We lie about it all, sex too

The Boston Herald

February 26, 1993

BEVERLY BECKHAM

The Boston Herald

People lie. This is fact. You lie. I lie. We all lie.

"Thank you very much," we might say to a rude young woman who begrudgingly slices us a half-pound of white American cheese, wraps it in waxed paper and thrusts it at us, all the while huffing and puffing as if we had asked her to change a flat tire in the middle of a highway in the middle of a storm.

The polite "thank you" we give her is a lie. What we'd like to say is, "What is your problem? Why are you so rude? Why don't you quit your job if you hate it so much?"

But we're civilized. And polite. So instead of telling the truth, we say things like, "Thank you" and "Have a nice day."

We lie all the time. We lie to please. ("I really like your haircut.") We lie to placate. ("I'm so sorry I'm late.") We lie to save face. ("The check's in the mail.") We lie to flatter. ("You have a married son? That's impossible!") And we lie to impress. ("Yes, I know him." "Of course, I've been there.")

Some lying is so ingrained that it's close to unconscious.

"How much do you weigh?" (Who ever tells the truth?) "How tall are you?" (Doesn't everyone add at least an inch?)

"Are you a natural blonde?" (Now there's a beauty. One would think, listening to people, that the world has only natural blondes.)

People also lie about how they feel ("Why, no, your dog's not bothering me."), what they eat ("I hardly eat a thing."), how much they sleep ("I was up all night."), and about what they're reading. ("Non-fiction. I read only non-fiction.")

When it comes to sex, the lying gets worse. Male people, in particular, are great prevaricators. Take, for example, Exhibit A. A is a nice-looking college graduate, hard working, twentysomething, seemingly honest guy. He dated a woman last summer, and she thought he was honest, too.

But. . .

He lied to her, told her he was more interested in getting to know women than in having sex with them. The woman believed him, and they became good friends - just good friends.

Then she found out that he was going around telling all their co-workers that they were a lot more than good friends, that he was sleeping with her.

Which brings me to Exhibit B, the hot story of the week, which no doubt, will be the hot story of the year, "The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior."

Based on eight years of research and nearly 8,000 questionnaires, it is being touted as the most comprehensive study of sex in America in four decades.

But I contend it's not worth the paper it's printed on. Why? Because people lie.

"How often do you have sex?" was one of the questions the researchers asked. Men, across the board, men, of all ages, said they had sex more frequently than the women said they did. Some 39 percent of men 39 to 50 said they had sex "a few times a week." But just 29 percent of the females checked a few times a week. From ages 51 to 64 the gap widened: 51 percent of men claimed they had sex a few times week compared with 28 percent of women.

Now this can mean one of four things. Either these men are all having sex with the same women; or they're having sex with each other or by themselves. Or - could it be, is it possible - that they're stretching the truth just a little?

Exhibit C supports the stretching of the truth theory. In another just-published sex study, this one done in France, men and women there were asked how often they had sex in the last month and how long each episode lasted.

Guess what? All the men said they had sex more often than the women said they did, and that the encounters, on average, lasted six minutes longer.

An honest error or a fib?

Exhibit D, the frosting on the cake, is another question from the Janus report. When asked what initially attracts people to one another, 48 percent of men and 43 percent of women said "personality."

Come on, guys. This one's a whopper. When was the last time you heard men women standing around the water cooler talking about someone's personality?

Yes, indeed, we do doctor the truth. "I get Playboy just for the articles." "Why, of course, I love sushi." "The gift was perfect."

"My sex life? Frequent! Fabulous! Fanciful!" And fabricated.