When a woman asks a man if their bum looks big, he’s required to answer the question carefully. This classic trap set for men can make or break an evening: tell a blatant lie and she’ll think that you don’t care if she goes out looking like the back of a bus, but tell the truth and suffer the consequences if not for the entire night but for the foreseeable future.

The subject is so important that it warranted a study of over 10,000 men, by www.makefriendsonline.com, to find out whether they tell the truth or lie. The men were asked the questions they most fear answering from their other halves: ‘Have I put on weight?’, ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ and ‘Do you like this dress?’ The results found that 56 per cent of men bravely tell the truth.

If you are a man looking for moral guidance on the dos and don’ts of answering such loaded questions, the study also revealed that women are not such complicated creatures after all. Men: women want to hear the truth. They found that 88 per cent of women want the truth bar the lies. However, what those women would do if they hear something they don’t like is a whole different kettle of flapping fish.
Sam van Rood, known as the Love Doctor, advises men to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Nine out of ten women will love you for it.”

To complicate things, though, you could seek some moral guidance from elsewhere that will tell you that lying is always best.

Jeff Maysh from Loaded magazine says, “A white lie solves all problems. It’s a fact: men lie. We do it to get girls in to bed, out of it, to do what we want, then what we don’t want!”

If you think that’s just locker room man’s talk, think again. Caroline Monk, columnist for Closer magazine, says, “For the guy’s sake, and for the sake of the relationship, lie, lie lie!”

If you don’t like what you’ve heard so far and want the opinion of a normal woman, Jenny, a 29-year-old from Tayside, says, “Absolutely tell the truth: if I didn’t want his opinion, I wouldn’t ask him.”

Who’d be a man, huh!

For women wanting to gauge whether their man is a compulsive white liar, the research found that men with PhDs are the most likely to lie when faced with difficult questions, with 53 per cent admitting to untruths, while non-professionals, like builders, are most likely to tell the truth with 60 per cent being honest.

Men in Gwent are the most honest in the country (74 per cent), while the men in County Down who were questioned are the most likely to lie, with only 29 per cent who would tell the truth.

Aries men are most likely to tell the truth (60 per cent), while Cancerian men are the most likely to tell a white lie (49 per cent).

Picture caption: Bum deal – do men tell the truth or lies to keep their women happy?

MyVillage, 03rd January