. And it’s those those little lies where I’ll say, yeah, that’s where I was.

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Sara 22:19

Yeah, yeah.

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Shawna 22:21

She

Knows and she knows not to ask you to make further, but that’s our accepted relationship because there are certain things as that mother daughter relationship as adults, we don’t necessarily need to know about each other. And it’s okay for those little white lies, especially when everybody knows that’s what you’re doing.

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Sara 22:39

I think one thing I’m learning recently to kind of bring this home as an adult I’m learning this is it’s perfectly a complete answer to say I don’t want to tell you. Oh, absolutely. I never, this is brand new. This is brand new information to me guys. Like I’m just now using that. I’m like, no, not gonna lie and not gonna validate anything. And the absolute truth is I don’t want to tell you.

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Shawna 23:05

There’s a phrase that I used to use a lot and I don’t know if it’s good or not, but I used to say, please don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.

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Sara 23:15

Then I’ve won the answer. I think we’ve covered it. Thanks for listening to the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. If you’d to learn more, go to atlantadivorcelawgroup.com/resources.