Lying in a relationship...

[AreHisPantsOnFire]

I have a pretty much zero tolerance on lying.

It's from a combination of childhood trauma and previously being married to a pathological liar who lied about absolutely everything due to being brought up by alcoholic parents.

I'm really sensitive to it and once I've discovered someone is lying to me, it rewrites the whole relationship in my head.

Eg tell me I look nice if you think I do but don't tell I'm beautiful because I'm not. If I ask for your opinion on something, it's because I actually want your opinion/perspective and not because I want you to flatter me by blowing smoke up my arse or to say what you think i want to hear.

I think this situation saying to sound pretty inconsequential to some but I hope people will respond given the whole context.

I think I have examples of my partner telling very small, inconsequential, pointless little lies in our relationship. But it makes me question the whole thing because, well, if someone lies, then they lie.

Eg. My partner gets up for work at 6.15am and leaves at 6.30am. I don't need to get up until 7. Sometimes, I wake up when his alarm goes off and sometimes I sleep straight through and sometimes I'm roused enough to he aware but I'm still not fully conscious and appear asleep to him.

He'll say things to me like, "You were still fast asleep when I left this morning. You didn't even stir when I kissed you and told you I love you." It's comment worthy because my sleep isn't every good generally and I can often be awake for good parts of the night so he's really commenting on that and saying I appear to have slept well.

But. Some of the times he's said this, I've been aware/conscious of him leaving but I know he hasn't kissed me or said anything. (Sometimes he does.)

It's like a weevil now burying into my thoughts. For example, when he tells me he's doing overtime on a Saturday morning, I feel I can't take it at face value. Sometimes, he'll come back and talk about it and, on those occasions, I know it's genuine. But sometimes he'll say nothing at all. No complaint about it, or comment on who was in and, if I ask how it went, he'll just say, "It was work." But he rarely has nothing to say about work so it makes me wonder.

Eg I know others won't agree with this but for my own personal reasons, I don't watch films with sex or unnecessary female nudity in. He knows this and he knows my reasons why. He will spend ages painstakingly choosing a film for us to watch together and checking the content before we watch something together. He has never made me feel in the wrong for this or complained.

I've also never cocommented on anything he chooses to watch without me. Sometimes (around once a week or so) I go to bed early to read so that he can watch something of his own choice where he doesn't have to be quite so vigilant.

The issue is that he has also volunteered that he doesn't like it either. He says he doesn't watch films with sex scenes (doesn't like it apparently) and he doesn't like gratuitous female nudity either. He parrots my sentiments and agrees with me wholeheartedly. I've never asked him to. I've told him my perspective but never questioned his or challenged him. Just explained so that he knows and understands. But I know I'm quite unusual in that respect.

But I can see from his 'continue watching' or series he has seen or conversations he has with others about films they've watched that he is absolutely watching stuff with (sometimes) lots of sex and nudity in it. So why the lie?

It just makes me question everything he says mentally.

I'm not really bothered if he kisses me and says he loves me before he goes to work if I'm still alseep and I'm not particularly bothered what he watches without me. But the fact he lies about these things makes me wonder what other more consequential lies there are that I'm unaware of. Like when he says he fancies me or I look nice or he loves me are those lies too? It's creating a general feeling of mistrust for me that I don't like.

Is lying like this normal in a relationship? Would you be bothered?

if he’s constantly being put on the spot and interrogated about every tiny detail of his life and day he is probably panicking and worrying about how he answers because you’ve always got an issue with his answer.

You ask him if you look nice, he tells you that you look beautiful and you tell him he’s lying!

His lies are probably a way of giving you the answer you want so that you don’t spiral in tk asking another 10 questions about his answer because you’re not happy with it.

You need to get some therapy to deal with your issues.

No one can put up with feeling like they’re constantly in a police interview when answering questions and he’ll leave.

I myself, would look at it in terms of awareness. I grew up with alcoholic, very dysfunctional parents who were unable to properly be aware of themselves and the damage they were doing. This transcended into my relationships and I would tend to pick similar people.

It sounds (to me) like he could be triggering this in you perhaps? I think there is a statistic somewhere, around 93% of our behaviour is unconscious. It doesn't sound as though he is a problem at the moment, (although to someone who has been through family trauma might feel like being gaslit/invalidated again) but maybe your discomfort lies in the fact that you just really need a partner who is able to look at themselves and their behaviour and because you are trying to grow and heal yourself more too.

Growth and change is uncomfortable so lots of people don't. Sadly someone turned the word 'woke' into a negative but being awake is what we should all be striving for (imho).

Eeeeeesh poor lad

I think everybody lies be glad they are small lies to keep you happy and not big ones

Also you can't punish a man because of something your ex partner did if he constantly lied comparing it to little meaningless lies is crazy

Actually OP if you read you first line, I have pretty much a zero tolerance on lying, and then compare it to the accumulation of lies which you have tolerated, we can all conclude that you are the liar here.

Maybe as you say if you had not lied and either acted the first time or accepted that you understand people do say things to make whole relationship more harmonious then you wouldn’t be in this mess you have made for yourself.

This is such a good point!

Fair enough, but even then, people lie in order to make their lives easier all the time. Sometimes they do it without even consciously realising it.

The problem with having such a strict no lying rule in a relationship is that it leaves no wiggle room, and that in itself causes the lie to escalate.

You tell your partner his ex was shooting daggers at you, and for whatever reason he says "That's weird, that's not like her" Now the reason he said that isn't really important. Maybe he didn't want a difficult conversation, maybe it really doesn't jibe with his mental impression of her and it takes him a few seconds for his brain to engage and realise that that's exactly what she did to his other ex.

So his brain then engages and realises he's lied. And that you cannot deal with lying, no matter how small. Now, the smart thing to do is for him to fess up, say "Sorry, I lied then, not sure why, actually she did exactly the same thing with my last partner blah blah...." But he's not being smart now, because he's panicking. He knows he's fucked up. You can't even deal with it when he calls you beautiful, how on earth does he tell you the truth now without it blowing up. So he doubles down, trying to avoid an argument. And so he's dug himself deeper, so he sees no option other than to double down again, and again and again. Until eventually it all comes out and is a million times worse than it would have been if he'd felt able to confess to the initial lie.

Everybody lies, all the time. Hell, we even lie to ourselves. Its a part of being human, society wouldn't function without lying. The teeny tiny ones, you have to let go, because otherwise how can anyone be honest about the bigger ones.

I think this has been a bit of a drip feed so it’s why you are getting a variety of responses. Your initial post you cited examples that could clearly be misremembering or just different ways of communicating, but further on you say about catching him in a lie with evidence, so clearly as a pp says, you do not have zero tolerance as surely you’d have ended it there and then on that basis.
What is startlingly clear is that you no longer (and perhaps have never) trust him so I think the sensible thing would be to end the relationship. Whether he is telling white lies/proper lies or not is irrelevant but it doesn’t sound a great way to live for either of you.

I would definitely suggest getting therapy regardless of what you do, as another pp said, what you seem to perceive as mistruths are actually just different opinions and part of a range of different social experiences and communication.

Honestly you sound like hard work!

He's not allowed to think or say you're beautiful? WTAF?!

I assume you do realise that the controlling behaviour you're displaying is actually abuse - and that's why your doing it?

I had a boyfriend who lied all the time about really stupid things. Said there wasn’t a single loaf of bread in a huge Morrisons and that “John from the bank” had called and said they were taking all his money (which he had spent). Its was exhausting. Even when caught he told more lies and would literally die on the hill of bullshit.
I now don’t do lies of any description - even the small ones snowball in the end.

Yes that's true - but to call him a liar when he says he thinks she's beautiful because she doesn't think that is almost abusive! She doesn't want him to lie unless she believes the lie she wants him to say "I don't think you're beautiful I think you're ugly" even though for him that would be the opposite of what he thinks and therefore he'd be lying!

As someone who is diagnosed OCD, whose OCD centres around lying because of childhood trauma, I can totally understand your feelings and it sounds like you may have OCD too. I would advise CBT, and look into therapy, because although I totally understand your feelings, they can be really harmful in this type of situation. I struggle to figure out which 'lies' matter, and may point to bigger issues, and which ones are just kindness.

It's really hard, I hope you're okay.

I didn't mean it to be a drip feed but I can see that it is.

I think I just feel frustrated because those things I wouldn't have thought too deeply about. And didn't initially. But, when I discovered some of the others lies, it started to allow doubts to creep in over the other stuff.

None of his lies have been big or necessary. Just stupid but the fact he continued to deny lying about something when the evidence was right there in black and white in front of us was a bit of a shock to me.

My exh lied about everything. He admitted eventually that his parents relationship had been very volatile and he'd decided that 'happy wife, happy life' was the way to go. Our entire relationship was a work of fiction because of it because he'd ever been honest with me about anything and had just told me what he thought I wanted to hear. So everything - holidays we'd gone on, the family meals we ate, how we raised the children, films we'd watched, places we'd been, financial planning - he fundamentally disagreed with and disliked our entire lives together.

We split up years ago and I've not felt like anyone else has been habitually lying to me again until now.

Mine and my partners relationship looks almost perfect on the surface. We have lots in common, we get on well, we rarely disagree or argue about anything. We agree on everything and are compatible in so many ways... but are we?

People's suggestions that he walks on eggshells are incorrect because most of these thoughts never leave.my head.

I suppose I'm increasingly getting the feeling that he isn't being 'authentic' in any way with me. That the person I believe I'm in a relationship with isn't the person I'm really in a relationship with. I'm just seeing a version of him that he wants me to see and believe.

I was quite friendly with his ex gf (their relationship came to a natural end) and she absolutely idolised him when their relationship was good. I've wondered if he was his authentic self with her. Or whether she also only got to see a version of him he wanted her to see? Perhaps she didn't pick up on lies? Maybe she wasn't bothered? Maybe there weren't any?

I was happy with who he was when we got together obviously or I wouldn't have been with him but he's also changed a lot. His lifestyle, the food he eats, his attitudes towards certain things. He says that it's because I've introduced him to a different way of living, have caused him to think more deeply about things he'd never really considered before. He says I've made him a better person. He's still him, of course, but he's also changed. Does someone really change that much? If we split up, would he continue to be this 'new improved' person - is this who he is now? Or would he revert to the person he was before?

How can you possibly know what I want him to say?

I don't like, "You're beautiful" mainly because it's meaningless and just what men say because they think it's what women want to hear. It's the compliment equivalent of red roses and a box of chocolates. No effort and without thought or attention.

Thats the thing, though. I don't want lies of kindness though.

I'm an adult. I don't need to be patronised.

I want the truth. If I ask.someone for their opinion it's because I want their honest opinion. Not to be flattered.

I understand that some people aren't comfortable with giving the truth. I had a friend who would but she always prefaced it with "ok, I'm going to he honest with you because I know that's what you want..." if I asked her opinion but she also said she found it hard because most of her other friends just wanted to be reassured and told what they wanted to hear to make them feel good/better.

But a lie in response to a question that someone might feel uncomfortable answering is one thing.

But these are things he's volunteered. Not things he's been asked about and isn't sure how to answer for the best.

I don’t think any of these scenarios are enough to get worked up about although it’s clear you find any level of dishonesty quite triggering which is understandable given your previous trauma. With human beings honesty isn’t always black and white, there are grey areas and to an extent there is a need to be ok with that.
The kissing example, he’s trying to make himself look sweet. It’s not a big deal. And really, if you are awake and not interacting with him (and clearly haven’t said goodbye although you know he’s leaving) it could be said that that’s a form of dishonesty it itself! It could seem like you are pretending to be asleep. I’m not criticising you, I do it myself on the odd occasion DH leaves before me. I’m sort of dozing but aware of what he’s doing and I don’t really want to interact because I’m hoping to fall back asleep and don’t want to wake up too much!
The work example I don’t really get. You’ve no evidence whatsoever that he isn’t at work. What reason do you have to doubt him other than that he doesn’t talk about work sometimes? That’s incredibly flimsy reasoning.
The TV example- a programme could literally have a few minutes of sex and nudity and contain that warning. It could even have lots but still be interesting in terms of the storyline. Saying you don’t like sex and nudity on tv is not the same as saying you’re never going to watch anything with it on it. You might have told him it doesn’t matter if he chooses to watch it, but if you’ve talked a lot about how much you dislike it and he cares about your feelings then it’s not that surprising he’s said what he thinks you want to hear. It’s a little immature maybe but again I’m not sure I could get too worked up. Just say ‘look, it’s ok if you watch that stuff sometimes, there’s no point telling me you don’t because I see it on the continue watching, but really I don’t mind, you don’t have to say what you think I want to hear’.

This is a fascinating thread because it touches on some psychological truths and some paradoxes.

We present the best side of ourselves in relationships. That's one of the things that makes love so addictive; we mirror another in a relationship, as we do that we playact being our best version of ourselves...as we do that, we become that better self. By modelling the person we want to become, by seeing that reflected back to us in the loving eyes of our partner, we do start to become that person. It's common to hear someone say "With him, I feel I am the best I can be". "You raise me up, you are the wind beneath my wings etc etc"

That works best when the things we are trying to be are things that lift us to our highest selves - forcing us to enact being more loving, more forgiving more thoughtful. Forcing yourself to kiss your wife as you leave and whisper I love you, even when you feel mehh or are actively annoyed with her as she's been snoring all night/forgot to take out the bins. That's a lie- you don't feel love!! But you enact it, because enacting it makes it happen in the long term.

So. This is normal. But there are a few ways this can go wrong.

1 - You try and enact something that's just too far from what you truly feel - you say you are a vegan and you get up secretly to eat bacon. You say you never use porn but actually you don't mind it, but you don't want your partner to judge you. This comes from shame, not from a sense of opening yourself to be better. This might be your partner- he's doing something that's too far from where he truly is. This is more damaging because that person really does lead something of a double life, either emotionally or actually in practice.

It sounds like he might have form for that and you might have form for allowing that - holding evidence of the discrepancy in words ans actions, rather than exploring it with curiosity and without shaming, at the time. Or perhaps, just as you have trauma around being deceived in your past, he has trauma about being judged and shamed when he reveals himself. That's kind of likely that you would have found each other, as "we seek the teeth to fit our wounds".

2 - A less serious version is the one who loves does some shortcuts as he tries to model best behaviour. Like saying you kissed your wife, when in fact you couldn't quite be arsed one morning. The reason you couldn't be arsed is a you thing. You still want to create the good result in her - you are committed to making her to feel kissed, cared for, beautiful. The kind of man you are striving to be is the perfect kind of man who would always take the time to do the kiss. Unfortunately though, the kind of man you really are, is flawed, human, forgetful, in a rush, maybe needing the loo, perhaps bearing a grudge in the morning he's shaken off by the evening. Part of trying to be better is just keeping on track with the "I'm a husband who kisses his wife goodbye" and using the fact you tell a white lie one morning as a little mental note to yourself to keep doing the thing.

If that's the situation then you need to get off his case OP and let him carry on trying to do his best. In this option it's a you problem as you can't on some level believe he is trying to be better for you, perhaps you lack a growth mindset, and you hold him to a worried kind of high standard.

All the examples you have given are very much grey areas that could be either interpretation.

Have you got any really specific, slam dunk examples of him telling a lie about something factual, so pointlessly unimportant or so important it would be big enough to raise it?

The films and the kiss and saying you're beautiful aren't clear examples either way.

oh and the girlfriend either - that could be just wanting to not create any more drama.

What do you think little white lies are all about. They're intended to smooth the lumps and bumps of life. Apart from that, your man sounds like he's trying (and failing dismally) for the line of least resistance in what he's saying.

In a broader sense I think your previous experiences are colouring your view on life and you might like to stand back and think about that

The point is, I suppose, that those examples should he inconsequential. And I said as much at the start.

But the fact I know he's lied about things just makes it feel like everything is a lie. Or an untruth. I don't know what's real and what's not.

If he expresses an opinion (completely unsolicited) then I don't know if its how uenreally feels/thinks or whether it's just what he wants me to think he feels/thinks.

When we have a conversation about something, is it genuine or a waste of time because I think we're having an exchange of views, exploring an idea or a meeting of minds but he's just saying what he thinks I want to hear? That's pointless.

I totally get your point.

I’m quite black and white, so find it hard to tolerate any form of lying. I just don’t see the point, and tbh it just irritates me.

Would you say he’s a bit of a people pleaser? It sounds like he just wants to please you.

I would firmly (but gently) tell him not to do it.

Reassure him you don’t mind him watching nudity, and not kissing you etc. That doesn’t matter one jot, but lying to you really does matter.

I think you're tying yourself, and him by default, into unnecessary knots.

You have a zero tolerance of any lies, no matter how big or small, (despite the fact there is no one singular truth, only people's versions of it) and that's your perogative).

You feel he lies to you.

I'm not sure what the conundrum is? Apply the same binary black and white thinking to your relationship as you do to what you perceive as the lying within it, and it's not acceptable, then surely it's unacceptable and it's over?

Have you got any really specific, slam dunk examples of him telling a lie about something factual, so pointlessly unimportant or so important it would be big enough to raise it?

Well, there are several examples of things he's said to me that he's later contradicted or later denied saying. Or timelines that just don't make sense. But I suppose that's not the sort of thing you mean.

But yes, there are concrete examples of lying. So just really stupid pointless ones like telling me he didn't get chance to go to the supermarket on his way home from work, to which I'd said no problem, we'd have something different for dinner then but then leaving the receipt on the kitchen table with that days date on it so he had been but had forgotten something. That's really not a problem.

Or when he and his ex wife were selling the house and I asked how it was going, if there had been many viewings,? Much interest? you know just the sort of chat people have, assuming that they'd be in contact and he'd know. And he said he had no idea because he hadn't spoken to her for weeks, which surprised me. Only then, he opened WhatsApp on his phone while I was next to him because he wanted to show me a message from someone else and her name was at the top and it turned out they'd been talking about it that day. But he'd 'forgotten'.

Again, absolutely pointless and unnecessary. I mean, I might not have a particularly positive experience of his ex wife but he was married to her for 20 years, they have kids and had a house together. Of course they needed to talk! I have absolutely no idea how often he speaks with her generally and I don't care. But why lie?

There are several more but they're all on this level. Denying he's been to places there are photos of him at or friends have brought up in conversation. Things he's told me that he's done completely out of the blue that he's later denied. Or telling me he's never done something it later turns out that he has.

Just utterly pointless stuff.

I want to say there are no big lies like financial stuff or infidelity but actually, how do I know that?

When we'd been together for about a year, he opened his WhatsApp and there was a message to a woman whose name I didn't recognise telling her she was beautiful. I didn't say anything at the time because I was a bit shocked. But I mentioned it the following day - just asked who X was and he was (of course) shocked because he had no idea what i was talking about. He opened his phone and scrolled through his messages trying to find the offending message but, of course, it wasn't there. Highlighting messages to his (male) friends and asking if it could have been something like that I'd seen (none of the messages bore any resemblence to "You're beautiful"). Maybe it was a message to me that I'd actually seen. I know my own name and I hadn't received any messages like that from him ever. Let alone in the past 24 hours.

But all these things just lead me to the conclusion that I can't trust him because what he says isn't the truth. Even when there's no tangible reason to lie. That's why I've started to doubt the smaller stuff because it feels that the lies fall out of his mouth everytime he opens it. If I ask him a question about anything at all, I hear his answer and I don't know whether to believe it or not.

This is the sort of thing.my exh did. He'd buy himself something (not a problem) but tell me it was for someone at work who'd asked him to get I on his behalf but then, 6 months later, it would still be in our house.

Just utterly pointless and doesn't serve any purpose other than to make me doubt his trustworthiness. Especially when the truth is so easily found. And not even found because its just literally there in front of me.

None of these lies have been said to avoid reaction or panicked responses to feeling interrogated or walking on eggshells. He's often said that one of the things he loves about me is that he can be himself with me. But maybe that's a lie too...

Reading your most recent update OP I've now got a completely different view.

Lying about contact with his ex and lying about telling about her woman that she's beautiful, are pretty big lies in my eyes.

The ones in your original post, I wouldn't bat an eyelid at. But given the woofer context you're understandably hyper vigilant.

I'd be questioning if I wanted to live like this

So what do you want to do about it? Talking about all this is actually just going round in circles.

what do you want from this thread, and what do you want to do?