Divorce Balance

Negotiation > Recovery > Enhancement

Wednesday, June 1, 2005
Divorce Lies

Tell the truth — you're kinda looking forward to one thing in divorce.

Now that the professionals are involved, the truth is finally gonna be smoked out of that such-and-so you married.

You've overcome your initial disappointment that divorce, per se, isn't a "criminal matter" (although you've heard about some clever ways to get around that obvious oversight). Still, you can fantasize about a stark room decorated in early ominous prison cell motif. White-hot light shining in their face.

"Don't lie to me again!"

So you have to let go of that in favor of divorce court. Can't lie there. I mean, someone could, I suppose — despite swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. But trial courts are fundamentally "fact finding" mechanisms.

And your lying no-longer-significant other isn't any match against such refined design, process, and expertise.

Researchers disagree.

The current Scientific American Mind reveals: Most "...experiments have shown that people perform at no better than chance levels..." when asked to separate honesty from lies, per Saul Kassin's "True Crimes, False Confessions."

Moreover, "...training programs produce, at best, small and inconsistent improvements compared with naive control groups. In general, professional lie catchers, such as police detectives, psychiatrists, customs inspectors and polygraph examiners, exhibit accuracy rates in the 45 to 60 percent range, with a mean of 54 percent."

A second complication comes from what David Livingstone Smith argues is our natural propensity to lie. We're talking about everyday, garden-variety lies — as opposed to anything specifically driven by relationship manipulation and divorce motivations.

To the tune of about three lies for every ten minutes of conversation.

But that covers, "...only the frequency of narrow, explicit, verbal lying. The real rate of deception, which includes our movement and expressions, must be considerably higher."

So the idea that any lie proves one a total liar is, um, a lie.

It gets worse.

The most effective liars are those best at lying to themselves. Consequently, there's no subconscious awareness of deception compelling them to inadvertently betray reality.

Such cases also render discussions with them fruitless if you're obsessed with post-divorce "debriefs" — under the argument that you'll finally find out what really happened way-back-when, since "they have nothing to lose."

Yet the divorced wife jeopardizes her new relationship by reconnecting with the husbands she escaped: "Why did you really leave me? You can tell me now." Or her new beau calls Hubby One for the lowdown on that marriage before signing up to become Hubby Two.

Your former-former can't tell you, even if they answer the call or appear in divorce court under subpoena (klieg lights, optional). Persistent inquisitions merely keep you holding on.

During your divorce process, ask for documentation, verification of facts asserted. As a divorce mediator, I'll help you identify and collect those things in an effort to mitigate possible non-disclosures.

But finding "the truth"?

Truth is about intimacy and reconciliation.

Divorce is the antithesis of all that.

—posted by Dell Deaton @9:00 PM EST 6/1/2005 [500]

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