The lies men tell themselves

Trump’s habitual fabrication and exaggeration, applying his bizarre “male logic” to all areas of his big lie of a life is, according to Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer of Trump’s bestseller The Art of the Deal, “second nature to him”.

“Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true,” the author explains.

This form of self-deception is actually a common psychological tactic among men, and is used as self-protection in the hope of better deceiving others. Showing off, basically.

So here’s my truth, and maybe yours too, fellas. There’s a teensy bit of the preposterous Trumpian Untruther in all of us. We might not tell big and dangerous and harmful lies to others, and we might not claim to have, say, an infectious virus “under control” when we know it to be spiralling into a deathly epidemic, but we do persist with a series of repeated and ridiculously optimistic, self-serving whoppers.

Like this, for instance. Elon Musk, genius of our times, recently posted a statement on his personal X (formerly Twitter) feed that read: “I only have 0.4 donuts at a time, because my brain neural network quantizes it down to 0 donuts.” Yes, honestly, that really was the world’s richest and cleverest man speaking, not Homer Simpson. Musk eats a saccharine and calorific doughnut but he does so with a Silicon Valley smartness and neurally controlled zeal that makes his doughnut digestion somehow better than yours. When he is, of course, only fooling himself. Here are ten more examples of big fat man lies.*

*I exaggerated — there are only eight.

The alcohol lie

Somehow, probably because he is half-sloshed when he’s doing the maths, a man can convince himself that the alcohol units he is getting through in one day or over the course of a week fall well within the parameters of a healthy consumption. It’s a lifelong self-deception achieved by some vinously wonky logic. For example, the notion that wine and beer are not “real” drinks, that he drinks nowhere near as much as his (dangerously alcoholic) friend, that he “never” drinks on Mondays or in the mornings, which is what proper alcoholics do, right? He also stays faithful to the Bank of Booze metric whereby a few days of abstinence translates into a bona fide lifestyle credit allowing a swiftly following lost weekend of Stoli-fuelled debauchery.

Naturally, a bold decision to take part in Dry January will turn him into some lying drama queen who says “I don’t drink” every time a bottle of prosecco is popped for those painful two weeks (max) off the sauce.

The celebrity divorce lie

A female celebrity he’s always fancied — Scarlett Johansson, for instance — whom he never had a hope in hell of meeting, never mind dating, suddenly announces her divorce. The whirring cogs of the relationship calculator in the stupid, man-fibbing, sauvignon-addled brain tells him that this is great news and a definite win. Scarlett is now single, available and therefore back on his dating radar. Yes! Air punch. Crowd roar etc. (Even married men do this btw.)

The waistline lie

Men are very happy to go along with the rag trade industry lie of “vanity sizing”. Ergo if the label says you are a 32in waist — hey, it says so right there, on the band of your new chinos — then, congratulations! You are, truly, a 32in waist. No matter that the truth-telling tape measure reads 37in when it is thrown around the belly. Vanity size fans also stay loyal to the deceptively nice brands that have them down as a “medium” jacket (when they are very definitely a “large”. At least).

The fitness lie

If something strenuous or sporty has been done recently, usually in the past few days, the self-deluding man reckoner automatically converts this small and isolated achievement into a regular and very serious, strictly regimental pastime. The occasional jog around the park or casual knock-up of tennis is heroed into obsessive keenness and semi-professional levels of commitment.

“Yes, I run pretty much every day at the moment” = I actually run once or twice a year … but I did run yesterday.

“I play tennis every week” = I haven’t played since university, but I smashed a few serves into the net with a friend over the weekend.

“I usually do 50-60 miles on the road on Sunday mornings” = I bought a very expensive carbon-fibre Colnago two years ago and I’ve only ridden it once.

Similarly, “I prefer foreign movies, to be honest” = I have an unwatched copy of Cinema Paradiso. On DVD. I also have a subscription to the Marvel channel.

“Yes, I have read Joyce/Proust/DeLillo — amazing stuff” = I listen to celebrity biographies on Audible, often at double speed.

“I get up at 4.30am most mornings” = Mainly to go to the loo. Then I go back to bed.

The good mirror lie

Yes, I’m talkin’ ’bout the man in the mirror. How a guy can take a look at himself and make that … change. But only if it’s the right mirror. Men are prone to the lie of the looking glass that shows them in the best light — the good mirrors that elongate limbs, slim waistlines, disappear double chins. Also, lie-lighting is important. Older men prefer uplights, which are much more flattering than overheads, which thin the hair and deepen wrinkles.

The relationship lie

The man fibbing dating equation that determines the socially acceptable age difference in partners is, as far as some men are concerned, as solid and proven as, say, Archimedes’ Pi or Einstein’s E = mc². Skewed entirely in the male’s favour, and usually employed after a divorce, it goes like this: half the man’s age plus seven defines the minimum age of a partner (eg 40 ÷ 2 = 20 + 7 = 27). To discover the maximum age of a female’s partner, there’s a reverse stratagem: take seven away from the woman’s age, then multiply the result by two (so, 40 – 7 = 33, and then 33 x 2 = 66). No prizes for guessing that in the forever optimistic world of alternative arithmetics it is the former numbers game, not the latter, that is used most frequently.

The diet lie

This is the idea that the body can be deceived into good health. So eating well for five days — fruit, veg, no carbs, no fast food, no alcohol — will earn a man a whole weekend of Five Guys, several pints and endless pies. Similarly, a donation to a cancer charity, or even better a monthly standing order, is a proven and cast-iron way of very definitely not getting cancer.

The camera lie

Somebody took a decent photo of a man, say, 10, 15 or 20 years ago. He looks slim and tanned, his teeth are clean and white-ish, his hair lustrous and complete, the double chin miraculously disguised. He will now keep and protect this blatant lie of an image, Dorian Gray-style, deferring to it as a genuine and modern likeness for profile shots, passport photos and so on for the rest of his life.

Hannah Betts: “Male fabrication falls into two camps: before and after, pre and post-ensnaring”

ZAC FRACKELTON FOR THE TIMES

Men lie. They lie to themselves, they lie to their friends, they lie to their offspring, but — most of all — they lie to their womenfolk. And that’s fine. We want them to. I’d go as far as to say they must. Up to a point, Lord Copper.

I’m not talking nipperish fibs of the “last night I flew into space” sort, although therein lies the germ of whoppers yet to come. I’m not even talking teen self-bigging-up of the “oceans of pints knocked back”/“legions of virginities claimed” variety — such as that Nineties youth who put it about that he’d had sex with me, my mother, both my sisters and, presumably, my grandmother. He was a flimsy, non-speaking specimen, his lack of charisma in real life compensated for by an alternate universe in which he was the balls-deep braggadocio beguiling Betts bitches. I trust he flourishes to this day, not sleeping his way around the West Midlands.

Misogynist texts throughout history have condemned women for their deceptive wiles, from Eve and her apple to Our Lady Taylor Swift. Our faces are dissembling, our love of slap, our very souls — were we to possess souls, which we totally don’t. This is odd, all things considered, when the boot is so firmly attached to the other foot.

Male fabrication falls into two camps: before and after, pre and post-ensnaring. Heterosexual courtship is dominated by lies females actively want males to concoct. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” “That was the best sex of my life.” “I’ve never felt this way before.” We tot up these fictions like charms on a bracelet before succumbing to them in some great gust of hope. Only then does the real fun start.

Meaning, no, they’re not going to be home by 8pm, after which they’re not going to make supper. Meanwhile, “working late” translates as sitting in a darkened office lavatory binge-watching Second World War videos. That’s if you’re lucky. An acquaintance boasts of being unfaithful to his wife of 25 years. Yet he cultivates the impression he’s a bumbling saint, and — high five to Hemingway — isn’t it pretty to think so?

Indeed, the least likeable liars are invariably the Famously Nice Guys, whose niceness is a contrivance to conceal barking insanity. Only last week I found myself smiling vaguely into the middle distance as a woman enthused about “one of the good ones”. “He’s just so sane!” she raved, as I pictured the occasion he threatened to propel us both off a bridge. The bigger the lie and all that, as the mad male con artist lives to keep quoting.

Is this sexist? Undoubtedly, but then life is sexist. I used to consider myself a category-disrupting gender warrior until experience forced me to define heteronormative relationships as “a little light mutual gaslighting”. Because women lie too, of course. Only they tend not to have the effrontery to do it to your face, reserving their falsehoods for the behind-the-back variety. I once inquired of a female boss: “When you referred to this as a promotion, did you lie?” She went puce, stammering “yes” as if I’d broken every etiquette rule, when really I just wanted clarity.

One does encounter the odd female fantasist who cannot distinguish fact from fiction — and an extremely unpleasant business it tends to be. However, even the average masculine porker possesses a loftiness, an ambition, a brazenness that manages to convince its own creator. Hence the bleating injustice when exposed. The most common is the old “I do equal amounts of house work” gambit. I mean, sure, knock yourselves out, but saying this won’t make it true, chaps. Better to come clean about the fact that your time is more valuable because you possess a penis.

Yet in the main, I repeat, men lie because we want them to — need them to, in fact. I say this as a woman cohabiting with a man who refuses to utter an untruth. Terence cannot tell a lie, south London’s own George Washington. “How do I look?” I have taken never to inquiring as he will peer, wince, then announce: “Not your best. Actively bad. A real mistake.” He refers to such behaviour as “playing with a straight bat”. I refer to it as lazy, unimaginative and lacking in emotional intelligence, or, at the very least, emotional expedience.

It has earned him the nickname “Walton’s Mountain” — after those tedious, televisual moralisers — and nine years of angst. I know exactly where I am at all times. And it’s ghastly. How I long for the lying bastards of my past.