A few weeks ago, a colleague told me of a sales negotiation he was handling. During his description, he casually told me that he lied to his potential client by telling him someone else was interested in the purchase as well at the same—pretty high—price. I found it interesting and sad that he was so nonchalant in telling me about his lack of honesty. It is, however, quite common.
Years ago, I read Sam Harris's book on lying, aptly called Lying. It was a valuable quick read that I must admit changed my life. Like most people, I wasn't a pathological liar or a conman. I would never have thought of myself as a liar. Yet, on closer inspection, I realized that my interactions with others often included factual inaccuracies, exaggerations, or omissions... I was actually lying.
A recurring category of lie was small, useless exaggerations. Someone might ask what time you ran in that marathon. Instead of saying you ran it in 3 hours and 52 minutes, you shave off a few minutes to 3 hours and 45 minutes. This type of favorable imprecisions are as common as they are also ridiculous: You can't say that you ran the marathon in under 3 hours as that would be too suspicious, so you change the information slightly to the point where it won't change the reaction of the person you're lying to. So you're not gaining anything except the risk of getting found out and embarrassing yourself.
Another type of lie is hiding the truth, either by omission or by explicitly saying a falsehood, out of confort. Typical examples include your wife asking if a piece of clothing looks good on her when it doesn't, or a waiter asking if you enjoyed the meal when you didn't. I find here that honesty is a lot easier than most people think. In both cases (and especially with your wife), your honest feedback is valuable information. You can add a caveat to make it easier: "I didn't really like the fish; I thought there was too much sauce, but I'm not a big fan of sauce most days, and everyone else liked it, so it's just me." Or "I don't really like the shape of this shirt, but I don't know anything about fashion and maybe it's just new to me, so if you like it, you should keep it".
Often, you'll noticed that either nothing happens, because your feedback was just asked out of curtesy. But in some other cases, it will be helpful to others: Your wife most likely wants to know if something doesn't fit her. Even if it's just your own taste, it's your wife and she wants to know what you prefer... that's why she's asking!
To go back to our initial sales example, the lie was useless as well (and most likely counterproductive as most people can smell sleazy sales tactics). Its goal was to set a minimum price and speed up the process, which you can also do honestly: "Out of respect for both of our schedules, I want to be upfront about our position. We've given a lot of thought to the sale price and have set it at $x. This is a firm limit for us. If this works for you, I'm excited about the opportunity to move forward together. If not, it would be great to stay in touch in case circumstances change."
If we argued about it, we would certainly find cases where lying feels like the only reasonable option. But those cases are a lot less frequent than most think.
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