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I’ve had a dilemma that has bothered me for a couple of weeks now, and wanted some feedback.

Since my wife’s A I have learned so much more (or maybe was forced to notice more) about her behavior patterns that I find off putting.

A couple of weeks ago I walked in when she was on the phone with her mother, and I overheard her telling her mother something that was a lie. A rather innocuous lie, no big deal, but a lie, nonetheless. She spun the story into a narrative that told part of the truth but in a way to save her from embarrassment. The parts that were a lie were effortlessly woven in to sound like a completely plausible story.

I didn’t say anything, but it triggered some feeling in me.
I know my W has felt my MIL was judgmental all her life and she always wanted her to be proud of her, so I now understand that is where her people pleasing ways began. Yet I am also of the opinion that you should be able to not have to lie to her over minor things in your 50s. Also, it disturbed me how easy it was for her to do it. I began to think back on how many times I noticed her lying to her bosses, or professors etc.

Her first instinct is to lie when faced with a problem that may lead to a confrontation or her being in trouble. So of course she would lie in the immediate aftermath of D day. She has tried to change that, and I have seen some real progress, but I guess it is hard to change life long patterns. Yet the thought occurred to me and I was disturbed by the idea of how many lies is she still holding about things which she never told the truth and will carry to her grave.

In our counseling sessions in the year after dday, our MC, in an effort to show us how our behavior patterns led to marriage problems, got her to talking about a story that she had previously told me years earlier… but this time the most important details were added that made me see things in a different light.

Before we started dating, she was involved with a real loser…the kind or POS that took her to hell and back….cheating, lying, using her for money, having other girls trying to fight her. that type of stuff.

During this time, she was in a car accident, had a fractured knee cap and shin and broke her ankle. I knew about the accident when we first started dating as she was about three years removed from it. During the MC session though she added details. Turns out the POS was the one driving. Her mother absolutely hated the guy. I mean REALLY HATED the guy….to the point of pulling a pistol on him and threatening him to get him to leave her daughter alone.
Of course my W was in LURVVEE! So she snuck and stayed with him. She was in college at the time so it was easy to hide from mom. Anyway he was high when he hit the other car. And this POS, who apparently had a warrant already, left her at the scene and told her he would go for help and come back. Of course, he didnt come back. So She acted like she was the driver and fell asleep at the wheel. The other driver was injured and unconscious so could not provide any info though they were not as severely injured as W. So she went to the hospital, lied to the police and ambulance driver and everyone else so as to not have her mother know that she was still involved with POS. TIl this day her mother still believes she fell asleep at the wheel because she was so diligent in her studies. There is no way in hell that her mother will ever hear the truth as she is still embarrassed by how stupid she was with this POS. Did I mentioned she continued to have a relationship with this POS?

Understanding this now and her behavior patterns, is it normal for me to be slightly fearful of her propensity to lie?
I am a very staunch proponent of being authentic and letting the chips fall where they may. However I understand how a person who’s whole childhood and early adult life was based on lying in order to keep people from not being mad at you, and not seeing the nasty underbelly of the parts of you that you are ashamed of.

On the other hand, I am not sure how this effects my ability to believe in R and believe in the person I am in R with.

Is some level of lying normal in all humans based on circumstances? Can you trust a person who lies, not to lie to you?

Are some lies ok? Or Am I being too rigid in my desire to see authenticity in every area?

Unless she truly addresses her lying and works to become radically honest, she will lie to you. People who lie, they lie to everyone not just select others.

This is my WH to a tee and honestly it really pisses me off. He just lies (or would lie) about anything that makes him look bad or know would cause a confrontation. Or just omits parts if stories that would do the same.

It’s been the biggest issue for us to overcome. You can see in some of my previous posts that him telling me stupid lies or omissions of truth is what has nearly broken us even more so than the A. To me when the WS can lie so easily how the hell do we know when they are telling the truth???

Whilst my WH is far from perfect he has improved a lot. He now tells me things he knows what cause us to have conflict or makes him feel uncomfortable. I was also lucky in that I didn’t seem to have the trickle truth a lot of others experience. BUT he has gone to therapy, read books, read articles from psychiatrists to get down to why he lies. He says he wants to be a better person so fingers crossed.

I hope your WS can see her issues and how they can effect you because I really do understand how triggering even the littlest of lies can be.

So your wife - She lies to her mother about things.

But do you believe she is lying to you as well?

Different relationships = different behaviors sometimes.

I just broke up with my business partner due to lying and job performance and other things. When questioned about projects, simple non-important stuff resorted to lies. We could no longer work together b/c trust was broken (and I found out the work was being done 90% by me).

People will lie to some people but not others. Just wondering if your wife lies to you as well.

This was me. The constant pattern of lies to avoid conflict, great and small, was a daily pattern in my life. I had no idea how constant and prevalent it was until I committed to not lying at all, about anything. Prior to that, I lied about things that didn't matter. I prepped lies in case things didn't go the way I planned. I lied to myself. The only way to break the habit was to break it completely, because the world looked entirely different through an uncompromising lens.

These days, I try to be absolutely honest, but it was easier when I was a SAHM and had only my personal life to consider. I struggle professionally with the fact that radical honesty is not a career builder. I don't mean serious lies (which are and should be fatal to professional credibility), but the common practice of smoothing over small hiccups with plausible excuses. In that environment, a person who discloses every mistake ends up looking incompetent and/or is treated as a liability for inclusion in sensitive issues. Spin is an important part of doing business. I'm not sure how well I would have fared with radical honesty if I had to compartmentalize between home and work.

Old timer here.

I'm sorry but the first and last rule of R Is No more lies ever of any kind. Brutal honesty is what heals a relationship a partner that is obviously lying to others is dishonoring you.
Are you calling her out on the dishonesty or just letting it roll?
I think part.of what made our R work and allowed us to heal our relationship and become better stronger People was holding each other accountable for behaviors that we deemed unacceptable. Lying was high on that list. We called each other out on the smallest dumbest of any half truth, white lie etc. Not with punity but really just saying hey that's not true and then figuring out what made us choose that path vs honesty.

So I have a different weigh in.

I am against lying in my intimate relationship with my husband. In fact we agree if one of us lies to the other it could result in divorce. And I like being completely open with him anyway, so it’s not the punitive part that keeps me in check, it’s the results of being vulnerable and experiencing the intimacy and safety it provides. Besides I have never been a liar toward him outside of the period of my affair.

I am not against telling my work I am sick once in a while when I am not.

And my relationship with my mother is very complicated. I don’t allow her to know much other than my daily activities. I still foster a relationship with her because I know she could not handle being completely cut off. Also I don’t want to have regrets.

But she has no boundaries. Most of my "lies" to her are of omission. I am not sure that’s even fair to call them lies by omission because I don’t particularly agree with her on how much of my business is her business. But if she asks a direct question that I do not want to answer, sometimes I will lie. Normally, it’s "I am not sure" or "I don’t know". I just really try and avoid making up stuff. But I do lie directly to her if needed. Why?

1. Everyone will know my business. She has no respect for confidentially. She told some very sentive info once to my sister about my daughters pregnancy that I did not want to discuss with people. My sister sent me a text then asking me questions that I felt was being used for fodder rather than true concern.

2. She won’t leave things be and worried incessantly and it is overbearing. I can’t tell her when something is going wrong or if I am doing one of the many things she doesn’t approve of because she will ask for so much information and pick through details and give me unhelpful unsolicited advice.

And I could go on. Lying is needed to keep a surface relationship with her. But I guess I justify it by it’s truly not her business. I can’t trust her to be sensitive or supportive. So I keep it very much about my flower garden, things we are doing to the house, kids accomplishments, and very little else.

She was the type of mom growing up where she read my notes to and from my classmates, regularly went through my stuff, would follow me to where I said I was going to make sure I was there. I was a strait laced kid, all A student, didn’t drink or party, held a part time job after school, etc. When I went through my divorce she called all my friends and tried to talk to them about it. She had aunts call me to try and talk me out of it. She would check my underwear to make sure there were no signs I was being sexually active. I could go on.

Now, back in my days of people pleasing, I would have told her whatever she wanted to know and just dealt with the outcome of that silently. So to me, deciding what she can know about my life comfortably and occasionally shutting down her questions with something that isn’t completely honest is the trade off. I try and still apply honesty when I can. I don’t lie randomly or invite her to know part of something without knowing the rest.

She simply has unwittingly weaponized any private info she ever has gotten about me. I don’t think it’s in purpose, it’s her very strong control issues and emotional insecurities.

Lying or keeping things from my mom is the easiest way I have been able to enforce boundaries with her because she never respects any that I am straightforward with. The only way that I could still have a relationship with her is keeping her out of things. I have done the that’s none of your business route. All she does is fills in the blanks wrong and then asks other people what they think. She also has these manipulative fits if she knows you won’t tell her the answer. It’s exhausting.

All this to say, yes it could be a problem. It also might not be. I think for sure it’s a problem if you catch her lying to you. And I 100 percent think it’s natural and normal for this to bother you. Talk to her about hearing it and tell her your concerns. This is probably the best way to gauge what’s going on.

[This message edited by hikingout at 4:09 PM, Thursday, May 22nd]

Webbit

It’s been the biggest issue for us to overcome. You can see in some of my previous posts that him telling me stupid lies or omissions of truth is what has nearly broken us even more so than the A. To me when the WS can lie so easily how the hell do we know when they are telling the truth???

Whilst my WH is far from perfect he has improved a lot. He now tells me things he knows what cause us to have conflict or makes him feel uncomfortable. I was also lucky in that I didn’t seem to have the trickle truth a lot of others experience. BUT he has gone to therapy, read books, read articles from psychiatrists to get down to why he lies. He says he wants to be a better person so fingers crossed.

I hope your WS can see her issues and how they can effect you because I really do understand how triggering even the littlest of lies can be.

It is a huge thing to see progress in the way that she has faced having the difficult conversations that may cause conflict. I have always been of the belief that those conflicts solve the problems that lead to major issues, while her approach was to bury and ignore those issues. I hope she can continue on that path as opposed to falling back into old habits.

The1stWife

So your wife - She lies to her mother about things.

But do you believe she is lying to you as well?

Different relationships = different behaviors sometimes.

I just broke up with my business partner due to lying and job performance and other things. When questioned about projects, simple non-important stuff resorted to lies. We could no longer work together b/c trust was broken (and I found out the work was being done 90% by me).

People will lie to some people but not others. Just wondering if your wife lies to you as well.

Before Dday this wasnt a problem for me. I had never found her to be a serious liar TO ME. But in the immediate aftermath she told more lies than I had heard from her in the previous 22 years. Most of them were complete fabrications that were easily disproven...others were the typical TT that waywards give. Still others were simple face-saving lies that had no bearing on anything. The lies did more damage than the A.

BraveSirRobin

This was me. The constant pattern of lies to avoid conflict, great and small, was a daily pattern in my life. I had no idea how constant and prevalent it was until I committed to not lying at all, about anything. Prior to that, I lied about things that didn't matter. I prepped lies in case things didn't go the way I planned. I lied to myself. The only way to break the habit was to break it completely, because the world looked entirely different through an uncompromising lens.

These days, I try to be absolutely honest, but it was easier when I was a SAHM and had only my personal life to consider. I struggle professionally with the fact that radical honesty is not a career builder. I don't mean serious lies (which are and should be fatal to professional credibility), but the common practice of smoothing over small hiccups with plausible excuses. In that environment, a person who discloses every mistake ends up looking incompetent and/or is treated as a liability for inclusion in sensitive issues. Spin is an important part of doing business. I'm not sure how well I would have fared with radical honesty if I had to compartmentalize between home and work.

I had always been one to employ brutal honesty and hadn't realized how different W and I had become until after Dday.

I knew she was always avoidant and I would often have to be the "bad guy" in certain situations for her because she would seek to avoid conflict to an extent. She was not weak or soft, but certain people she could not "stand up" to and I just handled it.
Now that I understand it, I am hyper aware of those instances. I am also more introspective of how I come across to some as "SEEKING" conflict.

I have no fear of calling out people at home, at work or wherever. It has been a problem throughout my professional career, but when I fully accepted it as part of who I was I became at peace.

I dont have to sugarcoat things to spare people's feelings,but I have learned how and why others feel different, like they "cant say" certain things. I used to hate that, but now I can at least respect it and understand.

Hikingout,

Lying or keeping things from my mom is the easiest way I have been able to enforce boundaries with her because she never respects any that I am straightforward with. The only way that I could still have a relationship with her is keeping her out of things. I have done the that’s none of your business route. All she does is fills in the blanks wrong and then asks other people what they think. She also has these manipulative fits if she knows you won’t tell her the answer. It’s exhausting.

I guess you have helped bring clarity with this. My W loves her mother but we both acknowledge she does crazy things and W likes to keep her at bay.

Now, back in my days of people pleasing, I would have told her whatever she wanted to know and just dealt with the outcome of that silently. So to me, deciding what she can know about my life comfortably and occasionally shutting down her questions with something that isn’t completely honest is the trade off. I try and still apply honesty when I can. I don’t lie randomly or invite her to know part of something without knowing the rest.

I love my MIL and respect the heck out of her. She caught FIL in bed with one of her friends when W was very young and she said to heck with it...picked up her 3 young kids and left. She struggled to make it on her own but she made it happen.
In doing so she picked up a very dictatorial attitude and it has carried over. When there is conflict, I just tell her, "Mom I love you but you are out of place and cant run this". She usually accepts it and backs off.
Im sure she talks about me when I am not around :)

However this is much harder for W to do. So I can understand why she just lies, I just dont agree with it.

I guess I am more focused on the pattern than the reasons.
I get telling work you are sick....I just dont. I call and say hey Im not coming today and leave it at that. I feel I don't need a reason.

I guess I expect everyone to do it my way and I am trying to learn to make room for other methods that I dont agree with.

While I see many sad parallels to my wife’s lying behaviors.

I do belive that specially after D day, truth is a must, in the absence or lack of trust, honesty serves as an absolute requirement for any recovery.

I was/am in the same boat trying to rationalize their behaviors and excusing them for past traumas. However after a rupture in the relationship, true responsibility is needed.

I pray for all of us!

Tray Dee -That makes sense.

Where I work you are not allowed to use vacation for calling off and if you are sick it has to be classified as for yourself or for family. So you have to state why you are out. My husband used to have unlimited PTO and could just say things like not coming in today without getting into trouble. I very rarely call in though.

I do not like or condone lying. The only person in my life I am like this with is my mom. If my husband were to say "you don’t get to control" something that to her would be like putting gas to the fire. He has said his fair share to her and it causes this meltdown effect. I used to get angry with him about it because it embarrassed me but now I see and take his side. But like I said I don’t really go out of my way to do any of it, I just do what is needed to protect my peace, and it’s actually the opposite of people pleasing.

My mom feels upset I don’t visit or call her much but I feel like I have explained what I do t like about her behavior repeatedly. She just explains it away "That’s just who I am" and then she will go on to defend herself and it’s just truly exhausting. My people pleasing self would have just gone and visited when she wanted or started calling more but I do not do that now. I do text her almost every day but that’s what I can manage. When she says stuff that I don’t want to acknowledge. I just don’t, I send a text later on a different topic.

Sorry for the long winded mess but I am trying to illustrate progress, especially in terms of people pleasing can look different but still be progress.

I still think you should discuss how you feel about it with her so you can figure out where her head is at. It maybe a very different answer than mine. It’s normal for things that would not have been a big deal before infidelity to become a much bigger deal after.

I think it’s interesting that a lot of people pleasers end up marrying people who are direct and then later think the direct one is more conflict driven. I have seen that dynamic repeatedly. My husband and I included with that. Though with me my complaint hasn’t been about conflict, mine has been about having emotional safety when I want to talk to him and get his support. He is supportive of my hobbies, career, whatever I want to decide in life. But when it comes to telling him my feelings he shuts it down by making me feel silly for thinking it. I am a highly analytical person though and I thinking can wear him out so he avoids when I want to analyze. We are still working on it, and I see it’s better but only because I have learned to respond differently when he does it.

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:39 PM, Thursday, May 22nd]

I have some similiar thoughts as HO.

My current partner of 4+ years (no infidelity) and I make every effort to speak our truths. In a kind way. If I can't do it as kind as possible, there are times I will just say OK...next. I am not anti conflict/confrontational, but there are some things I am not going to 'die on that hill'. Or at least not at that moment. So I guess my lie there is saying OK. When really I am not.

My "day" job is in HR. I am very direct, as honest as possible, and try to lead with empathy in hopes that when someone leaves my office after a difficult conversation they still feel respected. But have I given someone the impression I know more than I do during an investigation...yes. I have lied. And I literally am accustomed to a lot of people lying to me in the work place.

And finally my Mom. I lied to my parents for 18 months during the pandemic, when my position got eliminated. We live in different states so could not see them in person. I knew if I told her I was unemployed, she would worry. A lot. And then send me money.

I try to live my life in a manner that I don't do things I need to lie about. Do I fail? Of course. But I don't feel my first go to is lying.

But based on the thing that brings us to this site... lying mixed in with infidelity...I can completely agree that lies of any sort are unacceptable, triggering and not to be tolerated.

I think this is a very important thing to do when considering R.

Take an "honesty" inventory on your partner. How much do they lie, how often, about what. Other than the A. Obviously the A matter but this is a pattern question as I read. And you observation is she is a frequent and well practiced liar.

My wife did pretty well:

Didn't lie about her past when we met. Doesn't lie about money, with the caveat that she frequently will claim to have gotten a better deal/price on an item than she actually did. Doesn't lie about what she does. Doesn' lie about her experiences. Doesn't lie about her mistakes. She is reliably on time and sticks to her commitments (not a flake). Typically, historically she has a pattern of honesty and accountability. That went a long way for me to decide that trying to re-establish trust was worth it.

So maybe try to think about it this way.

-does she generally tell the truth?
-Does she generally keep promises?
-Does she make excuses for failures or take accountability (is anything her fault)?
-Does she hide things (secret purchases)?
-Does she steal things (maybe little things like office supplies from work)?
-Does she return her shopping cart?

You could add to the list, but you get the idea. Is your wife a generally honest person that happend to have an affair, or generally a selfish/dishonest person that happened to hold it together for a while in your marriage.

This0is0Fine

Take an "honesty" inventory on your partner. How much do they lie, how often, about what. Other than the A. Obviously the A matter but this is a pattern question as I read. And you observation is she is a frequent and well practiced liar.

This is the true mind screw of it all for me.....she is NOT a frequent and well practiced liar.

In fact she is horrible at it. Every lie she told me was easily rebutted and disproven. She is so bad at it that it is almost comical. Like some people are panic liars. When confronted they say the first thing that comes into their head, and it makes no sense. So when the confronter digs further there they say the next thing that comes into their head and it is even more silly than the first lie.

My honesty inventory shows that she doesn't lie often. She has worked in mostly high level ministry positions and finance so integrity is a must...but when she does lie it is to avoid feeling embarrassment or feel like a failure. She once (pre-A) lied to a relative after being laid off from a job, saying she was being transferred and the new position hadn't begun yet. I asked why not just say you got laid off? It's no big deal...it happens to lots of people. For her the stain of being laid off was some badge of shame. I couldn't understand it.

The TT I got after Dday, was not to obscure what she did (as I originally assumed) but to make it seem like she was more desired.
For example, She told me stories about how they went out on a dates at a nice restaurants and he bought her flowers and gifts. Come to find out that he never bought her anything, never took her on any dates, didn't really care much for her, except as a way to get money and brag to the male co-workers. He would always bum rides because he couldn't afford a car, but he made it seem to coworkers like he had her so under his thumb that she wanted to just spend all her time with him.
She felt she had to lie in order to hide the fact that she fell for an absolute POS. It really hurt her when one of the male co-workers told her that everyone already knew the secret, because he told them his plans for her from the jump. This broke what little affair fog she had and she saw the horror of the landscape she faced. At this point the lies increased exponentially.

Even at almost 3 years out, on the rare occasions I talk to her about the A she still uses what I call "sanitizing language.
"her indiscretion" which I correct her and say cheating or affair
His desire to "have her" or "be with her" which I correct and say f**k her.

Now that I have seen this tendency to lie in my W, I notice it almost everywhere. Coworkers, business associates, people on the street, politicians. My already high bulls**t dectector

That’s so interesting she lied to make it sound like she had been more desirable.

I think that’s the big lie ws tell themselves in an affair. The whole draw of the affair is often that we do not find ourselves worthy of love. For me, my husband knows me backwards and forwards. Now I see that as a positive thing, because now I know myself as having a very good heart and deserving of love. But back then because I amplified my faults I projected he did too.

So the affair for me in a nutshell was me projecting myself through someone else’s lens. I wanted someone to think I was awesome, sexy, irresistible, loving, and so on. I pretended to be what I thought a person like that would be like. When I look back in it, it’s so cringey.

And of course since then I have learned to accept myself so it’s easier for me to believe my husband accepts me too. My authenticity shines through because I know who I am. I spent a lot of time being critical of myself because I learned it from an early age from the way my mother was critical of me. And I think that mask your wife still needs to wear is likely coming from a place where she still needs time to heal her relationship with herself.

I wasn’t there 3 years out, just much better than I was before. This doesn’t mean that she isn’t safe for you, it just takes a long time to
Change perspective and self talk. As I near 50, I look back and think, wow, you were always this loving person, you were just so insecure it occupied so much space in your life. It makes me sad that I wasted all that time fretting over imaginary slights, imaginary problems, instead of being more thankful for who I was becoming and what I had going in my life. When I fail at something now, all I see is that I learned a way that won’t work and that I need to change my approach.

Back then, it would have resonated as I am a failure. It’s toxic shame; it’s not an emotion, it’s a place in your core where your are utterly convinced that you are bad, people know it, and it’s hard for you to make it easier to see by telling them.

I don’t think my relationship with my mom will evolve because it’s not emotionally safe to be vulnerable with her, or my dad for that matter. Not all relationships can be judged the same. Especially knowing my mom is who taught me to self abandon to survive. I feel your wife may always be this way with her mom too but I do not think it is necessarily a statement about her progress or lack therof.

So her lying is mostly about "saving face", the way I'm reading it.

Seems like her (affair included) challenge is to be authentic about her faults.

That's maybe a useful insight.