What is the difference between secrecy and lying

A study out of the University of Santa Barbara suggests that unloading secrets helps people to stop stewing about the secret and thus increases the self-esteem of the revealer — but only when the person to whom they confess has a positive response. It would be a mistake, however, to oversimplify the research findings and assume that secrets always cause harm and revealing them always makes things better.

Karl Pillemer, Ph. Christine Hyde, Ph. John Paul Garrison, PsyD. These effects depend heavily upon the individual, however, Garrison notes. The reality is that people cheat all over the place and are dishonest. Most people, however, are honest because of one thing: fear. For one thing, the mind-wandering aspect of secret-keeping that Slepian wrote about in his study undeniably saps attention from your primary relationship.

Your wife might be confused or suspicious and therefore trust you less, or if she believes your explanations, you might feel like a jerk, which might also increase the distance between you. Having secrets saps mental energy and does tend to wear on most people over time, Garrison agrees.

But you might have to take a risk. If it matters to you to be completely honest, you have to find a way to tell the truth. Truthfulness does appear to be a major factor in keeping couples happy in the long term. In his interviews with older people for the Legacy Project at Cornell, Pillemer says that couples cited honesty and open communication as the two most important elements of a successful, lasting relationship. This, he says, has to do with reputation.

If a politician lies and is discovered, trust in this politician will be undermined. But if he simply misleads, you become "unable to trust the implicatures" of what he says, but not necessarily unable to trust the politician himself. You still have no reason to believe that he would actually lie.

Damian McBride is unconvinced. Having spent his career as an inveterate misleader, he now believes that lying-without-lying is no better than outright lying. What's more, that modern politicians mislead every day of their lives is directly "connected to the fact that trust in politicians has been corroded over the last 40 years". There's also a cost to the character of the political misleader. Being economical with the truth "starts to seep into the rest of their lives", he says.

Having affairs, being secret alcoholics, secret gamblers, secret drug addicts, having that cloak of secrecy around them at all times, because that's become so much a part of who they are.

In Britain. MPs are not permitted to call each other liars - this is regarded as un-parliamentary language, the ultimate insult. To call MPs misleaders however, is acceptable. And it has the additional virtue of being true. Everybody knows lying is usually a bad thing, but is there a positive side, asks novelist Clare Allan.

The good side of lying January Ex-MP Bruce: Politicians tell lies. How politicians learned the power of the gentle nudge. Is it ever OK for politicians to lie? Image source, iStock. Image source, Getty Images. Bill Clinton denied "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky. Usually, keeping secrets comes from a place of love or respect for the other person. Someone might not want to bother the other person with their own issues because they might see it as insignificant, or the other person might be going through a very difficult period of time.

In tv shows like Gossip Girl, New Girl, and Friends, phrases like "I don't want to bother them with this today" or "I'll do it tomorrow" are very common when a character is dealing with keeping a secret from someone really close to them.

Secrets normally come from a place of wanting to protect something that's going well. If the secret is dark enough, sometimes people might fear that their relationships might fall apart. Therefore, the secretive person tries to wait for the best moment to break the news and hope for the best; not completely losing their foundation of trust with the one that they care about. Lying can sometimes come from the same place of love and respect for the other person, but not all the time.

While the secret-keeper considers how the other person will feel if they find out what they're hiding, the liar thinks about the consequences the same way, but hopes that the secret never comes out.

The lies come from a place of guilt, shame, and regret in most cases. A lie is often used to protect someone else's feelings and trust. Unlike a secret, if the secret is found-out after the first cover-up lie is told, the trust that the other person has is at a higher risk of being completely lost. Although lying and secrets are two different concepts, they can often make a fantastic pair when it comes to sparing feelings.

Secrets are sometimes the root cause of lying. Secrets are best left unspoken until an explanation can be provided, but sometimes an explanation might not be enough, especially if an interrogation of any kind occurs. To avoid ever having to tell the truth, people try to hide the truth with lies so they won't feel as bad in the future for whatever they did.