Are my husband's lies significant? Is he a cheat?

[husbandlies]

Obviously I've name changed.

We've been together 3 years, have a toddler and a baby and we're generally happy. We both have tempers so there are rows (never anything violent and we always kiss and make up within minutes). I'm 24 and he's 29.

In the past DH has lied about a few things and when I have confronted him he has continued to lie and then eventually buckled and accepted that I know but never given details.

For example, I hate smoking due to bereavements of close family members. He knows this, swears he doesn't smoke, has even sworn on our kids lives, etc, but he does smoke. His sleeves smell of it, he smells of it, and everytime he takes it up he runs upstairs for one reason or another when he gets in from work (to get showered and changed asap) and chews gum. He thinks I'm stupid and when I confront him he lies to my face and then eventually caves.

However, there are BIGGER lies, such as:

1. We hardly ever get a night out (alone or together) as we're skint and we have the kids and work a lot. We do kind of live in each other's pockets. Well I just found pictures on facebook of him at some girl's 21st birthday party. Ok so it was a year ago, but I didn't know he'd gone- so why didn't he tell me? I'd bought him the jumper he's wearing in the pictures for a night out with his mates and he only wore it the once. We know everything about each other so therefore he will have lied to me about who he was out with and where he was going. He will have lied before he went, lied in txts or phone calls whilst he was out, etc. Why? The girl who's party it was had added him on facebook a while ago and he had declined the friend request, even though he regularly talks about her- they work together.

2. He didn't want me to go to a christening with his friends. He was godfather. I had just had our first DS. I bought the baby presents and got myself a new outfit and my hair done. I was under the impression he wanted me there. Then on the morning he started freaking out, getting angry, etc. It was all very strange and in the end he said he wasn't going. I said he could just go alone if he wanted as that seemed to be what he was pushing for. He said he'd just show his face at the church and be home within an hour. He came home 12 hours later, very drunk. It was our DS's christening the following week and a girl my age who i didn't know turned up with the couple from the previous christening. I got chatting to her and she was going on about how she knew my DH really well. She then started talking about the fantastic night out they'd had after the christening the previous week and there seems to have only been a few people there- all of which were coupled off apart from DH and her. He looked uneasy when I was talking to her and he kept away. We had a huge row that night and I often threw it in his face in arguments after that. He made an effort to change and it was a pivotal point in our relationship.

3. He was talking to other girls on a social networking site when we first got together. I found this out a year ago when I found his page and it said when he had last logged in- a few days before. He had used that site for dirty talk with girls in our small town who he knew before we got together and his sister had mentioned him doing it a few months later. It all clicked into place in my head and I realised he had been talking to these girls well after we got engaged- and I would have been pregnant with first DS. When I confronted him he said he had only gone on a few days before to try to delete the page but didn't know how (yeah right). He then supposedly did delete it. That was 2 years into our relationship.

There are other lies and I'm feeling quite uneasy. I feel like I don't know him and he doesn't communicate half as well with me anymore. He's quite often ratty with me and I'm worried there's something not right.

He was a real player in the past and has been with a ridiculous amount of women and is quite well known in town- everyone his/our age range likes him. Especially women.

Sooo... am I being paranoid? Sorry this is so long.

No, I'm afraid you're not being paranoid.

The most innocuous reading of this is that he misses the freedom and the flirting, and so he lies about social events and encourages you to stay home so that he can go out and play at being single for the night. No harm done, except of course that he's lying to you and leaving you at home with the kids, which is completely disrespectful.

But most likely he's shagging around.

Sorry but I think Tortoise sums it up.

Hope you sort things out one way or another.

I thought as much. We don't really have sex anymore either... but I suppose I have just had a baby.

Yup, he's a weasal - sorry!

A liar and most probably a cheat too but the main issue is that he clearly makes you feel insecure and vulnerable. Not a great grounding for a relationship IME. Sorry, he still sounds as though he's the "player" you describe that he once was. I've been in a relationship with a very similar sort of man and it ate away at me, to the point I checked everything he did, phone, internet, hotels he was supposed to be at on business etc etc. Horrible, really horrible.

This sounds exactly like the behaviour of my exH, eventually I caught him out by finding text messages he had forgotten to delete. I had years of him lying about his where abouts and other things too.

If he's willing to lie to you about smoking then you can bet he definitely has no qualms about lying about other worse stuff too.

My exH didn't want me to go to a social event with him as I now know the OW was there too just like your DH didn't want you going to the Christening.........sorry, I really think he's playing away.

lying cheat

and he is taking you for a fool

I really hope you put a stop to it

however, I fear he is going to admit to nothing, so you have a problem proving anything

for me though, the fact I couldn't trust him would be a dealbreaker

you are young and have loads of time to meet a respectful man...this one is not one of those

dump him

I think I remember you posting before about the christening. It does sound like he is at it, I'm afraid.

It sounds like you have been ignoring your inner voice for years, but my goodness it was right.

Looking at this objectively, I'd say this man lies to you about even more than you imagine. Like so many of the current threads on this board, I think he has turned you into his mother and it's possible that you in turn have infantilised him. Hiding smoking from you is the most innocent, but revealing example.

As an adult, it should be up to him if he smokes or not. You can express your preference that he doesn't - and can insist you and the DCs are not present when he does it. You can insist it doesn't happen in your house - and insist that he funds his habit with no detriment to the family budget. But you can't tell him not to do it - and like a child he would rather hide it than "own up".

The nights out and social networking demonstrate that he would rather be seen as a singleton man than a family man. There's only one reason someone doesn't want their partner and family at a "families" event like a christening - it's because he wants to engage with other women.

He's behaving like a child on a curfew - lying about his whereabouts and what he is doing because the truth about his activities would cause all hell to break loose and it's not worth the fall-out, or the risk that you will "ground him".

This has become a habit. I'd wager however that he is useless at taking personal responsibility for lots more in his life and that you often hear tales about things being other people's fault, that he has been the victim in a whole range of situations and that various things you should be able to trust him to get done are either avoided or done badly.

Stop the rot now. You did not sign up for parenting a child in your romantic relationship. Stop parenting him and force him to take responsibility.

WWIFN :

Sorry Annie - am I being a bit thick today - what does your last post mean

have seen that before, wwifn, I too wondered what it meant

It's a love heart.

You are not being paranoid.

He has proven to you that he is a good lier and has stuff in his life he is unwilling to share with you.

You can never trust this man.

If you stay with him then throughout your lives you will have things like this come up.He;s not gonna change, he's just gonna keep lieing in the hope that he won;'t be found out.

A love heart? Does that mean you agree with her post?

Aah, that's made my day annie, thank you

Agree with everyone above - especially AF.

The thing is, he is only going to get worse as time goes on and you are busy with his kids and he needs some young flighty piece to stroke his ego.

I know that,in a way, it is more difficult when you haven't actually caught him doing something. But every day you spend with this man is a day of your new life wasted.

oh god. sorry op. its no. 2 that bothers me the most. why didn't he want you there? did he think someone might spill the beans about his misdemeanors? or did hr not want you to spoil an opportunity for him to pull? sorry thats really harsh i know

Oh I remember that thread too. Was that you?

If you can it would be better to broach the subject of his failure to meet the required standards for a decent husband, and what you intend to do about it, at a time when there is nothing going on. What I mean is don't wait until the next time he is planning to do a shifty runner for the night and have a row then. He won't take you seriously and will only be interested in escaping to his sad little adventure.

Tell him out of the blue. Give him a good shock.

i agree with mrsb. only because of my own experience i suppose. my partner of the last 10 yrs DID cheat, more than once(far too long and boring a story to go into you'll be pleased to hear), and though i didn't find out til much later, he did some bloody terrible stupid stuff. it was only when a long time had passed, and i found out the extent of it, had time apart etc etc that i was able to get my head around certain things and really get tough with him that things changed. some of you may think how stupid of me to do it at all, but 4-5 yrs later we're really happy, he's a changed man, and me too(well, a woman...).

what i'm trying to say is it may be salvagable, but don't waste time doing the melodramatics like we did-get tough NOW and make sure he knows you mean it. if he still fails you'll know he's not worth it and you'll have got out while you're young as well!! good luck.

His lies are not only significant they are a MASSIVE warning and wake-up call - he is a two-timing shit and you need to sort it out.

I have been in a relationship with a pathological liar and I even ended up making myself reason out how his lies could be true - only they weren't, they were lies and he was seeing someone else.

Something about ducks - if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck - it IS a duck. Same applies to liars (apart from the quacking, maybe)

I just said to him 'you know that jumper? what did you wear it for?' and he looked all shifty so obviously he knows exactly what he did!!

Then he went upstairs for a second, came running back down, took his phone, and went back upstairs.. watching me to check i wasn't looking but i was watching out of my peripheral vision.

He never leaves his phone unattended.

So how do i broach the subject? I feel like I need to uncover some more secrets before I can go to him IYSWIM. I don't want him to palm it off.

think first....whats your boundaries here? what will happen if you uncover a whole load of other lies?
think of what you want out of this relationship....it doesnt look likely he'll change,so what will happen?

Ive read all this before - do you have previous threads about it?