KEY POINTS:
I knew a girl once, whose love promised her he would never lie. Sadly, he kept his word. You never saw a more miserable girl. Because this man didn't just tell the truths she wanted to hear, he told the other sort, too. You know: your hair looks lank, your skirt is too short, you talked/drank too much last night, everyone hated you. It wasn't long before the girl found herself lying in bed, fantasising quite calmly about stabbing him.
For what had, at first, seemed like refreshing candour soon revealed itself as sly little digs and criticisms, albeit sugar-dusted with a cherry on top. And so that was the end of him, because she was young and strong, and could break free easily.
I learnt a lesson then (for of course it was me) - namely that handled badly, truth could be dynamite. One false move and kaboom! You were the relationship equivalent of a pair of smoking boots.
I remembered this (and him) when I encountered a survey revealing that half of all men lie to their partners. Not the big stuff - nothing to do with infidelity, sexual disease, or murder convictions - these were "white lies" to do with how women looked.
So instead of saying, "I thought we were having an unscheduled lunar eclipse until I realised you'd stood in front of the window", they say "I love your curves." And instead of saying "Blimey, zits at your age?", they say "Acne, what acne?" In return, thousands of women out there are probably at this very moment protesting that their man's shortness/ baldness/joblessness is, in fact, deeply sexy.
And it is a very sweet thing we do, this mutual validation, this refusal to wound. For home truths are bullets and should be used sparingly, if at all. Everything else is just a pointless, emotional Columbine.
From the man's point of view, there is also the fact that he knows what's coming when asked, "How do I look?" For a man, it's a bit like when the vampires tapped on the windows in Salem's Lot - the only possible defence is to ignore them. Failing that, get yourself a cross and start praying.
Basically, women have arranged it brilliantly so that men, poor damned souls, simply can't win. Whatever they say will be wrong, because it will not be the truth. But telling the truth ("Your backside reminds me that, as a young man, I wanted to climb Everest") is verbal hara-kiri.
Which is why it's disingenuous for the majority of women in the aforementioned survey to opine that they would rather men told them the truth. These women are lying about men lying. For, let's face it, over a certain age (about 15), no woman wants to know the truth. We already see it with our own horrified eyes, thank you very much. Moreover, what if men read this survey and took us at our word? Only recently, a South Korean businessman put his 38-year-old daughter on a dating site, with the immortal words: "Despite the shortcomings of being a bit too old and short, she is top-notch in terms of other conditions." Well, thanks Dad. But maybe this guy asked his daughter what to put, and she shrugged and said, "Tell the truth."
Do you see now how this "truth" thing could get totally out of hand? For when you think about it, those people, male or female, who pride themselves on always telling the truth often tend to be control freaks, bullies, misanthropes. And for any woman, a man determined to tell the "truth", but only about how rubbish she is, is not great news.
You only have to look at someone like Melanie Griffiths, and her endless surgeries, to speculate about how much "truth" she may have had from the men in her life. And you don't have to read in tabloids that Britney's ex used to jeer at her about her weight - you knew it the first time she was photographed behind her car's steering wheel, cramming down fast-food in a self-hating frenzy.
So who would women really prefer? Mr Truth, who tells it like it is, sometimes to the point where he drags your confidence so deep down under water you'd be blessed ever to come up for air again? Or the white liar who looks furtive when you put on an outfit that makes you look like Chewbacca, and stammers, "Very nice." I know which one I'd go for.
But some of us learn the hard way. In matters of love, the truth is another country and only the dumbest and nastiest go there.
- OBSERVER