Every Individual Is Different

It’s also telling that 95 percent of those who admit affairs to their partners do so out of guilt or a desire to repair the primary relationship. And these are just the consequences for the victim. Also, we should not overlook the cost of getting away with serious deceit. Think of the shame and embarrassment that must have been felt by the man who had to trick the woman he loved into believing he was ten years younger than his actual age. It seems the weight of keeping a dalliance secret often outweighs the happiness it might yield. Yet despite the plethora of painful consequences, broken trust does not have to be fatal to relationships. Every individual is different, as is every lie, in some cases trust can be repaired, even in the wake of deception as serious as infidelity. It’s important to note that such repair may not always be wise. We may encounter people who are not worth trusting, who will betray our faith as many times as it is restored. Yet there are also cases in which deception can stand as an exception, or in which the factors that led to the deception can be removed or altered. It is the case, then, that someone who lies or betrays and promises never to do it again may, in fact, not do it again. What’s essential to keep in mind is that such an assurance is only a precursor to restored trust.

The Long Run

Restored trust means believing the assurance, having faith in the honesty of someone who has, at least once, proven to be untrustworthy. No one should think that the promise to never repeat a transgression is tantamount to repairing the damage of that transgression. It means repentance and change on the one side and, at minimum, forgiveness on the other. It is often surprising how attached we can become to our own feelings of injured pride and righteous indignation. Though, if we are serious about moving on with a life that includes our betrayer, we must let go of these feelings. One final point I’d like to emphasize about restoring trust is that the goal should not be to restore the old relationship. First, why would anyone want to? The old relationship was the one that gave way to infidelity or manipulation or dishonesty. In repair, we should strive for something better. Second, overcoming betrayal is not the same as, and will not feel like, stepping into a time machine and living life as it was before the betrayal occurred. The betrayal did occur, and that experience needs to be learned from and assimilated into the new relationship. There are benefits to such a process. Overcoming betrayal can have the affect of bringing people closer together, as dealing with a breach of trust can lead to a rededication to the value of a relationship and to a partner’s needs.

Awaiting On You All

More importantly, repairing trust can, and should, create a new atmosphere of honesty and openness. We all pay lip service to the truth. But no one likely values it as much as those who have suffered from its violation. The break in the case unfolded as if it had been pulled from a cheesy mystery novel. Even though the case garnered national media attention, with JonBenét’s haunting face appearing on magazine covers and the nightly news for weeks, police had been unable to find her killer. For a time, suspicion fell on JonBenét’s family, but no arrests were ever made. The case seemed destined to go unsolved. Colorado police traced the man writing to Tracey to Thailand, and he was arrested there by Thai officials. When asked by reporters whether he was innocent, he answered, No. For a few days, at least, many believed the case had finally been solved. But what seemed a dramatic conclusion proved to be merely another dead end. False confessions, in which an individual confesses to a crime he or she did not actually commit, may strike us initially as an utterly inexplicable behavior.

Lay Your Burden Down

Why accept blame for something you didn’t do? Yet false confessions are not wholly unusual within the criminal justice system. Over two hundred people falsely confessed to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby. Often, false confessions are the result of coercive interrogation techniques. Coercion does not have to take a physical form, either. Relentless psychological pressure or outright deception can also persuade innocent people to take responsibility for crimes they did not commit. In Karr’s case, there were no angry detectives badgering him. It is possible he confessed to murdering JonBenét Ramsey as a macabre publicity stunt. It is also possible, however, that he had come to believe that he really had killed her. Indeed, researchers have found that it is easy to induce people to confess to transgressions of which they are actually innocent. Right before starting, each participant was warned that if they pressed the Alt key, the computer would malfunction. Just sixty seconds into the task, the computer seemed to crash, and the irate experimenter accused the participant of hitting the forbidden Alt key. In reality, each participant was innocent, having avoided the Alt key entirely. Yet when accused by the experimenter and a supposed eyewitness of hitting that key, a significant number of participants not only signed a written confession but appeared to be convinced of their guilt to the point of manufacturing details of their supposed misdeed. Yet there is a great deal of evidence that both these assumptions are false. We can’t always depend on ourselves to form a strictly truthful impression of reality. Humans are capable of deceiving themselves into thinking they murdered people they never even met. Lying is a behavior that makes sense to us when it comes from other people. But the question of why we would deceive ourselves is much more difficult to reconcile. Why would we be anything but completely honest within the boundaries of our own mind? More fundamentally, how could a person even lie to him or herself?