Liar liar....

I'm unsure about how I feel about white lies. I was always taught that lying was wrong, as most children, and I got into quite a lot of trouble for lying as child. Since I was always up to no good, and at such a young age, I hadn't quite gotten the hang of covering up my tracks, I lied quite a bit when I got caught. The worst part of it was, that even if my lies were believable, because of my constant daydreaming, I inevitably forgot what my lies were and eventually told the truth by accident, which inevitably got me into more and more trouble.

As I grew older, I learned how to better cover my tracks but I was still not very good at lying. My mother would say that I was absolutely terrible at it, but the truth of the matter is, the things that she actually caught me lying about were minimal compared to what I had actually lied about, but still I was terrible. With a face that clearly said I was up to no good, no one would ever believe I was innocent and given my history, I had no right claiming innocence. As it turned out, I usually got into more trouble about lying than I did about the actual deed.

Wisdom comes with age they say, and soon enough I stopped lying, but my mischief continued. To avoid the lying, I opted for another safer approach and that was not to tell the whole truth, to leave out the bits and pieces that I knew would get me in trouble and just stick the simple facts. That worked quite well, since I never forgot the actual story and the bit and pieces I left out, I knew would get me in trouble. Sometimes I still forgot the bits I left out, but by that time it was too late, the deed was done too long ago for it to be any trouble.

That habit has stuck with me from childhood. I still keep parts of the stories to myself. I never actually lie, but I do not volunteer information. For someone as paranoid as myself, that seems the best approach.

So I know that lying is bad, but because I had gotten into so much for it as child, I no longer can differentiate between the little white lies that people say are good, the ones that spare people's feeling, and the lies that are actually bad. To me, all lying is bad, even the little ones. And now, in the grown up world, in the corporate world, I'm stuck with a very ugly dilemma. My conscience has been so tormented by lying, that I cannot do it, even if it means sparing someone's feeling, or getting ahead in life and I'm starting to think this is a problem.

But boyfriend thinks that I cannot say whatever I think, that sometimes it's best to tell a white lie. His logic is that if it's no big deal and you're doing it to make someone feel better, then it's okay. But isn't that the same as tricking them? Alternatively, does that mean I should never believe what anyone tells me because if they say something nice, they might just be trying to make me feel better?