Getting Real

Getting Real

Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world.

1 John 4:1

I (Les) demonstrate it every autumn in one of my entry-level psychology courses at the university. I administer a simple survey to my two hundred students that has them ranking their interpersonal abilities relative to other students on campus. In other words, they are ranking how well they get along with others as compared with their peers. I collect the information, tabulate the results, and display them on the screen. The results are predictable. All of them, every single one, see themselves as “above average.” They can’t help but laugh out loud as they see the results. “Isn’t it amazing,” I say, tongue-in-cheek, “that in this class of two hundred students we lucked out by having everyone be above average?” They laugh some more.

Then I reveal on the screen another tidbit from the survey: An astounding 25 percent see themselves in the top one percent in terms of their ability to get along with others. This time, the students don’t laugh—they gasp.

How is it that fifty students out of two hundred see themselves in the upper echelons of interpersonal savvy compared to their peers? Simply because it’s more satisfying to believe good things about oneself than to face the truth.

Of course, self-deception doesn’t always work. Sometimes we are flat-out forced to see that we failed. We can’t deny failing an exam or the fact that we drove the car into a mailbox. That’s when we try rationalizing our behavior: “I didn’t have time to study” or “My spouse messed with the rearview mirror.”

We may frequently avoid telling ourselves the truth, but that’s not always bad. “Truths and roses have thorns about them,” said Thoreau. The truth can hurt, and it can take time to see it clearly. That’s the point: the abilities that contribute to self-deception are not necessarily wrong in themselves. We go wrong with them when we use our deceiving abilities to routinely convince ourselves that we are better than we actually are. That’s when we buy the lie that says, “If I’m not so bad, I don’t have to change.”

So here’s the question: When it comes to your relationship, how are you deceiving yourself about the kind of spouse you are? In other words, in what area are you trying to convince yourself that you’re a better partner than you really are? If you’re feeling brave enough, ask your partner to shed some light for you.^a

The easiest person to deceive is one’s own self.

—Edward Bulwer-Lytton

^a 81