What Does Lying Do to a Relationship?

Lies come in all shapes and sizes, but no matter how small, a lie creates distance between you and your partner.

The Foundation of Any Relationship: Trust

Love is what we want, but before we can get there, we need to have trust. The thing about trust is that it is fragile. Once earned, it can just as easily go away. 

Why is trust so important? The fact of the matter is that a healthy relationship cannot exist without trust. Trust helps your partner feel safe with you. Without safety, how is there a relationship at all? If we feel safe, trust then allows us to let our guard down, be vulnerable, and reveal our true selves. 

Research has shown that a lack of trust is one of the biggest reasons why relationships fail. When trust is lacking, you’re left constantly worrying about your partners’ actions and the viability of your relationship. Distrust can leave you fraught with anxiety and feeling lonely despite being in a relationship. 

How Lying Destroys Trust

No matter how small the lie, it will damage trust. And trust is a key element of any good relationship. There are different types of lies.  In addition to outright lies, lying can involve purposely omitting the truth or giving vague answers to avoid telling the truth. 

It Harms the Foundation 

When a partner lies, it undercuts the relationship’s foundation. Any type of lie can create distance. A small, seemingly innocent lie can change how your partner sees you. It can make them feel suspicious, confused, and insecure. They may start to wonder whether other things you’ve said in the past were the truth. 

One lie often leads to another. Over time, the truth is no longer assumed. Instead, deception becomes the default mode of interaction. Lying actually becomes normalized. This creates a disastrous breakdown of communication.  

It’s Self-Protective 

Lying is about self-protection, rather than partnership. In the moment, the priority is to protect themself first. This often is at the expense of the relationship. It does not necessarily mean the person doesn’t care about their relationship. They may not be operating with any malicious intent, though it is harmful nonetheless. 

Self-protective behavior can be an automatic response or a defense mechanism that becomes more likely to recur the more lying takes place.

Examples of prioritizing the self over the relationship include:

• Avoiding responsibility
• Hiding behavior
• Managing how you’re perceived
• Controlling your partner’s access to the truth

Instead, putting the relationship first requires both emotional maturity and regulation. 

Protecting the relationship over the self can look like the following:

• Having difficult and honest conversations
• Taking responsibility for your actions without shifting blame 
• Allowing your partner to react 
• Making repairs after a mistake
• Sitting with discomfort

The Emotional Toll

Lying in a relationship harms both partners emotionally. The person being lied to will experience decreased emotional safety. While at the same time, the lying will increase their anxiety and hypervigilance. Additionally, the partner will begin to doubt themself and question their perception. They may ask themselves questions like, “Am I naive?” The self-doubt and decreased self confidence does a great deal of harm to one’s psyche. 

The person who is lying is likely to experience chronic stress from having to keep secrets. They may feel guilty or feel shame. Maintaining deception takes work, so they may feel mentally exhausted as well. 

The irony is that most people lie to avoid something that they end up doing anyway with their lie, only it’s even more harmful. For example, people lie to avoid hurting their partner, to avoid conflict, to protect themselves from shame, or to defend the relationship. However, it’s the lie itself that ends up causing these things.

The Breakdown of Communication and Connection

The cycle of lies is a repeating pattern that, over time, ends up replacing intimacy with suspicion. It begins with the seemingly small, “initial lie”, often told to prevent something, like conflict or shame.  The partner ends up uncovering the lie, which causes doubt and/or hurts them. At this point, trust begins to crack. What’s worse, the lying partner doesn’t take accountability. They downplay, deny, or shift blame. This adds insult to injury. Now the hurt partner is on edge, skeptical. They second-guess past behaviors, question more, and monitor their partner, trying to piece together the truth. They may require excessive reassurance because their emotional safety is in jeopardy.

As a result of the scrutiny, the lying partner withdraws and puts their guard up. They hide even more from their partner because they believe open honestywill make things worse. They’re less willing to share because they now feel controlled. The cycle repeats. 

Beyond the Emotional

Broken trust activates your body’s stress response. When trust is repeatedly broken through lies, cortisol, adrenaline, heart rate, and blood pressure all increase. Over time, this can lead to weakened immune function, increased inflammation, and an increased risk of cardiac overload. The act of lying and decreased trust is bound to disrupt sleep, known to cause substantial adverse short- and long-term health consequences.

What About White Lies?

White lies are untruths that are usually well-intentioned. An example would be telling your partner you are on your way when you haven’t left yet. A white lie like this might be told to prevent your partner from getting upset with you. 

White lies are often told to avoid hurting your partner’s feelings. An example of this is telling them you love what they cooked for you, even though you despise mushrooms. 

However, research shows that even small lies can create distance. In addition, they tend to make us feel bad. The next time you feel you should tell an untruth, pause to ask whether it’s really necessary, and what the consequences for telling the truth are. You might find that the reward for being truthful is actually more beneficial.  

Recognizing the Signs of Dishonesty in a Relationship

It’s not usually one thing that signals lying, but a pattern of behavior. 

• Inconsistencies in their story: One of the biggest indicators of lying is details that shift and change.  These are often small contradictions, changing timelines, or minor details that don’t align with the facts. 
• Increased defensiveness: Lying makes people on edge. They can feel like they need to defend themselves even when they’re not being provoked. Neutral questions can make them angry. Instead of answering questions, they make accusations or resort to name-calling to try to turn it on you. 
• Secrecy: Keep in mind that privacy is healthy. Secrets are not. Deception might surface in their behavior around their devices. For example, they might not leave their phone out, take calls in another room, or change passwords that you once shared.
• Gut-Feeling: Sometimes you simply feel a shift. You can tell that something is off.  It’s hard to deny your gut when it’s warning you, especially when it’s combined with observable behaviors like decreased intimacy, increased anxiety, over-explaining, or general emotional distance.

How to Recover from a Pattern of Lying in a Relationship

It is possible to recover from the damage done by lying in the relationship. However, it requires significant commitment from both partners. It will involve taking full ownership of all past lies without shifting blame elsewhere. It will require more than apologies and insight for the relationship to heal. 

1. Take Responsibility 

The partner (or partners) who lied must first acknowledge and admit to the pattern of lying. 

What taking responsibility looks like:

• Apologizing or explaining without justifying your actions 
• Hearing out the wronged partner and offering validation and empathy
• Committing to openness, honesty, and transparency in the future

2. Understand The Why

There’s usually a purpose behind the lies. Understanding why the lying happened can help prevent it from recurring. 

Possible reasons for lying:

• Fear of negative reaction, like judgment or rejection 
• Avoiding uncomfortable feelings: conflict or embarrassment
• Low self-esteem 
• General pattern or avoidance 

3. Lead With Honesty

It’s not easy to be open and honest, especially in a direct but gentle way. Transparency will help your partner trust you. Keeping things inside is a burden on you, too. Being honest will reduce your stress and anxiety. Transparency doesn’t mean giving up your autonomy. It’s about cultivating intimacy and mutual respect. 

Ways to be more transparent include:

• Sharing without being asked 
• Being open about difficult things 
• Taking accountability for your behavior, instead of being evasive or defensive  

4. Follow Through 

You can only build back trust when words match behavior consistently. 

Consistent behavior means:

• Promises are kept 
• Apologies are not empty but result in change
• Communication is regular, open, and honest 
• If there’s regression, it’s acknowledged and discussed 

5. Improve Your Communication 

Poor communication is a big reason why lying happens in the first place. Better communication skills make honesty feel safer. Without strong communication, people are more likely to develop avoidance behaviors, such as lying. The goal is to be able to handle the truth without harming the relationship. 

How to improve communication:

• Start with vulnerability, not accusation. Use “I” statements.
• Increase validation by acknowledging your partner’s experience 
• Make repair attempts