I know you've heard a lot from me recently, and well... that is not the new norm; it just means I've hit a moment of having a lot to say. I don't plan these things according to a schedule, but I communicate what my heart is feeling passionate about.

And right now, my heart is passionate about honesty.

A man wrote to me this week. His relationship is on fire because he lied to his gal, and now she doesn't trust him, and he can't figure out how it got this bad.

I told him something I'd tell most men, and something I want every woman reading this to hear too.

He didn't lie because he's a bad man. He lied because he was afraid of her.

That's the whole mechanism. He didn't feel safe, and the truth felt expensive, and so he took the cheaper road. It cost him everything the truth would have cost and more, but he didn't know that at the time. Almost nobody does.

Every man I know could tell a version of this story. Every one. Including me.

So let me say something directly to the women reading this, because I think it's one of the most misunderstood things between the sexes.

When a man lies to you, your instinct is to conclude he's a coward, or a manipulator, or worse, that he doesn't respect you. He may be some of those things. But underneath almost every lie I've ever sat across from is something smaller and sadder. A man who is afraid of you.

Not afraid you'll hit him. Afraid of your intensity. Somewhere along the way, his nervous system connected the dots between a woman's emotional intensity and danger, and he decided that if he told you the truth, the reaction would be so big that he'd be rejected, abandoned, or found unacceptable. And he isn't sure he would survive that. So instead of telling you the truth, he starts managing you.

That's insecurity, not malice. A man's lying is proportional to his insecurity (and a great "tell"). Understanding it will help you see what's actually happening in your marriage. But understanding it isn't the same as excusing it, because it's still his to fix. Don't ever settle for, or allow, lying, insecurity, or not.

Now, to the men.

Nothing I'm saying here is a defense of lying. Lying wrecks trust, and rebuilding trust is some of the hardest work a marriage could ever ask for. And there's a cruel irony at the center of it. Most of the lies men tell are attempts to avoid a bad reaction, and they end up creating a worse one. The man who lies to avoid losing his wife is often the man who loses her. The man who lies to avoid upsetting a woman gives her 10x to be upset about.

Hard truth: If you're lying, you're not, presently, a trustworthy man. Even if you're not getting caught. And that's a punishment all its own, because you know. You're carrying something you can't put down, and every day you carry it, you trust yourself a little less.

So here's the blunt reality for the man caught up in this. You have two options. Your partner has to change and stop being scary to talk to (what a whopping amount of men are waiting for), or you have to become courageous.

And I want you to hear me about this. You don't need a single thing to change in her for you to stop lying to her. Not one thing. Your honesty must not be a reaction to her, or she owns the power of defining your character. Yuck!

Most men spend their lives on the first one, waiting for the people who scare them to stop being scary. That's a long wait, and it usually ends in a courtroom or the grave. Pretty sure you don't really want that life.

I gave the man a picture that landed, and I'll give it to you. When a man is afraid of a woman's intensity, he's reacting to weather. Nature can hand you a glass lake at sunrise, and it can hand you a hurricane. Nothing in nature is bad. A tornado isn't evil; it's just weather. The only thing that makes any of it bad is how we experience it and then the label we hang on it.

You can spend your life trying to avoid storms. You can also build a shelter, learn what to do when one comes, and stop fearing the weather or calling the sky evil. You don't have to like tornadoes. You just stop organizing your whole life around never meeting one.

And here's what a frightened man does with weather. He lies to keep away from it, and out of it. Then she catches him, and the storm he was dodging becomes a hurricane of distrust, and the thing he was protecting gets destroyed. Her intensity didn't do that. His response to it did.

Once a man sees that clearly, something in him usually says, I'm tired of ordering my life around other people's emotional reactions. So he stops handing his energy to the fear. He looks at it and says, "That scares me, but I want to be this kind of man, so this is the decision I'm making."

And here's what a new decision looks like in practice. Maybe you've been afraid to ask for something simple. An afternoon to yourself, a purchase, or a fun activity you want to experience on vacation. So you hid it, then you did it anyway, then you lied about it. The new decision is one honest sentence: I'd like some time to myself on vacation. I'd like to play golf this Saturday morning. And then you let her respond however she responds. She might have big feelings, hurts, demands, expectations, and all sorts of reactions. You find out you can experience all of that, stay in the room, stay yourself, and keep working it out like two adults. That is part of what it means to be an emotionally safe, mature man. That's the new action. Not a speech, asking for permission, and not a confrontation. One true sentence with your name on it, and then you live with the response.

Living by fear can only produce more fear. If you want more love, connection, and intimacy, you have to use means that match what you're after. You can't sow seeds of fearful avoidance and harvest a respectful, honoring love. You can't manage your way into a marriage you'd actually want to live in by managing her emotional reactions. You get that kind of marriage or relationship by being courageously yourself.

Most men get hung up here by waiting to stop feeling afraid. Courage isn't the absence of fear. It's feeling the fear and making a values-based decision from inside it. You don't need another book, another month of working up to it, or more of the program. You can make a courageous decision before you go to bed tonight.

And if you want the deeper shift, here it is. The reason you don't trust other people is that you don't trust you. You don't believe you can stand in front of a disappointed woman, hold on to yourself, and be okay if she's upset. So you lie to stay safe. Which means the way out isn't more careful lying. It's proving to yourself that you can stand in the presence of someone's displeasure and stay yourself.

Start there. Tell the truth to yourself. Tell the truth about yourself. Do that for ten days and watch what happens.

And hear this before you go. None of this makes you a moral character defect. It's what we do when we're scared, and scared men can learn.

That's the whole point of the work.

So here's my question, and I want a real answer.

For the men: What are you afraid will happen if you begin telling the truth to, and about, yourself? What are you afraid of experiencing, or losing?

For the women: What are you afraid his lying means about you, and what would you need to see from him (not hear, see) before you'd trust him again?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

And if you're a man who's tired of managing the lie and you want to deal with the root of it, that's the work I do. I help men meet the version of themselves they can trust. Not tips for being even better at living with low integrity. I'll help you do the actual work of becoming a man who doesn't need to lie or cower in fear.

Reply and tell me what's going on, or go to svenmasterson.com/apply and we'll talk.

Remember... you can sow fear and harvest more fear. That's a guarantee. But you cannot sow fear and harvest love.
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Have a great, honest weekend,

– Sven