July 26, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Since when did lying become so commonplace?
By JENNIFER NAGEL

Where did the truth go? I know it’s not exactly glamorous or exciting, but it seems like no one bothers to tell it. I wonder sometimes if this is a new trend — that people dodge the truth when it’s uncomfortable and have only begun to do so very recently — or if people have always lied to me and I’m just now intelligent enough to put the pieces together.

I consider myself a very good reader of people. After a few casual conversations with someone, I can predict very accurately how he’ll react to a given situation or comment. Part of it, I think, is that, upon meeting someone, I carry on with him as if I’ve always known him, commenting on the fact that I accidentally dropped a piece of food and lost it in my bra or flinging stereotypes and prejudicial comments about the town or area he’s from.

But I’ve noticed in the past few years more and more people blatantly lying to me. Take, for instance, a good friend of mine who invited me to lunch this past week. When we are together, he and I are like two peas in a pod. However, he has a lingering girlfriend problem. She hates me, he loves her, and sometimes to have drinks or lunch or walk the dog with me, he has to sneak away.

Not my fault that she feels threatened, I swear. When he left me a voicemail inviting me out to lunch, I knew we would not have lunch. (I used to think I had psychic ability, but it turns out I just know how people will behave and react. This, I think, puts my psychic ability on par with many actual practicing psychics.) We scheduled lunch on Friday, but Friday was the day after The Police show, and we were both exhausted.

We rescheduled for Saturday. On Saturday, when I knew I was “supposed” to be having lunch, I booked a pedicure and manicure ahead of time. My phone never rang, and my nails have never looked so stunning. I knew lunch would fall through in the same way I know he’ll call in a few days and pretend nothing happened. It’s just not worth an argument.

How does this relate to dating? Quite obviously, I hope. We’ve all been there (and I say that because I think it just happens to me a lot, so I’m going to pretend it’s happened to you and thus not suffer alone): everything is going along fantastically. You like him and he likes you; you think he’s handsome, and he thinks you’re pretty. You like the same music, you laugh at the same things, everything is grand and then there’s the one time he says “I’ll call you this week” but his eyes shift or there’s a note in his voice you’ve never heard before. I try to tell myself, as do my friends, that everything’s fine and I’m overanalyzing. After a catastrophic relationship, which I now view as training for this type of thing, I’ve learned to start trusting my gut. Because he doesn’t call, didn’t call, won’t call. He’s gone. Just like that. And there’s no explanation.

So where’s the truth? I have girlfriends who go out on dates with guys and don’t want to see them again, so they don’t call. I have a friend who works as a bartender and frequently gets stood up by guest bartenders who are scheduled to come in and never show up. Where is the sense of ownership? Never before in my life have words become so cheap  — and sometimes even my own words don’t carry much credibility.

I don’t know when this became OK. I mean, I read a billion picture books as a child, and half of them were about telling the truth — the one where Ernie submits his cousin’s painting to a contest and wins and takes credit for it stands out in my mind — and what has anyone learned from it? How hard is it to say to someone you’re not interested in dating, “I’m not interested in dating you?” We don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, and we don’t want to have our own feelings hurt. Well, guess what: if you’re not interested in getting hurt, then go home and sit on your mom’s couch with the cat for the rest of your life. Relationships are risky and carry with them the risk of getting your feelings hurt or hurting someone else’s.

One of my friends recently split with her boyfriend and began seeing someone new. She calls and asks what she should do to handle relations with her ex or to inform her parents of this change in her love life. I suggested — and this may be revolutionary — she call her ex and ask him to come pick up his stuff since they’re not together anymore, and that she call her parents and tell them she’s decided to leave her boyfriend because she’s unhappy.