The Comfortable Lie Nobody Talks About...

Sound familiar?

Rob and I were living in Portland. I was pregnant with our daughter, and mom and dad arrived to “help”. They did their best in a chaotic household that now contained themselves: two elderly people trying to be useful, along with two working parents and a baby on the way in a summer with temperatures that refused to move out of the 90’s.

Let’s just say I was not my most cordial and delightful self. I felt enormous, slow, hot and sticky no matter how many showers I took. (We had no AC then, just ceiling fans that moved with about as much energy as the rest of us. Zero to none.)

I was worried about my dad’s heart condition in the heat, my increasing water retention, trying to keep my part-time job, and score a decent crib (used please) for the dining-room-turned-nursery. You know - all the things.

My mom, in these situations, defaulted to what she knew how to do best: cook. She would cook Large Meals Every Day. They were delicious, nutritious and relentless. Each evening, Rob and I were faced with clean up duty in the kitchen. (No dishwasher either) And we were of course, after full work days, dog-tired and beyond cranky.

Finally, one evening after about a week of this, I snapped at mom. I was done being grateful. I was done taking care of her fragile feelings. I wanted Thai takeout with no dish duty and the hurt look on her face… made me furious.

“Mom! Stop cooking! It’s way too hot and nobody wants to tackle the pile of dishes because we’re all exhausted!” She looked stunned for a moment. Then she mutely nodded her head and proceeded to look like a kicked dog for the rest of the evening….while making passive aggressive remarks about the quality of the Thai food I had ordered.

For the remainder of that week, her countenance was pleasant, docile, accommodating - and completely devoid of authenticity. I refused to feel guilty about my outburst. I did not apologize. But sadly, their visit became something to endure. And that’s not the way any of us wanted to feel.

I know now, years later, that she didn’t know any better. In the Positive Intelligence model - her primary internal saboteur was The Pleaser - on steroids. Mom was raised in a fractured family - her dad a barely functioning alcoholic, her mom locked in a sanitarium because that’s what they did with people who had contracted tuberculosis. She was raised by her grandmother in White Bear Lake, Minnesota - and “Midwest Nice” is actually a thing - with painful consequences.

Laura Janusik writes about this topic eloquently in her blog Listening to Change. where she “explores the cultural communication patterns that define America’s heartland, where kindness is expected, confrontation is avoided, and saying what you really mean can feel… impolite.”

“Nice” doesn’t feel like lying. It feels like keeping the peace. And when someone refuses to play nice, like I did in setting boundaries with my mom - it’s a violation of the unspoken rules that keep the comfy lie in place.

But comfortable dishonesty - the kind dressed in politeness and, in our workspaces - professionalism - does real damage, slowly and invisibly.

What Comfortable Dishonesty Looks Like in Work Spaces

It’s the performance review where you circled around the real issue. The team meeting where you nodded at a decision you disagreed with. The friendship where you’ve been pretending not to notice something for two years.

The Systems That Reward It

Comfortable dishonesty persists because it works - in the short term. You avoid conflict, maintain approval, stay out of the hot seat. But once we examine the organizational and relational systems that incentivize it, we can see what those systems ultimately produce: teams that can’t self-correct, relationships that can’t deepen, leaders who don’t know what’s actually happening.

And in our families, fractures that never truly heal.

The Boundary That Breaks the Pattern

The way out isn’t to become the person who says every hard thing. It’s to build a practice of choosing one honest thing per situation - and saying it with care. Start with low-stakes truth-telling and build from there. The muscle of honest speech develops with use.

What about you?

Identify one space in your professional or personal life where comfortable dishonesty has become the norm. What’s one true thing you could introduce into that space this week?

Curious about what your internal saboteurs might be? Take the quick free assessment here, and then book a Discovery zoom with me to find out more!