Dear men:

You lie. We will catch you.

Women aren't stupid. Granted, we've all been a little airheaded and blinded by that almighty thing called "love," but as soon as our female intuition switches into gear, your "white" lie will be sunk faster than you can say "Battleship."

I have a personal tale of one certain ex-boyfriend who thought lying was a paid profession. It started off as "white" lies about whether he had been smoking (c'mon, hiding a habit like smoking is like hiding an elephant behind a popsicle stick), but soon transformed into lies about the origin of gifts he had received. Who lies about getting a $300 GPS system? Someone who's getting it from a secret, second girlfriend. Classy. As you can probably tell, Mr. Liar Pants was hiding more than a bad habit.

Lies are like snowballs. When you first get them rolling, they're tiny and meaningless.

But after you keep peddling them, they accumulate more and more snow and dirt, eventually becoming so large you can hardly pick them up. The problem with telling little lies is after a while, you start turning them into big ones. By telling your significant other those texts on your phone are from your brother (but they're, as predicted, from an old flame), you just may initially get away with it. But what happens when your phone ends up in the hands of your current girlfriend? Game over.

And what exactly is so "white" about a white lie? A lie is still a lie, be it to cover your own mistakes or heal the ego of your significant other. The everlasting "Do I look fat in these jeans?" question is the infamous exception many will cite for being a "good" time to tell a white lie.

However, your girlfriend would much prefer people to not be thinking "Gosh, she looks like Kirstie Alley in those." Even if we're meeting someone at the bar, we often cloud some truth. The verity of our past relationships, our income, even our sexual history, is sometimes bludgeoned. While these facts may be compromisable at the commence of a relationship, when it comes down to it, your lie will bite you in the ass.

Imagine how truthful you'd want someone to be with you. When it comes to their number of sexual partners or exactly when their last HIV test was, don't you think you'd want the truth?

If you're worried about disclosing your sexual information to a potential partner, there are two possibilities. First, if the person you like is going to judge you for your past, they aren't the right person anyway. Or the second option: Don't slut yourself around to the point you'd be embarrassed revealing that information to a possible sex partner.

If you keep things within your own boundaries, you'll avoid the necessity to tell a lie.

Obviously, trust is eliminated when it comes to a liar in a relationship. As a female, if you put up with a lying scumbag long enough, you're doing more than just letting him get away with it. You're also hurting yourself.

And, men, do you really want your girlfriend to be questioning you all the time? If you avoid the lies, you'll be avoiding any chance of breaking her trust. We all hear those stories of psychotic women showing up at their boyfriend's place of work to insure he's there, only to find him in the back room with a skanky secretary. Behind every psychotic girlfriend, there is typically a schmuck telling her lies.

My favorite story of lying men is the case of Lorena Bobbitt and her husband, the misfortunate John Wayne Bobbitt. After John's lies and scandalous affairs became overwhelming, Lorena chopped off almost half of his penis with an 8-inch kitchen knife. Then, even better, she drove away and threw his left over manhood out of the car and into a field.

And I bet John thought he was just "telling a white lie."

When she's not reading Cosmopolitan, Thea Neal can be reached at nealthea@msu.edu.