Husband constant white lies, what to do?

I want to reassure you that none of your friends will think you are crazy for breaking up with a liar. Honesty and respect are the two most important qualities in a marriage and he doesn’t have either of them.

I remember a friend telling me she was separating due to: ‘constant lies. I can’t trust a single word that comes out of his mouth’. Nobody questioned why she broke up with him!

We were driving, and his driving was erratic and fast, in a 30 the '30' light flashed on, and I said what speed are you doing? He said 36, it 100% wasn't it was faster, I asked him and I said I know you're not telling the truth, I then said I could see the speed, he said. Yeah it was 38.

In our car both of those statements could be true. The speedometer might read 38 mph but the actual speed would be a few mph lower. That's been the case in every car I've driven. I know that's a minor point in the grand scheme of things but it's a questionable example.

I had the kind of childhood where I had to be perfect at all times. If I wasn't I was punished. As an example 97 percent in an exam was rubbish and being size 8 at 5'8 and 17 was fat. White lies were a safety mechanism allowing me to navigate my mother's moods/whims and temper and my father's facilitation of them. In my late teens/early adulthood I assumed no one would want to be my friend if they knew me as I was fat, stupid, ugly and worthless so I'd lie to avoid conflict. As an adult in a stable relationship who has had therapy, I no longer lie about about anything and haven't since my early 20s because I feel safe, secure and loved for who I am.

Everyone I've ever met who tells white lies turned out to have had a similar childhood and understanding it, is the key to fixing it.

This would drive me crazy. I think it would most probably put me on high alert in all my interactions with him waiting for the lie to pop out. It messes with you emotionally because you are the one getting wound up and emotional and he can appear all reasonable and rationale while you know he's not.

Do you think it is a defensive mechanism? He feels under attack (not saying he is!) and has this knee jerk reaction in the form of a lie. My DH used to have an annoying habit of being defensive over the smallest thing. Rather than saying - sorry I forgot to pick up X from dance. I'd get a long reason why he didn't/ couldn't, basically justifying himself. Not a lie, but trying to put himself in the right. Drove me nuts. He did recognise it though and just said let me know when I'm doing it.

If your DH recognises it as a problem and will try and fix it, I think you are okay. If not this is going to drive you more and more crazy. Don't feel bad for feeling bad about it. This is him not you.

You have three high needs ND children.

So it's highly likely he's ND, as it's genetic.

Are you, too?

Have there been any investigations / help there? Not for the kids; for you both?

That needs looking at.

His behaviour is yours, too - you're both stuck in a destructive cycle.

You ask something.

He has a knee jerk learned response to fear - 'alert - we're under scrutiny. If I tell the truth I'll somehow get in trouble. Panic, quick - what will be the safest way for me to answer? Say that!'

= He lies.

Experience has told you he's likely to be lying, so you probe, investigate and interrogate.

He doubles down in panic, knowing it's going to get worse.

Your frustration with being lied to and taken for an idiot manifests in anger and confrontation with the evidence.

He buggers off for a few days because his ability to hold an adult / adult conversation is undeveloped. Fight or flight has kicked in, and he choses flight.

What was his childhood like? What were his parents like? Do you know them? Does he talk about them?

You both need help.

I really sympathise with you OP, and in your position I would be making plans to leave. I used to have a lodger like this, and it was absolutely infuriating. They'd lie about things they knew perfectly well I could easily find out the truth of, constantly and without conscience. By the time we parted company, I no longer believed a word they said, about anything but I couldn't tell from their demeanour when they were lying. I think they were some sort of low-level fantasist, but what annoyed me most was the contempt for me: people like this really think you'll believe their crap.

Sounds exhausting and he won’t change.

I did a hobby with someone who did this. Just constant lies about anything and everything from the extremely trivial to the gigantic life events. It was absolutely bizarre, we all knew, and I think she actually knew we knew as well, which made it weirder. It was like a compulsion.
She put herself across as an extremely confident and outgoing person, but underneath she was definitely insecure and had really low self esteem. She was desperate to be liked, but also to be "above" everyone else and never wrong. In the end, we all used to just take everything she said as a probable lie and nod along.
I'd find it unbearable to be in a relationship with someone like that. You just can't have any trust.

The workplace often has really clear codes of conduct which make it easy to know what to expect. Fewer opportunities to get told off for eating someone else’s biscuit. Depending on the workplace of course.

It really is in my extensive experience. With my own child I pull him up every time. I also have a SN related job and see it a lot within that.

No, not at all. Just communicate differently.
Slow down please.

It’s normal to change how we communicate according to the needs of other people. Avoiding sarcasm with ND people, for example.
Speaking clearly for people with impaired hearing.

She can choose to make changes to how she communicates, or carry on getting frustrated, or split up though it sounds as though she likes him.

Yes there are things he can do as well, but he isn’t here asking.

You've mentioned your kids are ND. Does your DH have ADHD? Compulsive lying is an ADHD thing, I have a few family members with ADHD like this and I can't spend much time with them as it's too frustrating. Clearly not an excuse, but an explanation, and one that would show it's unlikely to change.

I’m surprised by these responses. It’s about avoiding conflict. Obviously however, it’s causing huge conflict but it’s engrained behaviour that he can’t easily change, unless the context also changes. I think you need to think about the prompts that lead to this. If he had said re biscuits, there were only 2 left, I ate them, would you have been cross, and saying they should have been divided? The examples you give do have a policing his behaviour flavour, and that’s quite an unhealthy dynamic for a marriage. Me and my husband tell these sorts of lies to each other, when we haven’t done something or done something wrong, but as a joke, sometimes truly outrageous, like I made dinner but burglars came and stole it, sometimes really subtle to see if we can slip one past the other person( we never can).If he had said an albatross took both biscuits, would you have laughed?
I worry for you because your children will also lie to you at times, and I think you’ll get angry and think they’ve caught it from their Dad, but actually it is normal behaviour for children. It’s when it’s met with overreaction and concern that it becomes engrained. I wonder if your Dh swapped his critical parents for a critical wife. We all mess up, we drive too fast, ignore the alarm , forget to put the dishwasher on, finish the biscuits. Most of us minimise: We tell people we were just about to do something we’d clean forgotten, that the traffic was awful, that we’d love to join their book club but have a prior commitment. Does that mean we should all be divorced, or not trusted around children?

How do your ND DC cope with the lies?

What are you saying by posting this link? Should the op give her dp a free pass because "ADHD makes him lie"?

Forgive me if it was just to help the op understand where it might be coming from.

Living with someone who constantly lies is destabilising and a form of abuse.
Yes it's helpful to understand why but it's not the op's responsibility to put up with it.

Have you/he considered the he may also be ND? I know someone like this too, lies constantly. It’s not a conscious thing, not attempting to deceive, they just give the answer that is most likely to “fit” with how they perceive the question, masking without realising.

Also, @Teanandtoast what type of job does he have? Does he lie there as well?
Would it be an issue if he did?

My brother is a compulsive liar, and it's gotten worse as he's gotten older.

He lies to cover up for perceived failures, lies to impress people, lies to get out of doing things, lies and gaslights to control, to be the top man, the best in the room.

He lies when the truth would have been easier. He opens his mouth and lies fall out.

Extraordinary lies, white lies, every time he opens his mouth it's a lie.

And the worst thing is they he's so f@cking convincing a lot of the time! Because you just don't expect lies when it's a simple matter of how many biscuits he ate or whatever.

So I would start looking at everything your dp is saying through the lenses of "is this actually true". And decide if you want to live like this the rest of your life, regardless of what everyone else thinks.

Also you might be surprised, there will be pp who see through his lies but as they seem so harmless they've not said anything. But they don't have to live with him 24/7.

Does he lie to the children?

I went through the same thing.
At first, I wanted closure after we separated. I want to know "the truth" about the life he'd really been living all those years. But gradually I understood that he would never be able to do anything but lie to me, even though it didn't matter any more; our relationship had already been destroyed. Now that the kids are adults I have gone no-contact with him. Talking with him is pointless. He does nothing but lie.

This is exactly my experience! It’s exhausting. What I hated was the stuff he’d say about me that was totally untrue but in a room full of people. It was designed to make me feel small or dying with embarrassment and he clearly got a kick out of it.

This is hard going for you. I’m really interested in the answer for personal reasons too.

I just put this into Chatgpt - I know it’s not going to be 100% correct / trustworthy / not expert advice etc but it gives some interesting theories.

‘What’s the science and reasoning behind an adult that continually tells lies (large ones and small ones) or hides the truth.’

Might be interesting to know what his childhood was like / how his parents were with him?

Hope you get somewhere. It must be really frustrating x

Can you manage the lies better. Make him responsible regardless of his inexact answers.

For example.
The biscuits. As soon as you sniff a lie ask him to please bring you a biscuit. If need be, ask him to please buy a packet tomorrow.
The driving. He answered incorrectly but, whatever his answer, you needed to ask him to slow down please, because you felt unsafe.

You both need to know that you have agency to make some decisions that the other will respect. DH is acting like a child who is fudging the truth so that he doesn't get into trouble. Will he get into trouble? Do you admonish him? Why can't he direct you sometimes to text the children? That seems reasonable. Why would you disagree? Let him make more decisions.
And simply ask him more directly to act in a reliable adult way.
Pay him the same respect.
Try not to get caught up in the fine detail; some people don't register the fine detail like you.

My ex-husband was exactly the same. He lied about everything, even things there was no reason to lie about. Part of it was his constant attempts to wrong-foot me. Whenever he was exposed in a lie he'd either laugh it off or fly into a rage; the point of rages was to intimidate me enough so that I'd stop exposing his lies.

Anyway, turned out he also lied about all the affairs he claimed he wasn't having. I assume he is still lying to his second wife, and I know he lies to all his children. He's just full of BS from head to foot. I've reached the point where I can pity him.

Oh sorry I thought you said you couldn’t contemplate raising chn with him .

It's a known thing and your husband isn't the only one, if that makes you feel a bit better. It's entrenched in childhood and almost always based on a fear of confrontation. It then becomes pathological so it is a learned response even when there wouldn't be any confrontation or adverse consequences from telling the truth. That's what makes it so difficult. They still lie even when the truth has no consequences and they know they will be found out. You can't say you can drive to your partner and never be found out.
It needs specific help directed at the learned behaviour. And it doesn't mean there actually was high levels of confrontation in childhood. It can be low level triggers that develop it. I had to deal with a work colleague like this as a manager. It was difficult, to put it mildly.