What do you do if you lied? You blurted out a lie without meaning to and then you’re afraid to take it back and you’re not really sure there’s safe space to do so. What can you do?
Join relationship expert Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com and Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com as they share thoughts about how to clean up your lie.
Cathy: Another viewer wrote in and said what do you do if you lied? You blurted it out a lie without meaning to and then now you’re afraid to take it back and you’re not really sure there’s safe space to do so. What can you do?
I’m Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com.
Reid: And I’m Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com/difficultconversations.
Cathy: It’s a great article.
Reid: Yeah. Just download The difficult conversation formula. You can go to my website and just type it into the search bar. Just download that and use it.
If you think there’s not safe space probably is not correct, although I will also say that some people’s family lives and relationship worlds, if you’re in a situation where there’s physical violences, with a threat of physical violence, please call a hotline and get some advice from professional people who are trained in that situation.
But for you to define there’s not safe space, that usually means somebody’s going to be pissed.
Cathy: Yeah.
Reid: And if it’s not a violent situation, they’re going to be pissed more the longer you don’t tell them.
Cathy: Yeah.
Reid: In my opinion, unless they die and then they’ll be less pissed at you.
Cathy: Yes.
Reid: But that’s a long time to wait for a lie. That’s probably not a big lie because you blurted it out in fear, so The difficult conversation formula is I have something to tell you, this is what I’m afraid it might happen if I tell you, here’s what I’d like to have happen when I tell you and here’s what I need to say, I lied when I said this and that, I was scared, I’m sorry, what can I do to make it up to you?
Cathy: Or even if you weren’t scared is I don’t know why it came out of my mouth that way, that’s what I said and then I was frozen because it wasn’t what I’m meant to say and I’m cleaning it out as soon as I can.
Reid: Most people don’t actually need you to be perfect. They need you to be reliable and that means if you lie to them and you come clean quickly and fix it, however that means, whatever that needs to happen, that actually makes you more reliable. Like if you’ve met somebody and you’ve known them for 20 years and they’ve never lied to you, that’s a little weird. I’d rather have somebody lie a couple of times and then clean it up because then I know I can actually count on you.
Because of people will get scared about something and just fid and then they feel like they can’t speak up and so they continue the lie …
Cathy: And it gets bigger and bigger.
Reid: It just gets worst.
Cathy: Yeah.
Reid: With my partnership with Allison, we’ll do something and then all of a sudden it’s like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that was a lie. I lied. I got scared. I lied. This is the truth right here.
Cathy: Did you feel you’ve developed … you’ve role modeled for each other and built up a safe space …
Reid: Yeah.
Cathy: Where you can immediately fix it?
Reid: Yeah. Or it’s actually easier to immediately fix it than to come back a week later.
If you catch yourself lying and be like I just caught myself, say it immediately and then like what? And then like yeah, I wigged out and I said I lied to you and now you deserve the truth and I have my courage back.
Cathy: Yeah.
Reid: It’s actually when you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy.
Cathy: If your partner’s really upset because of a lie, go to the 5lovelanguages.com and look for the 5 languages of apology.
They may feel really hurt. Lies maybe something that’s a big deal for them or they may have hoped that you wouldn’t have lies between you that you think you could trust them or share anything.
Figure out what their language of apology is and make sure to use that when you’re apologizing.
Reid: And then, what you do is you master the 5 languages of apology, you sit them down, you’re like honey, there’s this really cool video I need to show you, you show them this video and right when they watch this point, they’re going to turn to you and then you just say I lied.
Now if they ask you why are we watching this video, say oh no reason, I just thought it was a great video. Now you’ve lied twice. What are you doing? Re-watch the video again.
Leave your comments below, let us know how it’s going.
Thanks for watching.
Cathy: Thanks for your great question. We really appreciate it.
Reid: We love you guys. That is not a lie.