Our friends over at Lemondrop hipped us to a new study that says many parents lie to get their children to behave. For instance, parents tell their kids the police will arrest them for crying too much or that if they sit too close to the TV they’ll go blind. When I was younger, my mom didn’t have to make up stories to get me to behave—she just raised her eyebrow. The first raise was a warning, and the second meant I was in big trouble. But she did come up with one big whopper to explain where I came from. She told me she purchased me from the “baby store” and I had a twin sister, but she didn’t have enough available credit on her AmEx to buy both of us. Of course, I didn’t really believe this story at first, but when I met Arianna Harris, who had the same birthday as me, at day camp, I became a little suspicious. Good thing Arianna looked exactly like her parents.

What lies have your parent(s) told you? And what lies do you tell your children?

Some new studies suggest men cheat up to five percent more than women, but apparently ladies are “bigger liars” about it. Hmm ... bigger liars or just better at not getting caught? According to some recent studies, women are having more affairs than ever—around 15 percent, while the figure is closer to 20 percent for men—but they behave very differently from men when they cheat. Dr. David Holmes, a psychologist at Manchester Metropolitan University, says: “The biggest difference is that women are much better at keeping their affairs secret. If you look at the studies into paternity, even conservative figures show that between eight and 15 per cent of children haven’t been fathered by the man who thinks he’s the biological parent.”

Well, the secret is out, ladies. One of our own has let the cat out of the bag. Writing for AskMen.com, female “relationship correspondent,” Madeline Murphy shares the five lies she says every woman tells. “All women lie in certain situations and your little angel is no exception,” Murphy writes, adding:

“Sometimes she’s only fibbing a bit to protect her own feelings or yours. Sometimes her motives are less laudable, like lying to cover her tracks. Whatever the case, certain lies occur much more frequently than others. It’s up to you to learn the five lies all women tell, and how to handle them.”

So just what are the five lies every single one of us is guilty of telling? Find out after the jump.

You know how sometimes little white lies snowball out of control? It’s usually when you say something dumb, like, “Oh, yeah, I watch “Gossip Girl.”” Then the girl who sits next to you at work gives a play-by-play of each outfit the characters’ wore every Tuesday morning and you just smile politely.

But one man wrote into “Dear Prudence,” the advice columnist for Slate, to confess he’s been lying to his girlfriend about something for four years: that he has an engineering degree.

A little bit of distrust goes a long way. In the wake of the Sanford scandal I am trying to get a better handle of why we lie and how we can tell if someone is telling us the truth.  My interest piqued during the political scandal of the Italian Prime Minister. However, it began several years ago when a male friend of mine began telling me stories about a new woman in his life.

I was a good listener until he asked the question, “So what do you think?”

Did he really want to know that she lying and manipulating him? Continue reading...

When did I become the star of the Lifetime movie, “In Love With A Stranger”? (This movie does not exist yet, but it should.) Was this the way “General Hospital”‘s Elizabeth Webber felt when she found out her husband, Ric Lansing, had kidnapped Carly Corinthos and was keeping her locked up in a secret room in their house? Was this kind of betrayal what Janet Jackson was singing about on the song “What About?” How many songs, movies, and books have been penned about deception? Countless, I think. But there are two people I’ve been thinking about in particular, who seem like they would get what it feels like to find out you’d been lied to for years by the person you loved. They are Julie Metz, author of Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal, and my ex-fiance’s college girlfriend, who emailed me yesterday out of the blue.

On an early date with my ex, we were discussing sexual experiences (what, me discuss sex?!) and he told me that he had had a threesome. Months later I found out that he had lied. I wasn’t mad about it, but because it was such an odd thing to make up, I’ve never forgotten it. (I’ve also never figured out why. Was he trying to show off? Plant the seed for a future threesome, which he tried, in vain, to have up until we broke up?) This week I read Glamour‘s “5 Lies Men Tell About Their Sexual History (Hint: The Three-Way is BS)” and discovered that, apparently, many men tell this little fib, along with other sex lies like “I lost my virginity when I was 16!” and “This has never happened before.” So what about the guys on our IM? What sex lies have they told?

ZOMG! Did you hear?! President Obama is GAY!  According to The Globe, that is. Tabloids sell amazing lies that millions of people buy.  While it would have been doubly empowering for America to not only elect its first African-American, but also its first openly homosexual President, these rumors are just fun fantasies good for a laugh—which we could all use right about now. Guess that’s why The National Enquirer is America’s best selling weekly “newspaper.” Here are our favorite outrageously LOL rag-mag cover stories…

We’ve been lied to by our parents, the media and our social, educational, and religious institutions. The messages they’ve given us regarding sex have been contradictory or absolutely false. In order to combat the lies (and to stop lying to ourselves), About.com has come up with a list of the biggest lies we’re told about sex. Please add to this incomplete list in the comments.

1. The number of sexual partners you’ve had plus or minus five
2. That you totally just washed your hands
3. That the reason for your bags is not, in fact, that you were out late partying but that you were up late reading “Twilight”
4. That you’re naturally toned
5. How much you paid for that (ridiculously cheap) pair of shoes

Who doesn’t want to impress a date? We tend to dress up a little more, do a better job of applying our eyeliner, and sit up straighter when we go out with someone new, but according to a study, most of us probably tell a few lies, too. A survey of 1,543 Britons by the National Year of Reading found that 39 percent are more likely to lie about what books and magazines they’ve read than they are about their age or job. Have you ever lied to a date about books you’ve read? Tell us which ones in the comments… [Telegraph, U.K.]

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.  Whether he’s a handsome stranger you don’t want to lead to the promise land or your boyfriend trying to gorge on girlfriend pie, here’s how to just say “Later lover.”

Sterilization Screw-Up A simple birth control slip up could cause penis pandemonium.  No dude wants to accidentally make a baby just because he wants to make sweet love.  So, just say you forgot to take the pill and would rather not risk it right now. He’ll probably thank you for protecting both of you!

Remember those “True Love Waits” sweatpants we posted about the other day? Well, K-Mart is claiming that the sweats’ message has nothing to do with abstinence and that the bloggers who say that they do are making their own inference. Uh-huh. Cause true love waits for…the sun to shine? True love waits for…the NFL season to start? True love waits for…oh wait, BUSTED. Feministing has got total proof that K-Mart didn’t cover their tracks before lying. Check out the description of the pants to the left. Second bulleted item down, describes the pants’ “bold abstinence screen print”. Nice job ladies.

A 38-year-old woman had an expensive laser procedure done to her face, but beforehand, she told her husband she was merely getting a facial. When he found out what a mega-big deal it was, he flipped out. The woman thought it was a harmless fib, but relationships expert Dr. Pam Spurr says even a little white lie isn’t good for a relationship. “What was really going on? She felt defensive about trying to hold back the hands of time, confiding that she didn’t want her husband to know how much she worried about facial lines. As if her husband wasn’t aging along with her!” See, what she really should have done was asked her husband whether he wanted his face worked on, too! [The Times, U.K.]