59 pages • 1 hour read
Tell Me Lies
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Themes
Manipulation and Control in Relationships
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness, disordered eating, emotional abuse, and sexual content.
Stephen’s relationships with women in the novel are defined by manipulation and control. As a sociopath, he uses his charm to manipulate them and get what he wants from them. He first attracts them by gathering “as much information as possible about every aspect of her life in order to more closely resemble her ideal partner” (32). He uses this tactic to attract Diana, using her favorite author to get her interested in him. He does the same with Lucy, appealing to her interest in literature and philosophy before offering her comfort and emotional support as she deals with CJ’s infidelity. As the novel shifts between Lucy’s point of view and Stephen’s, it becomes clear that these demonstrations of emotional support are purely performative. Stephen does not care about Lucy’s favorite novels or her feelings toward her mother; he pretends to care so that she will continue to sleep with him.
Every aspect of Stephen’s approach to relationships shares this superficial, performative quality. He gives women nicknames to endear himself to them, such as “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” for Lucy, “Princess Diana” for Diana, and “Alice in Wonderland” for Alice. In bestowing these names, he stakes a claim on each woman’s sense of identity. He also uses grand gestures to try to get women to give him sex, such as giving Alice her favorite flowers with a note and treating Lucy to a romantic night on the Kiss Me Kate. When he cheats or otherwise hurts the woman he is with, Stephen acts apologetic and makes himself appear softer and more affectionate, especially with Diana and Lucy. Again, the emptiness of these gestures becomes apparent in the sections narrated from his point of view: “More flattery doesn’t make the girl feel better, just addicted, and then you’ve hooked her because she continues to be hungry for that certain category of feedback” (97). He gains control of the woman he is with by giving them enough romantic signals and validation to make them come back for more, but he loses interest in these women when they stop providing him with pleasure, novelty, and satisfaction.
Stephen sees people for their usefulness to him, whether in his professional life or his sex life. After realizing that Stephen is a narcissistic sociopath and falling out of love with him, Lucy says, “[T]o him, I was always just this source of entertainment—this thing—and that he sees relationships as just these useful things” (371). This is why Stephen stays with Diana throughout college until she breaks up with him even though he finds her emotionality difficult to tolerate. He also uses Lucy for his sexual pleasure, only using romance as a means to an end. He expects Lucy to make the adjustments and accommodations in their sexual relationship, such as telling her to go on birth control because he dislikes condoms. Stephen must always be in control in his relationships, and when the woman he is with stops being ideal and useful in his mind, he starts thinking about replacing her with another one, as he did with Alice and Lucy.
The Ongoing Influence of the Past
In Tell Me Lies, the past continually reverberates in the present, as past mistakes and painful memories continue to shape the characters’ choices in the present. One of the clearest examples of this phenomenon is the effect that CJ’s affair with Gabe has on Lucy’s attitude toward her. The discovery that her beloved mother cheated on her father with her crush is too difficult for her to confront, so Lucy separates the mother who loved her, her sister, and her father from the woman she saw having sex with Gabe. She states that the day she saw the affair, “Mom died forever. She became CJ” (64). This leads to Lucy calling her mother “CJ” instead of “Mom” and frequently treating CJ coldly, even if CJ has not done anything in the moment. Because she does not tell CJ that she knows about the affair, she leaves her with no way to understand her daughter’s hostility or make amends. This mutual secrecy ensures that Lucy and CJ remain trapped in the past, unable to move forward. She states that “after she did the Unforgivable Thing, [Lucy] stopped caring what she thought” (14). Lucy also goes as far as to dispose of Marilyn’s jewelry, something that holds sentimental value to CJ. Furthermore, Lucy initially reacts with internal hostility when CJ comes to comfort and support her after Stephen breaks up with her, which leads her to reveal what she knows. It is also her anger at CJ that allows Stephen to draw her into a relationship with him and steadily makes her emotionally dependent on him.
The effect of the past on present behavior is also visible in the relationship between Diana and Stephen. Even though Diana does not trust Stephen due to his infidelity, and Stephen becomes irritated at Diana’s well-justified suspicion, they have an extensive history as a couple at Baird and struggle with letting each other go. Stephen asserts that he “always found life to run much more efficiently with a girlfriend” and that one must “choose who you’re going to love, backed by the reasons why” (92). Even after he loses interest in Diana, he is unwilling to let her go, as doing so would represent a definitive break with the past.
Though past experience sometimes leads characters to become trapped and make harmful decisions, it can also be a helpful guide. By paying close attention to the past, characters can learn from their mistakes and make better choices in the present. Diana finds herself attached to Stephen emotionally in the same way that Lucy does later in the novel. However, this same personal history with Stephen eventually leads her to reject him and instead pursue a relationship with a man in her program who she believes will love and respect her more. Lucy also shows this capacity to learn from the past. Lucy’s history with Stephen eventually makes her distrustful not only of him but also of her own desire for him, and when she sees him again at the wedding, her growth and wisdom lead her to reject his advances and lose any attraction she had to him.
The Tension Between Desire and Moral Clarity
Early in her relationship with Stephen, Lucy recognizes that he is not good for her, but she craves the validation he gives her, and this desire leads her to ignore his many faults. Even after he leaves her for Diana, Lucy remains in love with him, and she is willing to take him back even as he continues to date Diana. She is so fixated on the way he makes her feel that she tolerates his disrespectful behavior. Lucy recognizes the disconnect between her values and her actions. After having sex with Stephen during his relationship with Diana, she says, “It’s only when you do let this stuff happen to you that you realize your morals and actions are not as aligned as you’d hoped” (173). She explains this disconnect by saying, “[L]ust and love erase ethical parameters, and that’s just the way it is” (173). With the dismissive phrase “that’s just the way it is,” she absolves herself of any agency over her own life, rendering herself powerless against her desire. This is precisely the mindset that Stephen has sought to instill in her.
As Lucy grapples with the conflict between her desires, her moral values, and her sense of self-protection, she comes to the conclusion that “love [i]s pain that you ha[ve] to push through in order to access something greater” (173). This sentiment echoes the self-punishing worldview associated with her eating disorder, in which she pushes through the pain of self-imposed starvation, hoping to make herself worthy of Stephen’s love. This view of love aligns perfectly with Stephen’s interests, convincing her to tolerate his psychological abuse in the belief that she is always on the verge of “access[ing] something greater.” Her love for Stephen has become an addiction, just as he intended—something that she craves and will do anything to get.
After Stephen leaves and starts dating Alice, Lucy eventually starts to understand how unhealthy her desire for Stephen was. She starts dating Billy, who genuinely loves her and offers her real emotional support. However, as soon as Stephen returns to Baird, desire drives her back into his arms. She excuses and justifies this at the moment by stating, “Do you follow your head or your heart? Which do you do? Your heart, always. Right?” (279). In following her heart, though, Lucy betrays Billy and herself. The novel subverts the typically inspirational injunction to “follow your heart,” as Lucy’s heart—that is, her desire—leads her directly into the trap that Stephen has carefully laid for her.
As Lucy’s desires remain at odds with her ethical values, her sense of self begins to crumble. She debates staying with Stephen, knowing that their relationship is hurting Alice and that he is not a good person, but she decides to continue with him because she does not believe herself to be good either. She explains that because of all the things she did to her family, including CJ and Marilyn, Parker, Billy, Lydia, and her other friends, she “f[alls] into the bad category” and justifies her hurtful actions by blaming them on CJ’s infidelity (306). Rather than reject Stephen because he is not a good person, she decides that she is not a good person either. She uses this as a reason to stay with Stephen, but when he breaks up with her, she realizes that it was foolish for her to think “that [their] shared defiance of goodness was strong enough to equal love” (352). It is then that she realizes, following the end of their relationship, that she needs to do the right thing and search for real love, and she rejects Stephen at the wedding reception.
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