New research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and Personal Relationships suggests that people who mislead their romantic partners tend to fall into three specific behavioral categories. By examining the psychological reasons behind romantic deception, scientists provide evidence that lying in intimate relationships serves a variety of purposes. These purposes range from attempts to preserve relationship harmony to calculated strategies for emotional manipulation.
Tim Cole, an associate professor in the College of Communication at DePaul University and author of Broken Trust: Overcoming an Intimate Betrayal, conducted the research alongside Kellie Stonebrook. “This is one of my favorite studies, and it was honored with a Top Paper Award at the International Communication Association conference in Cape Town this year,” Cole said.
Deception in romantic relationships is a common occurrence, despite the high premium most couples place on honesty. People often mislead their partners for various reasons, making it difficult to understand the true impact of a lie. Cole and Stonebrook designed a pair of studies to identify the distinct motives behind these everyday falsehoods. They suspected that specific psychological frameworks might help explain why individuals choose to be dishonest with their significant others.
Attachment theory provides one such framework by describing how people manage intimacy and emotional dependence. Securely attached individuals generally feel comfortable with closeness and trust their romantic partners. Insecure attachment takes two primary forms, known as anxious attachment and avoidant attachment. Anxiously attached individuals crave deep connection but constantly fear abandonment, while avoidantly attached individuals prefer emotional distance and tend to pull away when relationships become too intimate.
To capture a wider range of psychological behaviors, the authors also examined antagonistic personality characteristics known as the Dark Tetrad. This grouping includes Machiavellianism, which involves a highly manipulative approach to social interactions. It also includes narcissism, characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, and psychopathy, which is marked by a lack of empathy and remorse. The final trait is everyday sadism, which describes people who experience intrinsic pleasure from causing others emotional or physical pain.
In their first project, Cole and Stonebrook developed a measurement tool called the Motives for Romantic Deception Scale. They initially recruited 926 participants living in the United States to evaluate a long list of reasons for lying to a partner. Through statistical testing, they narrowed the list down to seven distinct motives. The first few motives included malicious intent, attention seeking, conflict avoidance, and emotional appeasement.
Malicious intent means wanting to see a partner suffer, while attention seeking involves lying to make oneself seem more interesting. Conflict avoidance is used to steer clear of arguments, and emotional appeasement involves lying to protect a partner’s feelings. The remaining three motives were mistake concealment, privacy protection, and sexual avoidance. These involve covering up an embarrassing act, withholding facts to maintain personal autonomy, and making up excuses to avoid physical intimacy, respectively.
The researchers validated this new scale with an additional sample of 740 individuals. Following this step, they recruited 549 adults in romantic relationships to explore how these seven motives connected to attachment insecurities. Avoidant attachment was associated with motives involving emotional distance, such as protecting privacy and avoiding physical intimacy. Anxious attachment was linked to motives reflecting a need for reassurance, like seeking attention and hiding mistakes to prevent rejection.
“In the first study, we identified seven common motives for romantic deception—avoiding conflict, protecting privacy, concealing mistakes, sparing a partner’s feelings, gaining attention, avoiding sex, and intentionally causing harm—and linked them to attachment insecurity,” Cole told PsyPost. “The second study asked a different question: Do people cluster into distinct patterns based on why they deceive their partners?”
For their second study, they recruited a new sample of 567 adults who were either married or in a committed romantic relationship. The average participant was 42 years old, and the average relationship length was slightly over 14 years. The sample was split almost evenly between men and women.
Participants completed the newly developed scale measuring their reasons for deception. They also answered questionnaires assessing their attachment security and their levels of the four dark personality traits. Finally, the respondents rated their overall relationship satisfaction and estimated how frequently they tended to deceive their partners in general.
The researchers analyzed the data using a statistical technique called Latent Profile Analysis. This method looks for hidden patterns in how people respond across multiple questions, grouping individuals who share similar behavioral tendencies.
“Three profiles emerged,” Cole explained. “Transparent Partners (38%) rarely rely on deception, are securely attached, and report the most satisfying relationships.” For these individuals, honesty appears to be the default strategy for managing intimacy. They exhibited high relationship satisfaction, secure attachment styles, and extremely low levels of all four dark personality traits.
“Strategic Soothers (48%) lie mainly to keep the peace: avoiding conflict, sparing feelings, concealing mistakes, and protecting privacy,” Cole said. These individuals indicated that they primarily deceive their partners to maintain relationship harmony. They scored exceptionally low on motives intended to cause harm or seek attention.
Strategic Soothers exhibited average levels of insecure attachment but scored very low on the dark personality traits. They also reported moderate relationship satisfaction, falling slightly below the scores of the Transparent Partners. The authors suggest that this group uses deception as a coping mechanism to manage their relationship anxieties and prevent arguments, functioning as a protective shield rather than a tool for exploitation.
“Antagonistic Strategists (14%) endorse the full range of motives, including causing harm, seeking attention, and avoiding sex, and report the lowest relationship satisfaction and the most frequent deception,” Cole added. They were uniquely willing to deceive their partners to seek attention, avoid sexual intimacy, and deliberately cause emotional distress.
Psychologically, this group displayed high levels of attachment insecurity paired with elevated scores in narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism. For these individuals, deception seems to function as a tool for relational control and self-interest.
“What surprised us most was how cleanly the profiles separated,” Cole noted. “We expected much blurrier boundaries, but the statistical indicators showed unusually clear separation between the three groups.”
“The differences were large by any standard,” Cole said. “On self-reported tendency to deceive, the gap between Antagonistic Strategists and Transparent Partners was more than two standard deviations (d = 2.18). In behavioral research, that’s enormous.” He emphasized that the satisfaction differences were also substantial, not just statistical fine print. “These were meaningfully different groups rather than subtle statistical distinctions.”
The researchers noted also an unexpected psychological pattern between the two groups of frequent liars. “The other surprise was that Strategic Soothers and Antagonistic Strategists showed nearly identical levels of attachment insecurity,” Cole said. “What distinguished them wasn’t insecurity itself: it was antagonistic personality traits such as narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism. Attachment insecurity alone doesn’t explain harmful deception.”
The findings provide a new lens for understanding romantic relationships. “One thing this research reminds us of is that deception isn’t one-size-fits-all,” Cole said. “Two people may tell the exact same lie for completely different reasons, and those motives tell us a great deal about the health of the relationship.”
Cole highlighted two main takeaways for the general public. “First, the largest group in our sample, nearly half, uses deception to maintain the relationship rather than exploit it,” he said. “Lying to keep the peace may be closer to the norm than the exception in romantic relationships.”
Secondly, the reasoning behind the behavior carries more weight than the act itself. “Second, why someone lies matters more than whether they lie,” Cole explained. “The same act of deception can reflect relationship maintenance in one person and manipulation in another, and those patterns are associated with very different relationship outcomes.”
These findings provide real-world applications for relationship counselors and therapists. If a client fits the profile of a Strategic Soother, a therapist might help them build the confidence needed to face disagreements honestly. The therapist could focus on reducing the client’s fear of conflict, showing them that honesty does not automatically lead to a breakup.
Working with Antagonistic Strategists requires a completely different professional approach. In these cases, standard couples therapy might present actual risks, as the deceptive partner might use therapy insights to further manipulate their significant other. Recognizing these patterns allows professionals to prioritize safety and boundary setting over traditional communication exercises.
Even though Strategic Soothers lie to protect their bonds, their behavior is not a foolproof solution. “One other point is worth emphasizing: Strategic Soothers shouldn’t be interpreted as evidence that ‘deception works,’” Cole warned. “Although they generally lied for relationship-maintenance reasons, they were still less satisfied than Transparent Partners. Their deception may help keep the peace, but it doesn’t eliminate the relationship costs associated with attachment insecurity.”
The authors also caution against labeling individuals too rigidly. “These are patterns, not fixed types; people can change, and a single lie doesn’t reveal someone’s profile,” Cole said. “The data are also cross-sectional, so we can describe associations between personality, attachment, and deception, but not causation.”
The participants were predominantly White and relatively affluent, which suggests the findings might not apply perfectly to more diverse populations. Another limitation is that the researchers only measured the psychological motives for lying, rather than the specific topics of the lies. A lie about financial debt might impact a relationship differently than a lie about enjoying a home-cooked meal.
Moving forward, the scientists plan to continue exploring these complex dynamics. “We’re working to replicate these profiles and expand the picture by examining characteristics such as trust, empathy, guilt, jealousy, and forgiveness,” Cole said. “We also want to collect dyadic data to better understand what happens when two Strategic Soothers are paired together versus a Strategic Soother and an Antagonistic Strategist.”
This next step involves tracking couples over extended periods of time and observing both partners simultaneously. “Ultimately, we hope this work will help us better understand how patterns of deception shape relationship functioning over time,” Cole concluded.
The study, “Deceptive Hearts: Insecure Attachment and Motives Underlying Deception in Romantic Relationships,” was authored by Tim Cole and Kellie Stonebrook.
The study, “Strategic Soothers, Transparent Partners, and Antagonistic Strategists: A Latent Profile Analysis of Romantic Deception,” was authored by Tim Cole and Kellie Stonebrook.
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