Well since I was mentioned here I will respond.
1) Not technically. Is it a deception yes. And as to deception it is defined by intent and situational factors IMO. Like I said in the other thread I think it is a form of withholding intimacy, you are not letting someone into your real thoughts, actions etc. so they can't know the real you if you are lying by omission in some sort of regular fashion.
2) Well yeah. I don't make attempts to lie or deceive usually as to actual relationships, but with people not close to me like in work for example well yeah there are plenty of things I choose not to share with them and they may assume things I don't try to correct. It is really nobody's business to know every detail of my thoughts and my life. Though I am largely an open book on some levels compared to most people, well there are parts of me and my past that others may not look too kindly on and you don't get to know certain things about me and how I think in every aspect until I want to be closer to you and until I consider your knowledge of certain things would not be a threat. And yeah in my past when young when you had authority over you in a way I certainly did my fair share of lying by omission, but as an adult well I just don't feel other people have some sort of control of my fate in many ways so the need to do that pretty much largely dissipated with age, or could have been maturity, I just have not felt that up against the wall sort of need to squirm myself out of a quandary as an adult, but if I found myself there I probably would employ a lie of omission if it was beneficial, but again these would be in situations where intimacy wasn't at all desired.
3) This one is harder. I think for many people there are a lot of lies of omission in relationships especially in the beginning of a relationship for example, people try to put their best face forward, and may withhold stuff about themselves that they know may be relevant to the other person. Is this outright deception? In a way it could be looked at that way, I mean I am the opposite I usually like to put every negative thing about me out there first lol so I don't waste my time, but I can see why people would have fears and maybe withhold certain details for whatever reason.
So today I have a first date in essence. It is with a massage therapist I have been seeing for a year and a half. I usually don't talk much during massages, but me and him started talking and really hit it off and have been having this great continuing conversation. REALLY getting to know each other, in ways some of our conversation was like a confession booth where you don't mind spilling your guts to an extent on something because you don't actually know this person IRL sort of thing. Well I have seen that romance might be in the cards here for awhile. And being very future oriented I thought through all of the possibilities here - and there are some very good ones with this guy that I can see right off the bat I think, which isn't often that way with me, and makes me think I should pursue this. Now, I am technically single, when early on he asked if I was seeing anyone I said no, though that isn't quite the full story. Am I single in the normal sense of the word where my heart is not somewhat involved with another man. No. I have failed to mention details about my current romantic mind, not out of deception just somehow it never came up and he never asked directly, it was kind of about the past and the future in theory but not much of the actual present in our conversations. So I have an ex that I am still involved with to an extent, though I don't ever see getting back together, I have imagined a "single" future where he is part of it though that seems intriguing. I also met a guy a year and a half ago traveling for work, he blew my socks off, the connection was insane. We live clear across the country in demanding jobs though we are working together in a remote fashion. He plans to move out where I live for work in about a year when this job is done, and then maybe we can see if there is something there to pursue. Though we have had some intimate contact via the phone and texting here and there, we are trying for the most part to keep this professional for now. My feelings for this guy that something may never even happen with had me deciding before my MT asked me out to say no when our relationship veered into this territory, it didn't seem fair to him since my heart is kind of split up in different directions right now. But after a great session when he asked I just really wanted to spend time with him more, and I am attracted to him and I really like him as a person, saying an enthusiastic yes to an outing was just autonomic and being authentic because I do want to spend some time with him.
Now at some point I will have to open up about where my heart has kind of been over the past year. Is that information I want to get into right away. Not really. That is kind of lying by omission because the fact that I am currently not 100% emotionally available might make him decide he doesn't want to pursue things with me. But at the same time often to really get over something is to find something new, so it is possible this guy could blow these other men out of my thoughts with some time, in keeping this to myself for awhile this may not even prove to be an issue so why bring it up. And if I am not feeling this guy enough to let go of others, well I will break it off and tell him the reason why. He may feel he was lied to by omission at that point by wasting his time, but thinking you are being deceived really depends on the outcome where he probably wouldn't feel deceived if I was all in for him and worked through this instead of breaking things off if it got that far. I mean the whole line in Titanic that a woman's heart is an ocean of secrets lol, well right now at this stage of my life I feel like that is me, but in the movie I don't know that line wasn't really all bad just presented as a truth.
I have really been debating this for the past couple of months knowing a date was coming eventually - give full honesty (which is usually what I would do and let the chips fall where they may) or withhold my emotional messiness for a little while to see if it is really an issue and don't jump the gun in going there. I mean it is not like there is any real physical presence right now in my life that I am really involved with. Though I do feel a certain amount of deception in that he may not have ever asked me out if he knew more about my current romantic mind, but hey that may not even be true and he could be fine with it and just taking things easy see where things go no problems. I mean how can you often even know if some piece of info you may be withholding would be vital for someone else to know in their decision making or not sometimes? And the truth is I plan to withhold this for awhile for my own selfish reasons, I want to see if there is anything here, even if I am torn right now in my feelings and in some ways don't even feel emotionally available. I don't want to unnecessarily blow things up with something that could blow over in time if things progress pretty well. So there is motive to this withholding on my end, I do want in the meantime for a guy to think I am 100% emotionally available like a normal single person. And if this is good, bad, necessary well that all depends on the outcome really. If things don't work out it will be like I withheld important information about me, if they do I may have not scared off a guy who there was a future with unnecessarily and he may appreciate that I withheld certain details in the beginning that would have steered him away from pursuing me.
So yeah in intimate relationships, well sometimes it is hard to define a lie of omission as good bad or necessary IMO. It really depends on the situation, and though withholding can be deception well sometimes it is understandable and it is something everyone does to one degree or another in more intimate relationships, ENTPs do not have this area cornered, and the further along you get the more you open up and there can certainly be surprises with folks sometimes. And I think lies of omission get worse in degree directly based on how intimate two people are with each other as a deciding factor, how high are the expectations on each other for intimacy, and I think two people can be on different pages as to what level of intimacy and honesty is owed creating some problems sometimes where someone feels lied to and another doesn't feel that their withholding of something was a crime. The "wrongness" of a lie of omission often from the receiver is related to the entitlement of what they think they are owed. The "wrongness" of a lie of omission by the giver is often related to how important in the current scheme of things is something to be divulged and how much intimacy is judged to be there.
They often with the lie of omission use the car salesman who fails to divulge an important piece of info about the car. He knows 100% that that piece of info would be of the utmost importance to the buyer. In intimate relationships it just isn't that simple often IMO. And though I have usually been a person that is all for this 100% full honesty all of the time, well I have had instances in my life where I have gone against that for whatever good reason and it usually wasn't just thought to be good for me but for both parties in the end. I have never purposefully deceived in some sort major way. I mean anyone pulling the equivalent of the car salesman omission in an intimate relationship I would consider a major deception on par with the outright deception an actual lie is, but in most healthy intimate relationship lies of omission are usually not on that sort of scale IME.
I think telling an actual lie is usually always a bad thing (unless it is the white lie of course you don't look fat in those jeans territory lol).
That is because you are painting a picture of reality with concrete facts that are not real. But a lie of omission creates a grey area IMO, and plus if you trust the used car salesman without doing any due diligence you are an idiot. If you asked the right questions he wouldn't have lied. So as an ENTP I love gray areas lol, something isn't defined as a certainty completely yet, there is possibility to explore new info, there is reason to look into something further. Someone isn't closing the door on a path of inquiry completely with a lie of omission, which is why not just technically but even in theory they are not on the same level as a an actual lie to me. And I think intimacy is kind of a two way street, if you want it you have to ask in some respect you can't just put it on another person to give you every piece of information about themselves all of the time so you never feel left out of the loop. Kind of like buying the lemon car from the used car salesman, it takes two to make that transaction go down and one made a lot of assumptions and did no due diligence. Where if someone believes an actual lie from a person they expect to be honest with their response, well then I really don't see much fault on their part as I do place in negative consequences for a person as to a lie of omission in some instances. To a certain degree even in intimate relationships it is partly on us sometimes to ask direct questions and not live in the field of assumptions, and for any lie of omission to work well they need a person to make an assumption without direct evidence. And you know what they say about assumptions . . .
