4. What lying does to us
"Living with our partners’ lies changes us at the very core of our being. It affects our thoughts, our feelings, our behavior, our relationships with the other people in our lives and our self respect.
We become depressed. We want to retaliate. We no longer know the person we love, and we no longer know ourselves. We adapt behaviors that we’d reject in any other circumstances and become locked in a war between our most powerful emotions. We feel stupid, used, tricked, and ashamed.
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Lying by proxy
It is not unusual for a man who lies to enlist his partner in the juggling act he uses to stay one step ahead of the consequences. This is especially true and his lies are about money, missing work, or addiction. Caught in a no-win situation you may knowingly, though unwillingly, become complicit in his lies.
The less credibility your lover has, the more he needs yours. Before you know it you may find yourself lying not only to strangers, but to people you care about as well.
How his lies affect your children
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If you have children, living with a liar has a profound effect on their lives as well as yours. If you show by your behavior that you place a low premium on honesty, your children will absorb that information. What you say is not nearly as important as what you do. You can tell your children to always to be truthful and that people shouldn’t lie but when they see you making excuses, rationalizing, and covering up for a man who lies, they learn where you really stand.
You are your children’s first and most important teacher about relationships. If you continue to accept your partners’ lies in order to maintain the sight of a stable relationship, you may very well set into motion the psychological mechanisms that perpetuate a high tolerance for lying in the next generation.
You might believe that you can get by with accepting things the way they are, and for a while you might. I know that every woman who is with a partner who lies cherishes the fantasy that one day he will confess everything, apologize for the hurt he’s caused, beg for forgiveness, and immediately run to therapy.
But lying, like any unhealthy behavior, doesn’t magically disappear and it usually gets worse over time. Your partner will become more entrenched in his behavior and less willing to change. And you will find yourself giving up more and more of your self-respect and dignity.
The Loss of the Real You
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Lying hurts everyone. It hurts the people you care about, but most of all it hurts you. Your emotional, mental and physical health suffer. You find yourself developing characteristics that are totally alien to you. You may become hardened, hopeless, filled with negativity. You live with stress and tension that erode every facet of your well-being. There’s a keen sense of loss and emptiness that inevitably follows when you give up parts of yourself in order to keep a relationship.
When your lover’s deceptive behavior goes unchallenged and unchecked, a major metamorphosis in personality and emotional health takes place. Your moods go on a downward spiral. As self-respect fades, depression and hopelessness may become constant companions."
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Excerpt from When Your Lover Is a Liar: Healing the Wounds of Deception and Betrayal by Susan Fowler, Ph.D.
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What makes betrayal so painful is that it is not an act committed by your worst enemies, but it is an act that has been carried out by those you love and trust the most.
Betrayal can happen to anyone from all walks of life. It can occur in the form of cheating, lying, stealing, or revealing secrets. It happens when someone crosses a line that you never thought you had to draw because it never even occurred to you that they could have the capability to do such an act.
Betrayal hurts because someone you love and care about chose to hurt you. When you have put such a large emotional investment into a person and only for them to turn around and cause you suffering, you feel as though you lost a part of yourself.
Lying Shows A Lack Of Respect
Being told the truth, no matter what it may be, confers the feeling of respect upon the recipient. It proves to them that the other person places significant value upon the relationship and is not prepared to jeopardize it by deceiving them.
While some truths will clearly put a relationship at risk, lies tend to be even more damaging. Telling someone the truth, even if you know it will hurt them, shows that you are willing to take responsibility for your actions; lying shows nothing of the sorts.
Waiting For The Liar To Slip Up Again
Once you uncover a lie for the first time, it is hard not to live in expectation of future untruths from that person. You begin to question what they are saying, passing their words through your internal alarm systems in order to detect any hint of dishonesty.
The problem is that having to be on perpetual high alert for bullshit puts a real strain on the interactions between the two of you. Sooner or later, the mental energy required will make you want to avoid that person altogether.
On top of all this, thinking that another lie is not just likely, but inevitable is going to make you more suspicious. This is especially true in romantic relationships where one partner starts to question where the other is, who they are with, and what they are doing.
Lying Demonstrates Selfishness
When someone lies, they are essentially putting their own self interest before those of others. Their unwillingness to make a sacrifice for the greater, long term good of a relationship is another indicator that they do not place a high value on it.
Lies can also be an indication of more widespread selfishness and disregard for other humans in general. If done repetitively, it may be a sign of narcissism.
After being lied to by a partner you may become hypervigilant, where you experience constant feelings of jealousy, paranoia, and lack of trust in even healthy relationships which can be damaging down the road. Or worse, you begin to believe that you aren’t deserving of healthy relationships and instead choose to blind yourself to the betrayal, allowing the other person to continue to walk all over you.
The Liar Is Conning Themselves Too
An often overlooked consequence of lying is that the perpetrator is also being untruthful to themselves. In attempting to conceal the truth from other people, they are refusing to reveal their genuine wants and desires to the world.
In essence, they are denying their true identity and seeking to be someone that they are not. Any relationship is bound to feel the strain of this disingenuous approach to life.
Cut ties with repeat offenders
Whether you choose to forgive a betrayal and maintain the relationship will come down to a lot of things: the severity of it, how much you value the relationship, and the way the betrayal went down.
One thing to bear in mind, however, is whether or not this was the first time they have done something like this to you – or to other people you may know about.
If someone has hurt you before, or if they have hurt others that you are aware of, you should strongly consider whether keeping this person in your life is best for you (and best for other important people in your life such as children).
Generally speaking, the second strike will put so much more strain on the relationship and your interactions with each other that it is best to call time right then and there.
A third strike or more and you’re straying into the territory of enabling them. Reach this point and they will think they can betray you and get away with it.
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