The Scariest Liar Might Not Understand They're Lying

If you give me a chance, Ash, I will fix my mistakes. I know that person was not the real me. I’ll do anything to spend the rest of my life with you and showing you the man that I am and the man that I can be through my actions. I hope you all can forgive me.

This is an apology letter written from a husband to a wife. Can you guess the sin this husband committed that warranted this letter?

If you guessed possessing thousands of images of child sexual abuse material, many including his own step-daughter, you'd be correct. This is Jason Lytton of Riverton, Utah, writing from jail, after being arrested and then indicted on 10 second-degree felony charges of sexual exploitation of a minor.

You might remember having a funny conversation that a lot of us had as kids: what if you see blue the way I see red? How would you know? We could all be looking at the world with different colors, and we'd just learn that orange is called purple. We'd go about our lives, not knowing our world looks totally different than everyone else's.

Imagine the same concept except with complex emotional feelings. Love, shame, fear, desire. Someone might go their whole lives with an understanding of "love" that is very different from yours. They'd learn the words associated with it, and they'd learn the body and facial expressions, but what they're feeling is fundamentally different.

Jason would certainly say he loves his wife, Ash, and his step-daughter. However, a sane reaction to that is to think he must be lying, because no one who feels love like we do would be able to do what he did. No one who sees the true colors of love and shame would think that this letter is an appropriate plea for forgiveness. He seems to be operating on very shallow understandings of these emotions. Yet, he fooled his family for years.

What makes him an extremely compelling liar is that, for him, he's not lying. He loves his family to the full capacity that he understands love to be.

He's seeing pastel pink where we see fire-engine red. He feels a faded, toothless, stunted version of what we feel as a powerful emotion. Words often fall short of truly communicating emotions, which is how two people can say words like love, trust, and respect to each other, but not be talking about the same thing.

Shame is one of those complex feelings that we might know by the same word, but feel differently. A critical component of narcissism, sociopathy, and many other disorders is a muted shame response. This can be seen in the apology letter where Jason is not able to describe why and how he hurt his family. You can see that he knows he needs to apologize, but he never says what for, and he doesn't seem to understand the severity of the situation.

Shame alerts us to morally contradictory behavior. When this emotion is experienced as muted or faded, people like Jason are left guessing about which part of his behavior was the most offensive, and they often guess slightly wrong. This can be seen shockingly clear when, in an apology letter to his step-daughter, he describes her as "beautiful." He's made a good guess that she's upset by him taking sexual, voyeuristic videos of her, but misses that the fact he finds her attractive in that way is a big part of the damage of the offense.

Complex emotions felt differently can often go unnoticed for quite a long time. But when the facade is punctured, it leads to a lot of suffering.

What is the yellow-flag version of this problem?

• Love-bombing is a common habit of people who might not have a deep understanding of the feeling of love.

• Exhibiting behavior that is very loud, strange, or obvious, in a way that other people would consider very embarrassing. Can play into love bombing when you consider actions like over-the-top expressions of love.

• Confusion when called out on hurtful or embarrassing behavior. Can be mistaken as gaslighting because it functions on your psyche the same way. This person will very convincingly minimize their behavior.