While deception helps us...
avoid hurting others
avoid conflict
and regain a sense of freedom and control
... lying in a close relationship is not completely cost free.
Using deception, especially with a romantic partner, can lead to a lot of problems in its own right.
Deception...
·                                 destroys trust and creates distance
·                                 limits a partner's choices
·                                 and it's hard to contain
The disadvantages of deception are discussed on the pages that follow....


Lying and Deception Destroys Trust
Using deception in a romantic relationship or marriage is problematic because it often leads to a loss of trust and it makes people feel less close to each other.
Trust is vital in a romantic relationship.
It is impossible to have a close, healthy relationship without trust.  You need to be able to trust what a partner tells you.  Unfortunately, the best way to destroy trust is by getting caught deceiving a spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend.
In fact, relationships often come to an end when someone gets caught lying.
On the other hand, while deception destroys trust, our relationships survive, in part, due to the fact that people rarely get caught, or catch their spouses, when they do lie.  Despite what many people think, detecting deception is very, very difficult to do - especially when it comes to love and romance.
It also helps to point out that it is possible to rebuild trust once deception has come to light – difficult, but not impossible.
However, even though we aren't likely to get caught when we mislead others, using deception can still be problematic even when it is not detected.
Using deception, whether it comes to light or not, creates distance in a relationship.
Lying to a husband or wife has serious consequences.  The more people engage in deception, they tend to feel less close to their partners and they tend to feel more misunderstood.  It is hard to feel like a partner knows you, gets you, and understands you - if you are constantly lying to him or her.
And ironically, the more we lie to others, the less we trust them.  We project our own deceptive tendencies on to others.  If you think that your romantic partner is being less than completely honest – it can be a reflection of your own deceptive behavior.
Overall, using deception, even when it is not detected, can cause problems.  It can lead to a loss of trust and increased distance between partners.  And these problems are made much worse when deception actually comes to light

Lying Limits a Partner's Ability to Make Decisions
People often use deception to limit their spouse's or romantic partner's choices.  More often than not, we lie to our partners because we want to take away their ability to make decisions for themselves (see, Bok).
Deception is a very useful when trying to control what other people do.
People use deception to limit access to information.  Information which partners need in order to think for themselves.  Essentially, when you lie to someone, you are stealing their right to make their own decisions based on the reality of the situation.
Consider the following examples:
When a husband lies to his wife about how attractive she looks in a new outfit, he is taking away feedback that might influence how she dresses in the future.
When a fiancée lies about having an affair, she is taking away her fiancé's ability to make decisions about who he might like to marry.
When you knowingly mislead a romantic partner about what time you'll meet him or her at home (i.e., "I'll be home at ..."), you are taking away a partner's right to decide how to use that time.
When girlfriend lies to her boyfriend about a crush she has on one of his friends, she is taking away his ability to respond to that situation. Lying to romantic partners simply robs partners of their ability to think and act for themselves.
Lying Often Spreads
"If a man is sufficiently unimaginative to produce evidence in support of a lie, he might just as well speak the truth at once." -- Oscar Wilde
Once a lie is told, it must be repeated.
In fact, research shows that people repeat the same lies so often that they eventually convince themselves that they are telling the truth.
And as the quote above implies, once a lie is told, many more lies must be told to support the original lie.
Have you ever embellished a story?
And have found you adding a few more fabrications each time the story gets retold?
If you tell the story often enough, and it can become your truth.
For example, people's stories about how their past relationships ended are often filled with half-truths.  And over time, breakup stories tend to drift further away from the truth.  Ironically, as these stories become less accurate, they also become more real to the people telling them.
Deception, once started, is very hard to contain.

Relationships Involve Both Telling the Truth and Lying
When taking a close look at the use of deception in our romantic relationships, one thing becomes clear: our relationships are more complicated than we like to think.
Our relationships are held together by a delicate balance of both candor and deceit – both are required to make a relationship work.
Telling the truth is essential because without it our relationships would fall apart.
On the other hand, lying to a spouse or romantic partner helps us protect the ones we love from unpleasant truths, it helps us avoid conflict, and it allows us to exercise some freedom from time to time.
Using deception too frequently, however, destroys trust, it limits a partner's ability to make choices, and it becomes very hard to contain.