Low on hope and need some perspective

Today, less than a week after D-day, I'm feeling very low. I am mourning what I had and I just want to know, is it possible to fully engaged with your relationship again after this? My trust is so broken and from down here, I can't see a way out. I want him to be a safe place again but I don't know how. Any words, anyone? Love to all of you.

 

I have been trying to remind myself of these words all day long. I keep getting so angry, and I keep remembering more and more things to feel hurt about. I want to leave well enough alone and move forward but then it all just spills out and the cycle starts over. Last night we stayed up until 3 am, not quite fighting but definitely having a really hard argument about his lying. He's beginning to gain some insight as to why he lies all the time, which is good. But it's all about what he does with it.

He's been living this way for 25 years. I know I can't expect him to change right away, but I need to find some version of peace while he's working through this. My mom thinks I need to give him a solid chance to prove that he's trying without me looking over his shoulder all the time. No constant questioning, no fishing. I should listen to my gut if I think something is off, but I can't be trying to set traps and catch him constantly. It hurts ME too much. Seriously, it's excruciating and I can't live this way.

 

I'm wondering how much space to take while I'm giving myself this time. I still love being around him and I miss him a lot, but my pain is pretty fresh at the moment and I don't want to keep reopening these wounds.

 

How do you deal with the lying and the fibbing? This is weighing heavily on my mind right now because I can't help but think, "If he'd only be transparent with me, this would be so much easier."

And have you seen an improvement in the lies, in their frequency or severity or both? My problem right now is that, while I'm a pretty great "lie detector" with him, I still end up doubting basically every word that comes out of his mouth. I think this is an effort to protect myself. So even if he's improving, I don't know how to tell.

 

Thank you for this. I feel like I could have written this, what you said is so similar to how I feel about his lying. What I'm struggling with is, do I call him out on every last thing? Every time I sense a lie, a half-truth? Or are there some things I let go for my own sanity? I realize you can't answer that for me, but I'm wondering about what approach works for you?

 

That's one thing I've learned from this whole situation: to trust my intuition. I ignored it for a long time when I should have had more trust in myself. No more of that. Now I'm just wondering what to do when my gut is tingling and telling me something is up. I don't know if I should pursue every last thing or let some things go. It's maddening.

 

It's so ironic that I go to work every day and teach my clients the same things you just told me, yet every time he lies I take it deeply personally. Thoughts of, "I've made him feel safe, why is he still doing this? What a stupid, inconsequential thing to lie about! He said he knows it's easier to tell the truth, so why? Why??" Ring in my ears every time. It's extremely difficult for me not to personalize his choices, because they hurt me so much. I don't know what his "Rock Bottom" will be, but I sincerely hope it doesn't require losing me.

GhostWriter, thank you for your message. Thank you for being vulnerable in an effort to help a faceless person on the internet. I appreciate it so much.

He told me the same thing you said: He thought he would never tell anyone. Not about the abuse (from his childhood or his ex-girlfriend), not about the subsequent, confusing sexual exploits that made him feel like a "deviant", not about the porn, not about the lies. But...he told me. He was figuratively kicking and screaming the whole time, but he told me. And now he's told his therapist and his work mentor. So, I think maybe something his happening here.

I've learned a lot about myself in this process already. I'm not "crazy", I actually just notice what the people around me are doing. Growing up the way I did, that was a necessity to survive. I'm not overly jealous, possessive, what have you. Rather, I'm more than willing to give my partner the space he needs to socialize so long as he's not hiding things from me. Huge difference there. I've got a tremendous capacity for warmth, empathy, and compassion. If you come to me with a problem, I am there for you with my whole self. I'm learning to recognize and honor these things in myself as time goes on, and I hope he pays attention to them too. He says he's seeing these things more and more and he feels like an idiot for not appreciating them sooner. If he can back up those words with actions, then I see good reason to stay.

Truthfully, I don't want to have to start over with someone else when I have no idea what I'm getting myself into. I feel like he and I are into some significant work and growth and I'm not ready to walk away from that. Especially knowing that the next guy would have his own host of problems to uncover.

Love to you as well, GhostWriter.

 

That's the hard part for me. He lies about petty stuff all the time! He'll tell a half truth to make himself look better, or make some little thing up because it takes pressure off of him. HesHsaid he does it because it helps him feel in control, but it still makes him feel like a bad person and he's trying to stop.

If I chase after every last thing (perceived or real) then I think I sacrifice my own serenity in the process. But then if I don't, he gets away with it. And that makes me sick. So I'll need to think on this one and see where I land. My hope is that, over time, his compulsive lying will lessen and I won't have to be on high alert all the time.

My other thought was, "Let's talk less and do more." He said last night that maybe he just needs to shut his mouth when he doesn't have anything truthful to say, and I concur. I'd much rather him shut it than go rambling on, because frankly I just don't want to hear it anymore. So maybe we both need to engage more in activities together or just enjoy one another's presence more often, as opposed to constantly rehashing all of this stuff. It may seem childish, but I figure it'll give me a break and it will give him a chance to be more deliberate in his words when he does use them with me.

 

From what I understand, he is still trying to get to the root of why he lies. So far, I understand that lies = safety, control, and less hassle "in the moment". It's not entirely clear how that started, but I'd hazard a guess that it has to do with a) history of abuse, both as a child and from his ex (who punished him for anything and everything he said or did), and b) his family. I know that his parents have pretty specific standards for their kids, and when he was young it was more important to give the "correct" response to any question (i.e. the one that would maintain homeostasis in the household) regardless of whether or not it was the truth. I know all of his sexual behaviors (PMO included) began soon after the childhood incident of abuse but I don't yet know how that connects to the lies, except that I know he had an immense amount of shame and confusion to hide. Then his first serious girlfriend (he was 20 and she was nearly 30) did quite a number on him. Isolating him completely, sexually abusing him, calling him a pervert and a monster, and generally making it completely unsafe to tell her the truth about anything. I'd love to have a word with that woman someday...

So, that's what I know so far about the root cause of the lying. From his perspective, he says that lying was the only way he felt he had any control over himself and his life. He felt he could control the people around him by controlling the information he gave them. That became pretty deeply ingrained in him and that's what scares me. I hope it can be "undone", so to speak. I'm not comfortable with someone who habitually edits his own reality to that degree. Also, he says that he's trying very hard not to lie. But I have a hard time believing that he's really trying that hard if it's still so easy for him to bend the truth, you know? Especially about tiny little petty shit.

Still working on that. His lies are still very much automatic this early in the game. He's making an effort, but it's happening frequently enough that I fear I'd quickly run out of consequences, if that makes sense. We've discussed the 24 hour rule before, but maybe that warrants revisiting. I'm wondering about setting up a daily ritual in which we take a few minutes for him to come clean about anything, and for me to bring any doubts to the table. How does that sound?

UGH. I so relate to this. I'm still going to try my idea, but I'm also incapable of focusing if there's something on my mind. So we'll see how it goes. It's for my own sanity, giving me the space to take care of myself without obsessing so much. But I also think that if he sees me pulling back and not trying to save him and take care of him all the time, he may just get his ass in gear a little more. Who knows.

 

@GhostWriter You might be interested to know that we made some progress this weekend toward figuring out why he lies about the petty shit. I have to say, some of our best conversations happen in the car. Difficult conversations can sometimes be made easier when you're both facing forward and somewhat engaged in something else (driving).

I expressed to him that I wished I knew why he lied about petty things like he does. Because I don't have anything else to go off of, I can only assume that he lies so easily because he simply doesn't care enough to put the effort into telling the truth. So we talked it through and came to a couple of conclusions. The first conclusion is that he thought, by being honest with me, he'd end up revealing all of his flaws and I'd decide he wasn't good enough. He described it as, "I felt like a bucket full of holes and I didn't want to keep adding more holes because then you wouldn't want me anymore." He'd gotten the message from many people in his life (ex-girlfriends being a big source) that if he shows all of his "flaws" by being too honest, then he's not worth anything and people leave him. So that was a revelation, and one that I can certainly relate to. For me, I've received the message for years that I'm "too much" - too emotional, too clingy, too involved, etc. Two very abusive men in particular basically groomed me into believing that showing my true colors would overwhelm the person I love, so I'd better lock that shit up and keep it to myself. I explained to my SO that while he was busy lying to try to hide the "holes in his bucket" lest I think he's not enough, I was terrified that the next words out of my mouth would overwhelm him, thus being the single grain of sand that tips the scales and leads to abandonment. We both actually laughed. It was so silly to think that we were both petrified of essentially two sides of the same coin. I told him that while, yes, I do listen for lies... I don't actually listen for what he calls "flaws". Like...ever. I told him that if he's being authentic, then 99% percent of the things he says will very likely just pass unnoticed as part of our normal conversation. I'm not listening for flaws, and the things he thinks are flaws simply aren't that way for me. He made it clear that my perception (of being one wrong move away from abandonment) couldn't be further from the truth, either. It took some pressure off of both of us.

The second conclusion had to do with the more mundane aspect of his lies. I'd said something about how normal, how-was-your-day-honey conversations feel like a performance from him when all I want is to hear what really happened. It clicked for him that these types of conversations simply don't exist in his family, at least not in the same way. He actually had me do a role-play where I pretended to be him and he pretended to be different people in his family, and it went like this:

MOM: "[SO], how was your day today?"
SO: "It was pretty good, I went to school and --"
MOM: "That's great. You remember your cousin? Well you won't believe what she's gotten herself into now..." Cue long, dramatic story.

BROTHER: "Whatcha doing, SO?"
SO: "Oh, I'm working on this thing --"
BROTHER: "Hey, did you hear about the new Marvel movie coming out? I watched a YouTube review about it and blah blah blah"

I've seen this happen to him before. The way he describes it, these conversations that are meant to be a calm, loving opportunity to share your day with family, are entirely performance-based. If you don't come to the table with something "good enough", you end up steamrolled over by someone else with a better story. So what's a kid to do, especially when he already feels like a black sheep in his family? He does what he can to fit in, even if it's lying.

As it applies to us, he said that he's afraid of being boring. Simple as that. He wants to bring things to the table that will excite or impress me, or at the very least not upset me. And it's a vicious cycle because can tell when he's doing this and it does upset me! I can tell by his tone, the pressured speech, the pregnant pauses. And it instantly makes me want to shut down and not tell him anything. That was news to him, because he assumed I was just in a "bad mood" and now he had to fix that, too! It's a crazy circle. So, I told him what I want and what I need. I want to ask my partner about his day, and hear all the mundane, boring details. Why? Because I wasn't there and I'm interested in hearing about it! I want to hear about what so-and-so said to what's-her-name even though none of this applies to me. To me, it's these moments of sharing the boring details that sustain a stable relationship.

I described it like this: He and I go out each day like hunter-gatherers and return at the end of it with what we've found. The bulk of it is going to be nuts, seeds, and plants (the mundane details) but every once in a while you snag some big game (juicy gossip, a crazy story, a big accomplishment). His family relied only on big game, so the pressure to perform was immense. My family taught me that if you rely only on big game, you starve. So you live on the nutrition that those little mundane details feed into a relationship. To me, that's intimacy. That's being with my best friend.

So that was a doozie. There was other progress made this weekend that I want to leave here for my own reference as much as anything else.

- Had an argument about what he's actually doing versus what he's just saying/thinking about. He's doing a good job so far staying sober from porn and actually replacing that behavior, but the lying he's white-knuckling and failing continuously. I told him if he's not actively filling up his day with positive, healthy actions then he's not going to see progress. Simply trying not to lie is not going to get him anywhere - he has to take care of himself. He made a list of things he has to do daily/weekly to take care of himself. It includes physical, spiritual, emotional and mental health. He posted it by his door so he can look at it each morning.

- The argument stemmed from feeling him pulling away and becoming distant. He tried to play it off at first but he admitted that his thoughts were telling him he should do this alone and doesn't need me telling him what to do. I told him that his brain was a) right about not relying on me, and b) trying to self-sabotage so that he can go back to all of his old ways. I told him I get no pleasure whatsoever from calling him on his bullshit. In fact, by relying solely on me and not finding a support network, he's putting me in the position of being the only one willing to stick my neck out and tell him what's up. That builds resentment on both sides, and it gives him an excuse to cut and run when it gets too hard. I told him to cut it out, stop making excuses, and find a support group.

- I told him some of what my needs are, and he's started a list in his phone of things to remember about me. It includes things I need as well as things to keep in mind (such as, "she's not going to judge you", "she's always on your team"). So that was nice to see.

- We had a chance to clarify how we both feel when I'm questioning him about something I think he's lied about. He was under the impression that I enjoyed the satisfaction of "catching" him in something and that I liked having the upper hand. He said he knows he put himself in this situation through his actions, but he described it as feeling like I'm a sniper and he has a red dot on his forehead. I told him that could not be further from the truth for me. I am terrified every time I bring up something I think he may have lied about. Sweaty palms, racing heart, the works. I'm not a sniper, but rather I am attempting to defuse a bomb before it kills us both. It was a surprise for him to learn that I feel just as much in danger in those situations as him. I get no pleasure whatsoever from it, but it's something I need to do.

- A little confused on the sexual front. He's rebooting in hard mode so we're not having sex, but there's been a lot of sexual tension even in the midst of all this. There's been a lot of cuddling, kissing, making out, that kind of thing. He's making an effort to build physical intimacy with me in ways he didn't before, by actually taking care of me, paying attention to what I like, making it about me and my needs. Honestly, that's been amazing. Like, mind-blowing. But then we're pushing (and sometimes crossing) the line between intimacy and outright eroticism and I don't know what to do or whether that's okay. There's no orgasm, just a lot of making out, mental and emotional connection, talking about what we want. I don't want what we do to set off any triggers for him, though. Our sex life tends to incorporate some mild power play (dom-sub type stuff) and up until this point it was mostly initiated by me. A couple of weeks into this reboot, he seems to be exploring with me what he actually likes and doesn't like sexually. As opposed to the unhealthy sexual tastes he developed from habitual porn use. I'm worried it's too early for this, but I'm not sure. We're both enjoying ourselves immensely and the second it stops feeling intimate and starts feeling strictly physical, we stop the action. It feels to me like his "true libido" is coming through, but that's my impression. He's starting to tell me things he likes, whereas before he was never able to identify what turned him on. To me I see this all as a positive, but with potential to cause harm if we're not careful.

 

Thank you It's been a relief, honestly. It feels like we finally got around to saying something that we both needed to say for a long time.

Haha! I love that. We're both really visual learners, so it helps to come up with metaphors for understanding each other. Like any artwork, I suppose they're open to interpretation!

So, we checked in about this last night and agreed to dial it back. The sexual component was so exciting for both of us because it felt more "real" than it has in the past, but that's not worth ruining all this progress. I think on a more selfish note, I was really enjoying the feeling of having his focus (and adoration, truly) fully on me. When we were intimate before D-Day, even good sex was still pressured because we were both distracted in one way or another. It was such a relief to have him actually want to appreciate every last part of me. He said he was sorry it was never like that before and he wants every time to be like that in the future. So I guess for now we need to focus on ways we can still feel that connection without coming anywhere near edging.

Thank you, I agree. All the support I've received here has been such a blessing, I can't even put it into words.

Even with all of this progress, I am struggling every day with the wounds that are still very raw. I need to give myself the time and patience to understand that those won't heal right away. I was hurt very badly, over and over. The betrayal trauma is still quite fresh and I find myself triggered often. It's frustrating for me because I don't want to sound like a broken record, but then I remember that I have every right to let him know how I'm feeling and he needs to learn to hear it and make amends.

I'm struggling a lot with the issue of ogling, as I know it's a persistent problem for him. We've had several talks about it and I come out of each one feeling a little more like he "gets it". His words to me are that, while the impulse to ogle is habitual at this point, that's no excuse not to be disciplined. He says that there's a difference between passively noticing someone and lingering, and that's what he's trying to stop. He said that he doesn't want to hurt/disrespect me anymore and he doesn't want to treat women that way anymore. And he doesn't want to be that creepy, skeevy guy anymore. That's all great, but I have absolutely no way of knowing how much he actually monitors that behavior while he's away from me. One of my big triggers is feeling like I'm being paid lipservice, so it's scary for me to think he's (yet again) just telling me what I want to hear.

 

And another update ...... I figure it's better to get it all out than ruminate on it. Thanks to anyone who reads this and I appreciate all the support.

Now that my SO is practicing honesty, he seems to finally understand that he can tell me things that he used to be too afraid to say. Today we were talking, and through the course of the conversation I learned that some suspicions I'd had were true. Another member here told me that uncovering old lies hurt just as badly, if not worse, than new ones.

I've mentioned here before that my SO would often lie to cover up any interactions with females whatsoever because he didn't want to "deal with" my reactions. I've written about it in detail, but at this point he wholeheartedly realizes that covering it up makes it look BAD and that, if you have to hide from your SO, you probably shouldn't be doing it.

I know about my SO's interactions with other females now, we've gone through the list (not long, all of them already acquaintances on some level) and all their interactions were platonic (I've seen the receipts). But still I was suspicious about his intentions. Again, why hide them if you're not being shady? Well, today he admitted that he had used those interactions to "make himself feel better" emotionally during times of strife between us. He justified it by sticking to our rule of not sharing more with a member of the opposite sex than we would with each other. So, no, he wasn't cheating in that respect. But in his words, he does see now that those interactions were completely inappropriate. They were a way for him to slap a bandaid on a major problem. Rather than turning to his support system, he sought what was familiar (both from his single life and his life as a high school nerd): attention from females, even if it was technically platonic. It stroked his ego and made him feel better when he viewed me as the enemy, about to expose him at any moment. Plus, he wasn't sure if we were going to work out and he didn't want to face the prospect of being lonely if I left him. He didn't justify any of these actions, just explained what his mindset was at the time. He said he's disgusted at his behavior.

We've made a lot of progress lately, but this hurts. I knew it was true already, and I genuinely appreciate that he was willing to be vulnerable and honest about that. According to him, he says that at the time he truly didn't think he was doing anything inappropriate, but in hindsight he sees how disrespectful it was. He said that he sees more every day that I am not the enemy and he shouldn't have treated me that way. He's already off all social media and he said he wants to show me that this will never happen again. According to him, he sees now how immature and unfaithful it was to act that way.

I guess right now it just stings quite a bit. It hurts to know he had one foot out the door when I was trying so hard to make it work. I want to know how to proceed knowing that he felt that way, that our relationship was so ... disposable to him. Part of me wants to say it was all part of the addiction, that it was trying to keep itself alive and keep me at arm's length because I was the first person to be "onto him" to that extent. But then another part is saying that maybe I'm excusing poor behavior and I shouldn't accept that, even in the past.

I don't know. Any thoughts appreciated.