Good morning and welcome to Anatomy of the Male Mind.  A couple of weeks ago I was listening to my favorite radio show and, although I missed part of it, they were discussing something that happened on a reality television series.   Reality television?  This should be good!  The conversation revolved around an incident between a man and his girlfriend.  Apparently, the girlfriend asked her boyfriend if he had ”been with” his ex-girlfriend.  Coincidentally, the man had just run into the ex-girlfriend at a golf outing.  Rather than say he saw her (probably to avoid an argument), he said he had not “been with” her.  In his mind, “been with” referred to intimacy.   The current girlfriend later finds out that he ran into the ex at the golf outing and ends the relationship because he lied.

Fast forward to the radio show hosts dissecting this.  There are two men and two women on this radio show.  The two men said the boyfriend didn’t lie because he had not “been with” the ex.  They agreed with how he handled it.  The two women on the show were not so agreeable.  They felt the boyfriend lied because he should have said he saw her.  The men argued that the question was whether or not he’d “been with” her and he answered truthfully.

Splitting hairs?  Absolutely.  But I found it fascinating how heated the conversation became.

I decided to give our man panel this scenario and let them have at it.  As usual, they didn’t disappoint.  Here’s what Ethan, Jack Russell and Rob had to say.

Man Panel Question:  If you had been the man in this instance, would you have done what the boyfriend did or would you have admitted seeing her?

Dang, that’s intense! If I was in the same situation though, I’m sure that I would have handled it the same way. Even if the “been with” wasn’t sexual or intimate in nature, which I would have interpreted it to be, it would at the most be considered meeting up for dinner, lunch, or coffee. If you run into somebody at a golf outing, you can truthfully say that you have not “been with” that person. Then again, it might have been a good idea to mention that he saw her the other day and it was awkward or she looked ugly or something along those lines.

Really, it seems pretty ridiculous. I would hope that a girl really wouldn’t break up with a guy over that. If she did, then they obviously had serious communication problems and that was more or less just the straw that broke the camel’s back. And since it was a “reality” show, the drama may have been encouraged….just saying.   :)

Ethan

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”. Sir Walter Scott must have also learned the hard way. The boyfriend should have responded with “No, I was not with her, but she was at the golf outing”. End of discussion, right?

Not a chance!

I think everyone realizes that there’s more to this story than was reported. But, working with what we know, I believe the guy’s response was a lie. In my opinion a lie doesn’t need to be spoken, it can be a silent deception. He knew what his current girlfriend meant by the question. Every guy, including the two male radio hosts, knows what the current girlfriend really wanted to know. She wanted to know if he saw her, glanced at her, heard her voice, approached her, talked to her, thought about her, or by means of any of his five senses had contact with her. She even wanted to know if any connection occurred between the two of them by means of mystic or otherworldly channeling. Every guy also knows that the time frame attached to the question includes every minute, hour, day, week or year that preceded the question.

Therefore, by choosing to answer the question with a response that falsely presumed that his current girlfriend only wanted to know if he scored a hole-in-one with the ex-girlfriend was disingenuous to say the least. The possibility that the current girlfriend may have been unreasonably jealous without basis or cause and was going to make this guy’s life a living hell didn’t change the deception to truth.

Now that I’ve shared my opinion of lies vs. truth, I guess I better answer the question you posed to the panel.  Before I answer the question however, I need to relate something I’ve learned about human nature. It is human nature to lie when we believe we’ve done something wrong. We learn this before we’re even old enough to understand the concept of right and wrong and we carry this self preservation mechanism into adulthood. We know punishment follows wrong and we lie to avoid it. It takes a concerted and deliberate effort to unlearn this behavior. So, let’s not be too hard on this guy–or me.

There was a time that I would have taken the approach the guy in question did and say no, I hadn’t “been with” her and hoped for the best even though I knew I was being dishonest by not revealing all the information. I was the king of argument avoidance. As I’ve gotten older and have experienced more and more of life’s trials, both personal and  through observations of other people’s experiences, I’ve come to realize that the outcome of this approach is never good and most times worse than the outcome of being open and honest from the start. I’ve been on both sides of the equation and when someone you care about intentionally withholds information from you, or is deceitful, it hurts. I really believe (unless you’re a sociopath) that no one wants to be the cause of, or the recipient of hurtful acts. Under the circumstance that existed for the guy in the TV reality show, I hope I would have suppressed the human nature response, and said, “If you mean did I have sex with her? Absolutely not, but she was at the golf outing. Let’s sit down and talk about the worries you have about my previous relationship.”  From that point on I would answer all her follow-up questions. Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it?

I really wish I could invent an easy button for relationships.

Jack Russell

It’s a no-brainer.  If you are in a good relationship you should not have to even give this a second thought.  Yes, I saw her, we said hello.  That’s it. If you lie about it then you are dealing with two other problems A) you still have some deep rooted feelings for the ex or B) you don’t have a good relationship with your current girl or not-so-distant-future X girl.

Rob

Thank you Ethan, Rob and Jack Russell for your honesty. 

To our readers, does it surprise you that the boyfriend in this scenario chose to handle the situation this way?  We’d love to hear from you.

Join us on Friday when author Ann Macela discusses how to prepare a manuscript for submission.

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