Dear limbikanimaria:

You are welcome and I am grateful for your gracious reply.

“I do know that my mother lies, that I lie, that we all lie at times“-

-When people ask me: how are you? Most often I will answer: fine, thank you. Even if I don’t feel fine. Is that a lie? Yes, and in this way we all lie. This kind of lie (there are other examples) are part of what I call social lubrication lies. If I was to answer truthfully the question: how are you, asked by multiple people per day, neither I nor they will have the time or the desire to listen to a long answer, a long answer that will take time to develop as I answer.

You made a distinction between lying so to protect other people’s feelings and lying for selfish reasons, like your ex boyfriend did (“to endure that he would see me and we would have sex”), a very painful experience for you.

Back to your mother: I was not referring to her lying to you as in social lubrication lies, an accepted and practiced social custom in all modern societies, or as in what you mentioned, lying to protect others’ feelings, as in let’s say, a woman asking her husband: do you think I look fat?

I am talking about lying for selfish reasons. I am suggesting that your mother lied to you for selfish reasons. And this kind of lying, we don’t all do, do we (outside of extreme circumstances such as when held hostage and physically tortured)?

anita