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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

How do I believe him

5 replies

LovemyLab · 28/07/2014 16:30

Early on in our relationship my partner made a decision and lied about it and it changed our lives and our family's lives. This decision and lie caused much pain and suffering and I wouldn't have stayed with him if I knew the truth. At the time I believed he loved me but in retrospect he did not love me, he was selfish and wanted or needed me but didn't care enough about what I needed. I found out the truth 10 years later.

Lying became a habit. When he had a problem he would ignore it and hide it until it became much worse and I found out. I was always upset that he lied rather than whatever the problem was. We had a pattern, I became the responsible one in our relationship and he was the irresponsible one and I did stop trusting his judgement on things.

10 years on we're dealing with the fallout from his biggest lie and trying to work on our relationship. He is a different person, dealing with his problems in counselling and is working really hard and doing brilliantly. He's learning to think things through and make better decisions.

But we are dealing with family issues at the moment and I don't trust what he says about what he feels, what he's doing and what he will do. His explanations do not make sense, I learned in the past this was usually when he was lying. My fear is that he still doesn't really love me, that his idea of love is all about him. That he will make whatever decision suits him and then lie to me about it. I can't stand the idea of him lying to me any more but I don't know how to get him to stop.

OP posts:
TillyWithercoat · 28/07/2014 16:34

What's keeping you in this 'relationship' OP?

CogitoErgoSometimes · 28/07/2014 16:40

You can't change him and neither can you change what he has done. Like the Boy Who Cried Wolf, the problem is not so much the lying as the complete destruction of trust. Whether he's a reformed character or not, whether he's lying or telling the truth, whether he's doing brilliantly in counselling or otherwise, of course you're not going to believe a word that comes out of his mouth now. You'd be a fool to do so based on past evidence

CogitoErgoSometimes · 28/07/2014 16:43

Of course, I'm curious what it was he lied about 10 years ago that is causing such misery today. But IMHO it's lying about small stuff that is more worrying. Some monumentally serious cock-up you can understand why someone would want to hide the truth. Lying about something relatively trivial is, as you say, an unthinking and ingrained habit. His go-to response.

Jan45 · 28/07/2014 17:01

OP you have answered your own question, are you not done mothering this useless man you can't even trust, whatever it is he has done, the relationship sounds nothing but a huge strain on you, not him.

Why do you want to be with someone who lies?

msrisotto · 28/07/2014 17:15

I doubt that the big lie 10 years ago was the end of the lying was it op?

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