“Did I marry a pathological liar?”

In his new book, Love and Lies: An Essay on Truthfulness, Deceit, and the Growth and Care of Erotic Love, Clancy Martin argues that loving someone requires lying to them. His third wife, Amie Barrodale, recently interviewed Martin about his assertions.

Amie: What if this woman who cheated finds herself fantasizing about it a lot. She’s never contacted the guy, and she never will, but she thinks about him every time she sleeps with her husband.

Clancy: Wow, good one. For the record, you’re my wife, and if this happens, please lie to me about it.

Amie: Wait, that’s a good answer. Why?

Clancy: Because I don’t think I could handle the truth, but I want us to stay married. So I’m asking you to be the strong one, since it’s your deal, your mental affair. If you feel like it’s starting to threaten the relationship — if the only way for us to continue to be happily married is for you to get the truth out — well, then I’d ask you to find a gentle, caring way to do it. Don’t just say: “I can’t stop thinking about this guy I slept with, he was fantastic and had a huge —”

Amie: How come you didn’t go into detail about our marriage, or your previous two marriages, in the book?

Clancy: Two reasons: respect for you and my two previous wives, and respect for my daughters. And also, I guess, fear that you guys would all love me less if I were too bluntly honest. But truthfully there are some things I would love to say, but can’t, because I know they would really hurt people I love.

(via the morning news)

• Amie Barrodale
• books
• Clancy Martin
• interviews
• Love and Lies

Meet a former professional liar

Clancy Martin is a tenured philosophy professor who used to sell luxury jewelry… and he wasn’t very honest about it.

The jewelry business — like many other businesses, especially those that depend on selling — lends itself to lies. It’s hard to make money selling used Rolexes as what they are, but if you clean one up and make it look new, suddenly there’s a little profit in the deal. Grading diamonds is a subjective business, and the better a diamond looks to you when you’re grading it, the more money it’s worth — as long as you can convince your customer that it’s the grade you’re selling it as. Here’s an easy, effective way to do that: First lie to yourself about what grade the diamond is; then you can sincerely tell your customer “the truth” about what it’s worth.

As I would tell my salespeople: If you want to be an expert deceiver, master the art of self-deception. People will believe you when they see that you yourself are deeply convinced. It sounds difficult to do, but in fact it’s easy — we are already experts at lying to ourselves. We believe just what we want to believe. And the customer will help in this process, because she or he wants the diamond — where else can I get such a good deal on such a high-quality stone? — to be of a certain size and quality. At the same time, he or she does not want to pay the price that the actual diamond, were it what you claimed it to be, would cost. The transaction is a collaboration of lies and self-deceptions.

• business
• Clancy Martin