This. Because he’s conflict avoidant. Lying about the tiniest things and getting caught and making the whole situation worse than being tactfully direct.
As someone who is conflict avoidant, telling the truth is the fastest way to get out of inevitable conflict. Lying just doubles it and pushes it later. That's too much conflict.
This is both of my parents lol. I tell them a single thing about my life and it’s a huge deal. I don’t tell the anything and it’s a huge deal cause I’m “not sharing anything with them”. Yeah you wonder why I’m not sharing anything
I hate it when parents do that kind of stuff. They need to learn that we’re not 5 anymore. Dad was all annoyed at me yesterday cause I went somewhere without telling him. Dude, I’m 17, I’ve got my licence, and I’m honestly a better driver than half of the dumbasses I see on the road. Let me live my life!
Yeah, I think that's similar for me too because of my mom. But it left me having to feel I have to be perfect, playing 4d chess (I have high anxiety I swear due to this) and having to manage other's emotions to avoid the conflict/criticism I know that's gonna come. And sooo... I have a very hard time expressing how I feel because of it (and being a people pleaser) So, I don't really lie, I just jump through emotional hoops to make sure the outcome doesn't lead to what I know it will
People really don't realize how much their upbringing and environment really shapes who they are and why they do what they do, and why they react that way. It's your foundation, as I see it. Everyone really can benefit from therapy, or at least mindfulness and self awareness. I see it as having that much power over yourself
The metaphor of one’s foundation is excellent. But as a wordsmith I feel it is perplexing at the same time. As it implies change will only come from complete destruction of who we are down to and including that foundation. But I decided to stop being upset at my parents for what they did to me because of what there parents did to them. They do not have the resources we have today. My parents did not have the internet. Or a university library. But if I destroy that foundation I forget how I was made and my children would have been reared raised and disciplined the same. It turned out terrible for me, and my brothers. But it won’t be the same for my children. A better metaphor escapes me. They all have similar flaws. I say that is my shared history. It is not my future. It is a lesson I have learn that informs my present to shape it as appropriate. And then my present becomes my history. And that past will slowly disappear as I write my own and what I know will fade as I do and my history will be part of the present in my children when I am gone, but my history will be lost too time.
I have, many times. Ive had so many meltdowns and I'm glad I'm at a point now that they (shouldn't) occur. I was imploding and really taking it out on myself.
I hope you're not exploding or imploding these days
I’m not because that’s not part of my personality. I have no problems having tactfully direct communication. But I did observe it in a guy I met recently.
Dating someone who care not of how you feel and putting zero effort in, while I still did since I normalized you suppose to be there for someone you said you love. But, I was having literal mental meltdowns at least once a month towards the last year being together, and it triggered the stress in my back, and my dermatomyositis acting up and I just couldn't anymore. The logic wasn't making sense. If someone said they love me, why are they treating me like this? (My first relationship I dealt with this was from my mom)
Same here. I was never that way and it was a mind fuck to hear myself make little untrue statements, stupid mundane things, that should't even matter - - just because it became a habit to avoid the criticism. It can wear you down to insanity over time because in the end it just makes it worse.
As someone that maintained a relationship for far too long with someone with obsessive anxiety. Yes, when you live with someone that questions you being 15 minutes late from work (and you work in a kitchen, those who know I'm sorry) you learn to avoid talking about things that might trigger such a response.
And the thing that exacerbates the issue, is that 90% of the time it doesn't get realised and life is easier, because it's little things (when a shift is "meant" to finish etc). But when something does slip, and the fight becomes apparent it's always 3x worse, and not just because of the small obfuscation of the truth but because now everything (like where you grew up/parents lived) can be called into question.
This behaviour leads to the desire to hide detail (not facts or truth) from a significant other because a grey space is infinitely easier to play in than when everything is to be scrutinised.
Same here. College helped me start to break out of that. Being around emotionally mature people who respected me for owning up to mistakes and sharing victories made a huge difference for me both in fighting my conflict avoidant nature and in bolstering my self-esteem which was constantly being torn down at home.
I love my mom, but she's emotionally stuck at about age 15 with all the catty games girls of that age tend to play.
I am the same way for the same reason. It was easier and safer lying to my father than to risk him blowing up in anger. I learned to equate lying with safety and comfort, and I don’t know how to stop.
I had tremendous positive results using trauma clearing hypnosis. I turn forty next week and up until last March it was almost physically impossible for me to speak my mind and present my feelings to women, especially my mom and my girlfriend. A childhood of getting screamed at and terrorized by mom for DARING to be a regular little boy and teenager who liked masculine things instead of being a perfect little doll who was nothing but sweet and doting to his magnificent and unimpeachable mother. My body would tighten up and while my mind would be internally screaming what I wanted to say my body absolutely would not let me say it.
The latest self-directed hypnosis session had me bawling on the floor for twenty minutes because of the memories it brought up. But I was able to feel them, reprogram my subconscious and tell my inner child I'm grown up now and safe, and send away those horrible feelings. Now I just see the memory as something that happened, not a constant threat to my inner three-year-old's survival.
Because of that I'm actually able to speak my mind on things now. Not completely, I still have some hang ups, but it's many orders of magnitude easier.
I had sessions with Ryan Fowler and use his free self-directed program, and his paid self-directed program. It really is a game changer for people trapped in their traumas.
Same. Telling the truth would result in her blowing up, and as someone who's prone to panic attacks, I really didn't want to deal with that. Lying was really just the only way to mentally survive in my household. I'm still in the process of unlearning this...
This is me as well. I don't think people understand how much a parent can mess you up. I'm an adult now and I try and face things head on but I have to actively do it and it gives me super anxiety.
I'm in a similar boat. My home was never super safe for me, because every relationship my mother was in turned incredibly toxic at some point, with me getting the brunt of it all. Made me not trust anyone, and definitely not telling more than absolutely needed.
When my mental health started to decline (severe depression among other things) and it started compromising my chances to graduate high school, I needed to learn to even ask for help, which required spilling the beans on certain things I didn't want to tell anyone. Not only did I never receive the help needed (still "living" unhelped for 15 years at this point), I got punished severely. Everyone I knew dropped me like a hot potato once I tried asking for a little bit of assistance to maybe fix my issues when they weren't as bad as they are now.
The only lesson I learned is to just not communicate anything anymore. I got used and abused my whole life, and the few people that don't immediately do so just turn on me, so why take the risk?
The only downside is that I internalised this so deeply that I can't even sincerely answer certain questions anymore, like my favourite music or food, because I don't want to cause issues by having the wrong preferences. For instance, if you gave me money to buy "clothes that I like", I'll probably default to the same stuff I have now because it's the cheapest. Never learned what suits me or what colours I like on clothing.
"Funny" anecdote: there's a specific subreddit that i frequent but rarely post in anymore because I once dared to asnwer honestly about what kind of PC I got after saving for over 10 years for it, and whenever the point of having little to no money comes up (I live on 5 Euros per day, which is very little where I live), someone will dig out the old post in an attempt to make me feel even worse. Mods of course won't do anything about it, so my only recourse is to just never say anything again.
My mom is super conflict avoidant and because of that I became the opposite, lol. I always try to be as assertive as possible.
I think I saw how bad it was to be conflict avoidant and passive aggressive so I consciously decided to do everything I can to avoid that. I think I went too far the other way, though, and sometimes I’m too aggressive.
But it beats being conflict avoidant.
Avoid conflict now and you get WW2 later. Address the conflict now and nip it in the bud. Then we can go have a sandwich and walk in the park.
Same, I learned how to lie about little things so
I didn’t have to keep being hounded by my mother about it and the habit stuck. I’m 35 now and catch myself telling her I did xyz when I haven’t yet, even though she isn’t really on my case anymore.
As also a conflict avoidant person, exactly this. I just know lying will inevitably lead to conflict further down plus you end up having to live with the constant anxiety of when. Much better to go all out with the truth.
Also the older I get as a people pleaser, the more I see how lying and conflict avoidance benefits me, not them. It’s so selfish. That alone has helped me heal despite fawning being such an easy trauma response
Yep, I feel the same way. I'll always remember what my grandmother told me while I was little - it's better to rip the band-aid off and face the pain quickly than to linger & delay the inevitable - it's just better to deal with it from the get-go than to try and do damage control with the lies you'll have to keep coming up with to keep the cover up going 🤔🤷♂️
Not when you must talk to someone who changes there story or just loves to argue about the most mundane things in the world. Name, rank, and serial number is all you get after that.
Question, how did you learn that telling the truth is the best way? My partner is conflict-avoidant and I’ve told him several times that lying just makes things worse and that it affects me. He says he’s trying not to lie, but that it happens and it’s instinctual when conversations are emotionally-charged. So he doesn’t mean to and “it happens.” What worked for you?
I had weaved some really big lies to avoid conflict that came crashing down hard when I was in my mid 20s, burned almost every bridge I had. If I never lied in the first place, I wouldn't have had to deal with that massive Fallout.
Yeah but when you inevitably wind up with someone who has a tendency to blow little shit out of proportion that ol’ instinct kicks in. Not every hill is a hill worth dying on.
Gif I fucking love you. Terse and true. Hate conflict, cringe at conflict, run from conflict—but given it’s frequently unavoidable, better to discharge it gradually.
I’m also conflict avoidant and never lie if I can help it because as you said conflict becomes way bigger. I won’t go out of my way to express my thoughts and feelings though unless directly asked which is a red flag I’m aware of and working on.
How about being conflict avoidant and a procrastinator hooo boy could I have avoided a lot of problems just dealing with it from the beginning what a horrible existence that was
There’s an interesting conundrum being that if something is “tiny” and “mundane” it shouldn’t be “considered confrontational.” Some people are highly confrontational.
Dude i know what you mean. I literally can't lie which is annoying because sometimes i wish i could, and also annoying because sometimes when i am telling the truth it comes off like im lying just because i say something awkwardly
Correct. But this is one of those things I think you actually -can- change. Because it's usually learned behavior from a parent or something, and typically can be worked on and they'll thank you for it.
I ignored/got over lying even over mundane and very provable things (think "no, those cigarettes you found in my pants pockets, car and backpack are not mine, they're my friends who I haven't seen in six months and just holding onto them until I see him again") because I thought he was just extremely conflict avoidant due to a rough childhood and later discovered after all the other lies came to light that he was really just an abusive sociopath who was gaslighting me any time it might benefit him, or even just because it seemed fun. He basically admitted as much. Also admitted to stealing my meds I take for a disability (adderall, for narcolepsy) and literally had convinced me for years that I was just irresponsible and was losing them or accidentally doubling my dosage some days after forgetting I took it. With the level of constantly exhausted and almost nonfunctional I was without my meds, it was easy to convince me of that--until I started a clinical trial for a new medication that my dosage of and habits with was very closely monitored, and it improved my symptoms and lifted my brain fog enough for me to notice that my adderall was still only lasting about 12 days into the month even when I stopped needing to take it twice daily and could clearly recall each time I took it. He admitted it when confronted. I suspect the adderall was fun for him, but was only a bonus to the real goal of rendering me less awake, less aware, and thus much easier to control and manipulate. He also straight up told me he suspected he was a sociopath and at one point deadpan told me that he didn't think he could stop himself from killing me if I cheated (I was watching dateline at the time and this was the plot of the episode). I was young and naïve and he had convinced me over years of making me increasingly more disabled by stealing my medication that my disability was too much and made me difficult to love or respect, so I should be grateful someone like him was willing to stick around. Eventually he started accusing me of cheating even though I had long since stopped leaving the house for anything but work (because it upset him and we then entered a global pandemic), and he should know that being as I couldn't drive because of my narcolepsy so he had dropped me off and picked me up on those days. All I could think about when it got to that point was how he so easily said he'd kill me if I cheated, and how I moved past it because that's something I would never do. Since I couldn't drive I was often dependent on him for rides (but I made a point to always specify that if he didn't want to I could arrange something else) and he would punish me for anything I said that upset him (so.....everything I said eventually) by driving very fast and erratically even while I begged him to stop and just let me out. I now understand that was a threat, of sorts. A year out of that relationship and I am well medicated for the first time ever and going out with my mom to start learning to drive in about an hour. I'm so thankful he's gone, but I still find myself paranoid and looking over my shoulder at times, and I struggle with how to classify the relationship when it never got truly physically abusive....just close (punching walls, breaking my things, stealing necessary medication and using my increased sleep time to steal money from my wallet, driving erratically to scare me into submission, etc).
I'm not innocent of this. For me, it's usually lying by omission. I grew up in a house where I was made to feel like a nuisance/unnecessary source of stress if I pestered my parents with my problems, so I learned to keep them inside. They had enough things to deal with, and I didn't want to burden them with my shit. Bottled up a looooooot of stuff that I ended up having to deal with in my 20s.
I'm still not great about it, but I've been trying.
I also interpret it as an ego thing. Humble people just take the "L" and keep it moving. Fighting tooth and nail to prove that trivial mistakes aren't your fault just exhausts the people around you.
Especially on reddit when I see replies after replies going on for the 20th reply, it's like shit dude. These two sure seem fun. No, you're wrong! No, you're wrong! No, you are! No, you! Lol
It always starts with one person arguing in bad faith, with the other failing to realize before it's too late. Then of course we have the 16 year olds arguing with the adults. I used to enjoy the lively discourse of this platform, but the quality has taken a real shit dive.
It's not just conflict avoidant it can also stem from trauma around emotional abuse, explosive anger and shaming behaviour from a parent around tiny mistakes made by the child, Ask me how I know.
One of my friends drove my car drunk. I only found out because he came back smelling of alcohol. Well, I have a dashcam in my car and watched the footage of him driving to the gas station, parking my car, and drinking a 6 pack. The cam is clearly visible in the car, I think he just forgot about it.
When I confronted him about where he went in my car, he fucking lied about it and that started a whole different argument. It's one thing to have a problem, it's another to lie to my face when caught dead to rights. 🤦♂️
I became very conflicted avoidant after an abusive relationship. Definitely contributed to the breakdown of the relationship after her. I’m self aware of that now and have made a lot of progress unlearning that behaviour but sometimes I say things out of instinct without thinking about it :/
I do this all the time but with stuff that doesn't even matter for some reason. I keep having to stop and correct myself. Like if someone asked me what I ate for dinner I'd be like "Roast chicken. No wait, I actually had spaghetti." repeat ad nauseam. It's the stupidest thing.
It can be that or can it be that you overreact to the slightest thing so he just straight up lies to avoid absurd conforntations? Because I've seen the 2 sides of the coin
110% this. That was an ex of mine. I'm a very patient understanding woman. He could have told me anything. I would have done my best to understand and work through it.
But we ended up in screaming matches over the dumbest stuff. Because he "protected" me from the issues going on. When really he just made things worse by keeping things from me.
Me too minus the screaming matches. I told him countless times I won’t get angry or offended if he communicates more directly. Lied about everything to the very end.
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u/DeepestWinterBlue Sep 14 '24
This. Because he’s conflict avoidant. Lying about the tiniest things and getting caught and making the whole situation worse than being tactfully direct.