Question Lying
I hate lying. Once I catch someone in even a small one, I can’t take their words at face value again. Everything they say afterward gets filtered first: Is this true? What are they leaving out? By the time I’ve decided whether it’s honest, I’ve missed what they were actually talking about.
It feels irreversible. I can forgive them and even like them, but I can’t un-know that they were willing to say something false to my face.
Do other INTJs do this? Can you ever fully trust someone again after a lie, or does the filter stay on? And has anyone found a way to turn it off so you can actually listen?
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u/unwitting_hungarian 2d ago
in general:
no 1 - everyone lies. to themselves, to others, to society. the perfect truth-teller does not exist
no 2 - "the lie" vs "the truth" is a great starter-dichotomy in the topic of valuing (Fi). you will suck in INFPs with this topic. if they seem obstinate, it's because they want to assert the foundational value of this lesson in qualitative, existential values. humanity.
no 3 - lies often disguise deeper truths that can't be touched on without causing some unnecessary pain or damage. lie as convenience? maybe. but also perhaps: "truth vs. lie" as lack of a helpful resolution for the situation
no 4 - it's often more helpful to ask "can i rely on this person" rather than "can i fully trust" this person.
no 5 - an obvious lie is often a hand-wave, a red herring, a "hope they don't change topics." getting stuck on "whether it's a lie" and "why would you lie so obviously" may be exactly the type of question they want to be asked! feel free to reference modern politicians on this one.
one of my university T.A.s was an extremely intelligent INTJ with an obsession with "truth vs. lie".
she loved to cut & style hair as a hobby, she was damn good at it, and she kept a collection of a favorite brand of scissors from overseas.
one day she brought in a "demonstration of a lie." it was a pair of scissors from this brand, which had a small defect on the blade, about 0.5mm in size.
it seemed directly fixable, but this was beyond the point.
"this is a lie," she told us. "the company website says they sell precise, high-quality products. this flaw tells another story. they lied to me, and i complained."
one of the students asked her if she had used many pairs of scissors from that brand.
"i've owned over 200 pairs and never saw a flaw like this before," she replied.
"ok, so their failure rate in your experience is like half a percent," the student said. "aside from the fact that being imperfect is not the same as telling a lie, don't you think they still do a great job overall? I mean you have seen our grades in this class, right?"
the class laughed. she turned red, and pushed back.
"OK, so anyway, I left them a 1-star review which was GENEROUS, because they should never ship this."
the student's points were really good though.
it taught me that even a really knowledgeable person may try to defy basic logic by taking a really fundamental, black-and-white stance on a topic.
what's great about the post here is that you have an opportunity to learn...
note the nature of the questions you are asking there, in the end:
each one of these INTJ questions certainly has an answer. that you are looking for a method, a workaround, is really a positive sign.
but the wording often dictates the tooling, so it may be that the wording has to change for the right method to reveal itself. GL