Unless you’re the most naive person in the world, you know that the guy in your life is going to lie to you at one point or another. The trick is knowing when he might be lying, what he’s lying about, and why he’s doing it. These are some of the biggest fibs we tell.
- “You’re the best I’ve ever had.” This is really a little white lie if you think about it. Do you really want us to compare you to the other women we’ve slept with? Yeah, didn’t think so. Besides, isn’t it enough that we’re with you right now instead of any of the women from our past? This is a pretty harmless one in our eyes.
- “You’re definitely smarter than me.” Whether he’s an Ivy League graduate or he got straight Cs in high school, every man thinks he’s smarter than every person around him, and that includes the lady in his life. Fortunately, almost all of us are smart enough to recognize that women also like to feel like the smartest person in the room and in a relationship. That’s why we’ll tell you that you’re the smart one but rarely mean it.
- “I love spending time with your friends.” This lie most women should be able to pick up on pretty quickly because it’s tough to say with sincerity. Look, some of your friends are cool, which is why you’re friends with them in the first place. But all women have that one friend (sometimes two) who is just insufferable to be around and makes us dread any night in which we’re forced to hang out with them. We tell you this lie because we don’t want to upset you or insult your friends, so we’ll say we love them even if we don’t. If a guy tells you that he loves spending time with your friends, he’s either lying to you or your friends are way too pretty and you shouldn’t allow them to get too close to your boyfriend.
- “I’m cool with just cuddling tonight.” Please don’t tell me you fell for this one. To be fair, any guy who says this line will pull out every shred of sincerity in his body when he delivers it. But let’s be honest, no guy is going to be fully satisfied with cuddling. It’s not that we don’t like cuddling, but no man is going to be happy about having the possibility of sex being ruled out. However, we’ll say it’s okay and go along with it so we don’t ruin our chance to have sex the next night.
- “I fell in love with your mind above everything else.” Look, if a guy’s with you, he loves your mind and your personality, but no guy sets out to meet a woman with a great personality. We want a bonafide hottie who’s going to get our blood flowing but we don’t want to come off as shallow, so we deliver some cheeseball line about falling in love with your mind.
- “Sure, I want to have kids someday.” This one you’ll probably hear early in the relationship when we’re still trying to get you to like us. Yes, it’s a little cruel to make you think that we’re all about family and eager to have kids, but if we really like you and can tell that’s important to you, we’re going to want you to think that we’re onboard. But let’s be honest, most men aren’t thinking about marriage and kids right after meeting someone.
- “I would hate being single again.” OK, this one’s a bit of a whopper. It’s not that we don’t want to settle down at some point and enjoy being with you ladies, but being single is loads of fun, and if any guy tells you there’s no part of him that doesn’t want to be single again, he’s lying. That being said, we know we have to reassure you sometimes that being your boyfriend is exactly what we want, so we tell a little white lie.
- “We just work together, that’s all.” Yes, sometimes we have an attractive coworker and sometimes it’s fun to flirt with her, but we know if we acknowledge that we have the slightest attraction to that coworker, it’s possible you’ll fly into a jealous rage. So, in the interest of saving us both a lot of time and energy, we’ll just deny that we’ve thought about that new receptionist as anything other than a coworker. It’s a fairly harmless lie—most of the time anyway.
- “Yes, let’s watch (insert name of chick flick) again.” Whether it’s 27 Dresses, Sweet Home Alabama, The Notebook, or some other Nickolas Sparks-inspired movie, we don’t want to watch it for the 20th time. I’m sorry, we just don’t. It may have been nice the first five or six times, but it’s not anymore. Still, we know how much you love it, so we’ll go along with it and fake excitement for your benefit. But please know that we don’t actually want to watch the same chick flick over and over again. You’re welcome.
- “No, I’m not lying.” Last but not least, we have a lie about lying. Most men are committed to their lies, so even if you confront us or try to trick us, we’re more than happy to double down on our lie. Hopefully, I’ve convinced you that there are (good) reasons why men lie to women. Even if you can tell that we’re lying, maybe you can just play along and make us think you believe our lie. Is that asking too much?