How To Be The Bigger Person When Someone Lies About You

Someone lied about me.

Not a small lie. The kind that twists your words, takes them out of context, and drags your name through the mud in front of an audience.

And I'll be honest with you. It made me angry.

I wanted to write the email. I wanted the last word. I wanted everyone to hear my side of the story.

If you've ever been gossiped about, lied about, or watched someone tell a version of you that simply wasn't true, you know exactly what that feels like.

So what do you actually do?

In this video, I walk through how to handle it without becoming the very thing that hurt you.

How to name the lie and say the truth. Why "everyone has to like me" might be the deeper lie you're telling yourself. How to find a pressure release before you react. What it really means to give up your right for revenge. And the question a mentor once asked me that completely changed how I respond.

Being the bigger person doesn't mean being a doormat. It doesn't mean staying silent every single time. It means deciding who you want to become before you decide what you want to say.

Watch the full video, then tell me in the comments: how have you handled someone lying about you? And after watching this, what would you do differently now?

Until next time, stay strong.

I'm Dr. Kimberly Beam Holmes. After a decade transforming marriages at Marriage Helper, I've realized that the greatest tragedy isn't a failed relationship; it's the person who stays stuck and never experiences the fullness of all God intended.

The Way You Show Up is for the high-achiever who is tired of "fine."

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Transcript

When Rumors Hit Close To Home

0:00

What do you do when people are lying about you? When they're gossiping about you? What do you do when they are running your name all through the mud? How do you be the bigger person? How do you handle it? Or should you? Should you even try to be the bigger person? I want to tell you about a story that recently happened. So, as many of you know, I'm the CEO of a company called Marriage Helper. And I've been doing this for 14 years. I've been helping people save their marriage, helping people on the brink of divorce learn how to bring back the most important relationship in their life, how to get their wife back, how to get their husband back. And there's a lot of people that have come and gone in the competitor space, if you want to call it that, over the past 14 years. But the worst is when they lie about you. And so about last year, I found that there was one of these people that's in the competitor space, and he has this video that he does. And in the video, there's one part where he literally puts an article from Marriage Helper on the screen for all to see. And he says, it says something like, you could listen to really bad advice. And then it has the Marriage Helper logo and it has a part of one of our articles where it talks about giving up. And it says, you could give up. And it continues on to say a little bit about that. But the thing is, y'all, he took this article completely out of context. Because if you would have just scrolled up with your mouse a little bit on our actual article, you would have seen how it said, here's what not to do. But instead, he made it align to exactly where it would prove a point about us that wasn't true. This isn't the only time

A Competitor Twists The Truth

1:50

this has happened. I've I've heard through the years about other people who say that, you know, marriage helper is dumb, Kimberly is petty, whatever it might be. And y'all, I wish that I could say I had the perfect Christian response every time. But I don't. It makes me so angry sometimes because I hear these things or I see these things and I think this person is lying. They are lying about me, or they're lying about marriage helper. They're they're twisting the truth and they're doing it in order to benefit themselves. So what do you do? What do you do when someone is lying about you, gossiping? Because it's probably happened in your life with a friend or with your spouse or with a family member who twists a situation that happened and starts telling everyone in the family about it, or maybe a church member who heard about a prayer request that you had and they turned it into the newest piece of church gossip. Whatever it is, you've probably been there and you have felt like you have been on the bad end of bad news of someone turning and running your name through the mud, and it wasn't even true. If people could just hear your side of the story, so what do you do? How do you be the bigger person? Or are there ever times where you should confront it? And that's where the hard part comes, at least for me. As many of you know, I'm a Christian, I love Jesus, I believe the Bible, and I believe that for me, the Bible is the guiding point and the guiding like rule of how I should try and live my life and to live to become more like Jesus. And I think of all of the times that that Jesus was, where his name was drug through the mud. And there were the people who knew him and were with him, and the people that he went to be with, the sinners, the tax collectors, the strippers, they weren't strippers in the Bible, but those are the kind of people that Jesus hung out with, right? And when they didn't understand him, he had this loving, kind, and compassionate gesture and reaction towards them. It was like his heart broke for them, and he wanted them to understand him. And so he he approached them in a different way. But then there were the people who were supposed to know about him. They were the religious leaders and the teachers of the law and the other rabbis and the priests, the people who were supposed to understand him and supposed to be following the word of God, but twisted everything he did for their agenda. There was like this other group of people who just didn't understand and he treated them with compassion. And then there was this other group of people who should have known better. And he handled them a bit of a different way. I mean, he turned over tables in the temple courts because they were doing things that were preventing the people of God

Compassion Versus Confrontation

4:43

from being able to get closer to God. And so that's Jesus. And we see that as a model, I think that we can take in some situations like this. What do you do? People are running your name through the mud. So I think there's this one way of saying, like, the people who should know better, the people who are your friends, who are your family, there's a point that you need to just go talk to them, not just post about it on social media, not just vent about it, not just starting your own piece of gossip, but actually going to that person and clearing the air. Saying, hey, you know what? I realize that maybe you and I have two different interpretations of this situation and maybe we should talk. But then maybe there's this other group of people where it's someone you don't know. Maybe it's in the situation like me. I don't personally know any of these people that have been saying some of these things. And in some ways, it's pretty impossible for me to find them and have that kind of conversation with them. I'm gonna be honest with y'all. I feel like this kind of situation, the one that demands more courageous compassion or maybe more compassion than courage, having a heart that breaks for them because they don't understand, instead of just like going in with guns blazing, is the harder part for me. So, what do you do? What do you do in this situation? Number one, you hear people say, well, if someone's gonna talk bad about you, it says more about them than it does about you. And that's true, but it says something about you too. Because whatever it is about what they have done or what they have said is creating this negative reaction within you for a reason. Because there's something about it that is fundamentally getting to your belief of who you are as a person. That's what you need to really be thinking about. One of the coaches that we have at Marriage Helper, his name is Jared, and he has this practice that he calls name the lie, say the truth. What is the lie that you are telling yourself or that that person is saying about you? I mean, in the situation I described, there's a very blatant lie. We never told people to give up on their marriage. That is a fundamental principle of what we believe at Marriage Helper, that we believe every marriage can be saved and we are never gonna tell someone to give up. That's the the person's decision who's in the marriage, not ours. Not ever is it our decision. So fundamentally there's a lie there. But maybe there's something even deeper about is there something that I feel like this even says more about me? I mean, there's a part where I'm like, have I have I not been clear? Like, how in the world could this person do such a thing? There's just a lot of feelings and emotions that go in with it. Whatever the situation has been for you, maybe it's your your spouse or your best friend or someone in your life has just said something untrue about you. There's gossip. Name the lie. What is the lie? What is the lie that they've said? And where applicable, what are the lies that you're telling yourself about it? Now, my husband, I I admire him for this exact reason. He is so easygoing. He's so confident and sure of who he is. Very rarely do what other people say about him does it

Name The Lie Say The Truth

8:10

does it ever bother him. He's like, let him not like me. Let him not let him think that way about me. For me, it's much harder. If I feel like someone doesn't like me, I really want to rectify it. But there's a further lie, I think, that's underneath that for me of I have to be liked by everyone in order to be loved. But that's not true. That is a lie. The truth is, if we're gonna name the lie, everyone needs to like me. Everyone love me. That's the lie that everyone needs to love me, but they don't. Everyone doesn't need to love me. I want to be respected, I want to leave an impact, I want to be kind and loving to others. But the lie behind that is if some person doesn't like me, I have less value as a human being. And that's not true. So, what is the truth? The truth is that no matter what another person thinks about me doesn't mean I'm less of a person. That's the truth. And in fact, if you're a Christian as well, then the only person whose opinion matters about you is what God thinks of you. The testimony of him who sent me is the one that is true. Everyone else, I believe that was Jesus who said that. That's the only person that he cared about who thought of him. Jesus only cared about what God thought of him. He didn't care about what the tax collectors, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, anyone else, he didn't care. He wanted to love every one of them and do and treat, do towards them and treat them in a way that showed them love, the love of God. But ultimately, what they ended up thinking about him in return was not under his control. One of the things we say at Marriage Hilper is you can only control you. You can't control other people. You can't control how they're gonna act, what they're gonna say about you, what they do behind closed doors, but you can control you. The second point is I do believe you need a pressure release. I know that I do. When my emotions are all worked up because I'm mad about a lie that someone said or a gossip or whatever it is, I need someone or somewhere to go to just get the steam off in order for me to think more clearly before I respond. So for me, I go for a run, or I'll go for a walk, or I'll take a hot shower, or I'll just spend some time talking to a trusted person like my husband. I choose my husband, my mom, or my dad, because those are three people in my life that I know aren't going to continue to fuel the fire. And that's the worst thing you want in this kind of situation. You want someone who's wise and discerning, who has a demeanor that's going to help you become calm, but someone that you can vent to a little bit, process things with so that they can help just kind of calm you down. Not because you're dependent on them or anything like that, but that's what we need as humans. Like we want a person that we can go to and process things with who's gonna understand us and empathize and say for a minute, man, that sucks. I'm so sorry that's happened. But someone who's not gonna let you stay there. Otherwise, you're just gonna end up spiraling and living and kind of like living a life in your own mud. You're just gonna continue to sit in the gunk and the gross and continue to like feel that way all the time. You don't want that. You want someone who's

Find A Healthy Pressure Release

11:45

gonna process but then help lift you out of it. Point number three. You need to give up your right for revenge. I wanted to write some pretty crass emails about some of these people that have said some pretty bad things about Mary Telper that just aren't true. But then I'd be no better than them. And it can be hard. But ultimately, I had a guy who I had on my podcast a couple of months ago, his name is J.R. Briggs, and one time I heard him say something so poignant, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since, which is that Christian leadership means that you give up your right to have the last word. I love having the last word. It's really hard. Sometimes just shut my mouth and be the bigger person. And some of you may be even thinking, Kimberly, but you've just done a whole video about like this random person who's like called you out. And I understand the kind of the tension between that and maybe a little bit of maybe, maybe hypocrisy, but I'm trying to use it as an example without throwing that person's name under the bus or through the mud to give an example of how I do struggle with this. And I think a lot of people do. Who do we want to become from it? What is the kind

Give Up Revenge And Last Word

13:20

of person we want to be? And how can we do that? For me, I want to be more like Christ. And so not calling this person out and going on a smear campaign against them. Like, I don't want to be that kind of person. And whatever you might be thinking of, your spouse, your best friend, the person at church, whoever your next door neighbor, if you just go back on a smear campaign against them, if you get involved in the next chain of gossip thread, when does it ever end? I had a mentor tell me years ago as I was going through something else in my life, a difficult situation with a with a person that I had worked with. And I remember he said, Kimberly, how would you want your daughter like if your daughter knew everything happening and she was being mentored by you and she was shadowing you every single day with in your life and in what you do? How would you want your daughter to see you handle this situation? Like, who is the kind of person you would want your daughter to see you as? And that also stuck with me because I've I've thought about that a lot since then. I want to be a person of grace and truth. I want to be the kind of person that stands up for what's right, but also has the compassion towards people who don't agree with what I agree with or or maybe even don't do what I think that they should do. I want to be, that's the kind of person I want to be. I want to be bold, but I don't want to be inaccessible. I don't want to be like cut off. I don't wanna, I don't want to be unapproachable. And sometimes that's hard when people are talking bad about you, lying about you, dragging your name through the mud to know how to respond because you want to defend yourself. And sometimes you should. But I think the best way you should defend yourself is one-on-one, graciously asking for the person to stop lying, to stop doing the things. And maybe other times it's just choosing to give up your right for revenge, choosing to give up your right to have the last word, keeping your mouth shut when you have a lot of context you could add. But saying, what good is it gonna do in the end? Is it gonna help edify that person anymore? Is it gonna help me? Am I gonna feel better about myself in the in the short term? But maybe I'm gonna look worse to others in the long term because I'm ultimately just becoming the kind of person that just also talks bad about other people whenever they talk bad about me. I don't want that. And I don't think that that you want that either. So hopefully this video was helpful. I would love to know in the comments how have you handled this situation? When people have been lying, gossiping, dragging your name through the mud, what did you do? And maybe what would you do now, now that you've watched this? What is an aha moment you've had? And if there's someone that you can share this with, maybe not the person who recently dragged your name through the mud, unless you want to be real bold, but I'm not gonna stop you. You do you.

Grace And Truth Plus Next Steps

16:35

If you there's someone you think you could share this with and it would benefit them, then please do. Until next time, stay strong.