Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

As I was completing this week's set of readings, I couldn't help but channel some Fleetwood Mac. Growing up I can remember going through my parents record collection and listening to albums which included The Beatles white album, Michael Jackson's Bad, and of course Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night & Rumors. So as I dive into deception, secrets & avoidance, helping, the ideology of openness and advice giving, my mind keeps humming along to the tune of "tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies."

Yesterday MSN featured an article titled "5 Marriage Rules Really Happy Couples Break." Here's the list:
Breakable Rule #1: Never Go to Bed Angry
Breakable Rule #2: Tell Each Other What You Want in Bed
Breakable Rule #3: He Deals with His Parents, You Deal with Yours - I love how this one blatantly states that we are really only targeting women with this article!
Breakable Rule #4: You Can't Change Each Other, So Don't Try
Breakable Rule #5: Happy Couples Always Spend the Holidays Together

As I was perusing this advice, which comes from interviews with long-married women (MSN's words not mine), I had to stop and ask myself "What would Parks say?" or "I wonder if Afifi, Caughlin, and Afifi have seen this?" It's always an interesting juxtaposition when popular press collides with scholarly research. Afifi et al posit that guarding secrets is anything but dark. They along with Parks, O'Hair & Cody would probably make the case for the functionality of avoidance, deception, and secrets., which is supported by some of MSN's breakable rules. Never go to bed angry is saying do not get into a demand-withdraw situation. Telling each other what you want in bed may be a little bit too much self disclosure and make your partner uncomfortable. And if you can't change each other then maybe there is a purpose to topic avoidance and deceptive communication.

I buy into all of the arguments posed by Afifi et al, O'Hair & Cody, and even Parks to a certain extent. The bit on feminization and gender/sex differences is a whole other blog entirely. But I support these authors arguments only in terms of dyadic relational communication. Sure I think these messages strategies are important when it comes to friendships and romantic relationships. Those relationships are voluntary. You can break up with a partner, you can stop being someones friend, but when it comes to family I can not get on board the functionality train. This is a strange paradox that I find myself in. In fact, I have used the message strategies stated by O'Hair & Cody to maintain these dyadic relationships. I've seen how too much self-disclosure can back fire on you and result in the exact opposite of what I was intending. But when it comes to my own family, I struggle to see the light in this dark. Maybe it's because families imply a 2 or more situation and for the most part are not voluntary. It is harder for me to break up with a family member or stop acknowledging them as part of my life. When it comes to my family, secrets have a hard time remaining that way. They eventually come out in some way, shape or form. It might be half truths, a skewed viewpoint of the story, or something one family member told another that works its way through the gossip chain. I could see where some would make the argument that maybe I am better off not knowing. Sometimes I too feel that way, but at the end of the day it's my family and I have a right to know the truth, for us to be open, and to disclose our thoughts and feelings. Deception and secrecy has torn my family apart. So maybe this ideology of openness is in fact not a bad thing. After all how open are we really? Perhaps the focus should shift from the quantity of self disclosure and openness that we engage in and begin to strive for quality in these interactions. Caughlin (2003) found that we have high levels of both open communication and avoidance. Maybe we should reframe this discussion and focus on decreasing the amount of trivial disclosure that we make and work on opening up when it really truly counts.