6 Reasons People Lie in Relationships

Posted on by stilllearning2b

People lie in relationships for myriad reasons, some of which are more egregious than others. By understanding the motivation behind their mistruths, you have some insight into their thought process and a sense of the likelihood that they will continue their deceptions.

6 Reasons People Lie in Relationships:

 

1 – They Are Ashamed of the Truth

I find this motivation to lie quite sad. As a former teacher, this is one of the more common types of lies I saw in my classroom. Kids lied because they were ashamed of their financial situations, their home lives or their performance on an assignment. The lie was an act of self-preservation, projecting the person they wanted to be.

This is the type of lie that I believe got my ex in trouble. As his professional life began to fall apart and he began to struggle with addiction, instead of being vulnerable and admitting to his internal battles, he instead pretended to be ever more successful. And the problem with these type of lies is that the more they are told, the more the person moves away from themselves and sometimes they are lost forever.

With this type of fiction, if it is caught early, more is to be gained from a gentle approach rather than a punitive one. They need to feel safe before the fallout from the lie can be addressed. Shame can wreak havoc on relationships; it’s important not to ignore its impact.

 

2 – In Misguided Attempt to Protect Others

It’s such an unexpected response when you discover that you’ve been lied to –  “I just wanted to protect you.” The impulse is good, but the horrible execution has had the opposite effect, hurting you instead of protecting you. This type of lie has two layers to work through – first, the realization that they have not been honest with you and second, the sense that they do not trust that you can handle the truth.

There’s a lack of respect inherent in this kind of lie as they believe that they know what is best for you. In fact, you may realize that this power dynamic is even more concerning than the lie itself. In order for a relationship to function as a team, BOTH partners need to have access to the same information. If one is acting as gatekeeper, the other is inevitably a prisoner.

If you find yourself in this type of dynamic, it’s important for you to examine your own responses. Maybe you have a tendency to overreact to difficult information (raising my hand here), you are inadvertently telling your partner that you can’t handle the truth. Work to manage your own emotions and responses so that they feel comfortable having those hard conversations.

 

3 – So That They Can Continue Their Behavior

This is the classic selfish lie – they want to continue doing whatever it is they’re doing and they know that telling you the truth would prevent them from being able to do it. They are not directly trying to hurt you, but the impact on you is less important to them than their own happiness in the moment. As long as the lies benefit them, they are unlikely to change their ways.

One of the ways to identify this sort of dishonesty is by their reaction when they are caught. The selfish liar will be angry rather than contrite, painting all of this as your fault. After all, before the fabrication was revealed, everything was perfectly fine in their world.

 

4 – They Enjoy the Thrill of Getting Away With It

These are the scary ones, the people that lie because they enjoy manipulating and controlling others. They have no consideration for the impact of their deceptions. In fact, they may enjoy looking back at the destruction left in their wake.

You will often first see this when your partner pulls a fast one on someone else and can’t help but share their “victory” with you. I remember my ex delighting that he convinced some guy running a survey at the mall that he had diabetes and therefore couldn’t participate in the study. The interaction was minor and of no consequence, but I should have paid more attention to his reaction at his lie being believed. If they will lie to others, it’s only a matter of time until they lie to you. Furthermore, these lies will continue to escalate, as a bigger and bigger “hit” is required in order to get a rush.

 

5 – They Believe Their Own B.S.

If someone lies often enough, they begin to confuse their fabrications with the truth. It’s a snowball effect, as one lie begets many more downstream. At some point, the lies and the half-truths become so entangled with reality that it becomes impossible to sort them out again. As a result, these lies are not only told externally, but also believed.

What is so wild about these types of people is that on some level, they are aware that they are lying. Yet they have spent so much time living in the fiction section, they no longer know how to navigate reality.

 

6 – Their Lives Are Compartmentalized

This is another situation where they may truly believe that they are not lying. They convince themselves that one aspect of their life has no consequence whatsoever in other areas. A classic example of this type of liar is the person who only cheats when they are traveling for business. It doesn’t happen at home, so they believe that it has no impact at home.

Confronting this type of liar can be crazy-making, as they will seem legitimately confused about why you are so upset. Asking them to understand requires for them to confront their own cognitive dissonance head on, which is unlikely to happen.

When They Deny the Affair

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Something’s up. Maybe you stumbled across an inappropriate text or perhaps there’s just a different energy in the air. Either way, your suspicions are growing, eating at you as your imagination begins to shift into overdrive.

Summoning your courage as you straddle the line between wanting to know and wanting to believe that everything is okay, you ask –

“Are you having an affair?”

And the response is volleyed back.

“No.”

You’re not sure how to feel. It’s the answer you want to hear. Want to believe. But at the same time, you’re not sure if you do believe it.

In some ways, you’d prefer a confirmation of your fears, because then at least you would know where you stand.

But this?

It’s maddening.

Agonizing.

Obviously someone isn’t telling the truth. But is it your partner or your own fears?

As you try to unravel the truth, begin by considering the reasons they may be denying an affair –

They may be trying to have their cake and eat it too.

“But I want them both!” you can just picture this person insisting like a spoiled toddler while stomping their feet. This is the stereotypical selfish cheater. They want what they want and they don’t expend too much energy thinking about how it might impact those around them. They lie not because they particularly enjoy lying, but because they want to get away with this for as long as possible. They are not worried about the truth hurting you; they are concerned about the impact the truth will have on their fun.

It’s rare that someone would only act selfishly in regards to a relationship. Instead, it tends to be their general approach to everything in life. Consider if they generally lack empathy and have a tendency to consider their own needs at the exclusion of others. These sorts of people will often speak of how they deserve happiness and may play the martyr or victim routinely.

They may enjoy the power that comes from deception.

These are worst type of cheaters. The actual affair may be ancillary to them; their primary motivation is the power and glee they gain from manipulating those around them. Although this type of person is obvious in some ways, when you’re under their spell woven with gaslighting and emotional abuse, your view is blurry.

These are the cheaters that will respond with outrage at your accusation, no matter how damning the evidence is against them. They will turn the fingers back at you, painting you as crazy, irrational or unfaithful in your own right.

It’s very difficult to see gaslighting when you’re in it. If you suspect that this may be your situation, talk to others you trust to gain their perspective and find a way to take a little break from the relationship to give yourself some space to think clearly.

They may be too scared to admit the truth.

They know they messed up. They know the truth will hurt you and they don’t want to hurt you. On one level, they may believe they are doing the right thing. Protecting you. On another level, they are afraid of seeing the hurt, the betrayal in your eyes and knowing that they are the one who put that there.

This puts you in a tough place. Your suspicions make you anxious and their response makes you frustrated and confused. Your emotions are high, yet the best way to uncover the truth is to stay calm so that they feel safer in revealing it. Is it fair to ask you to temper your emotions when they are the ones misbehaving? No. But then again, nothing about infidelity is fair. 

The good news is that this is the type of cheater that often feels great remorse for their actions. They are ones most likely to take responsibility when they are ready to face the truth. Patience may be called for here as you give them to space to summon up the courage needed to speak, but you also have the right to set your own boundaries about what you will not tolerate.

They may believe they are innocent.

Perhaps they define infidelity differently than you do and so even though they’ve crossed your line, they are still safely on the innocent side of their own demarkation. This happens often when there is an emotional affair; the betrayed partner is picking up on the emotional distance and redirected attention while the other proclaims their integrity is intact because the clothes have stayed on. Before accepting their proclamation of innocence, ensure that you are indeed talking about the same thing.

This can also happen when the betrayer is a pro at compartmentalization or rationalization. They see themselves as a “good” person, someone who would never cheat on their partner. And so they participate in impressive mental gymnastics in an attempt to reconcile their actions with their beliefs about themselves.

They may come up with a reason that the affair is inconsequential (“We only have sex. There is no emotional component, so it doesn’t impact my marriage.”). Or, they may keep that side of themselves completely separate from their normal guise, often using alcohol or other substances to help block out (or excuse) their actions.

This situation can be tricky to suss out, especially if they only show you the “good” side. Pay attention to how they handle mistakes and embarrassing situations. If they have a tendency to secret these relatively banal things away, it’s an indication that they have a tendency to split when experiencing shame.

They may be innocent.

This best case may be the real case. It’s possible that you misinterpreted something or allowed your fears or past experiences to reach false conclusions. Of course, you also have to be careful not to rush to the perceived security of this assumption too quickly. Because once we believe something, we inadvertently seek confirmation that it is true. And you don’t want your denial to offer a safe hiding place for a cheater.

Just as you don’t want to provide a safe haven for a cheater, you also don’t want to create a hostile environment for an honest person where they are constantly bombarded with fake accusations. This is why it’s important to pay close attention to your reactions, trust yourself to see and handle the truth, and keep your eyes open in regards to your partner. Don’t excuse their stuff and also don’t accuse them of yours.

So what can you do if you have suspicions that your partner denies?

Start here – What to Do When You Think Your Partner is Cheating

The Pathology Behind the Lie

Posted on by stilllearning2b

I don’t get spooked easily.

But I’m spooked right now.

Not because of anything imminent.

But because I’m really starting to understand what kind of danger I may have been in.

When the police first told me how lucky I was to make it out of my first marriage alive, I brushed off their concern. After all, they were talking about the man who had cared for me when I was sick and would gently slide my glasses off my sleeping face each night. How could he have tried to kill me?

Yet even though it seemed unfathomable and he had made no direct threats, I found that I was frightened of him. The reports from his other wife that she found evidence that he was planning her death didn’t help to calm my nerves. And the police took his actions and my fears seriously, setting up nightly patrols during those first few uncertain weeks.

Even then, I didn’t really take it seriously.

But now I do.

And my change in perspective came from the most unlikely of places – a podcast about Casey Anthony, the Florida woman who was accused of killing her young daughter in 2008.

At the time of the trial, I remained largely ignorant of the intense publicity. I knew only the basic outline – she accused the babysitter of kidnapping her child and the child’s body was found some time later.

But listening to the podcast?

In many ways, I felt like I knew her.

Because even though she was a twenty-something mother accused of murder and my ex-husband was a thirty-two-year-old man who committed bigamy and fraud, they were operating out of the same playbook.

And the more I heard about her lies and realized the parallels with my ex’s, the more spooked I became. A feeling of looking down and suddenly realizing that you’re precariously perched high above the security of the ground.

(A quick note here before I delve into the details: As stated, I never followed this case while it was active. Even now, I have not referenced any sources apart from this podcast. There may be information that was discussed in the show that is incorrect or incomplete. Frankly, I’m spooked enough from these details; I have no interest in digging any deeper. Also, I have my gut feelings about Casey’s involvement in Caylee’s death, but I’m not going to speculate about that here. I’m more interested in her multiple lies and her reactions (or non-reactions) to her daughter’s disappearance and then confirmed death.)

In many ways, I’m still too close to my ex’s lies to be able to see them all clearly. They are so interwoven with my own memories of what I believed at the time, that it is difficult for me to be objective. In listening to the description of Casey Anthony, I was able to see these behaviors in a more impersonal and detached manner.

And realizing these similarities makes me truly wonder what my ex was (is?) capable of.

 

Everything’s Fine

Casey Anthony’s daughter was missing for 39 days. For most of that, Casey kept insisting that everything was fine. Whenever her mother asked about Caylee, she was told that she was an amusement park or with the nanny. Any concern was brushed off with an, “How can you be so ignorant as to think that?” attitude.

My ex had been living a double life for years at the time he left and the financial deceptions that he carried out were beginning to reach critical mass. It got to a point where he was no longer able to shield me from everything (although he gave it a damn good try, including cutting the phone line so that I couldn’t receive calls from creditors). Whenever I would see something that would give me pause, his reaction would always be, “How could you be so ignorant or distrustful to question that?”

 

Real-Life People Becoming Fictitious Characters

When Casey could no longer deny that her daughter was missing, she then claimed that she was kidnapped by the babysitter. She described to the police how she met this woman through a mutual acquaintance and that she used to babysit his child. This man was real, but he not only didn’t know this babysitter. He had no children.

My ex used a friend in a similar manner. He claimed (to both his other wife and the police) that he co-owned this friend’s business and had a great deal of money coming to him as part of the agreement. This friend (although I’m not sure that’s the correct term) was real. The business was real. But everything else my ex claimed was simply fabricated to connect the dots of lies he had spread.

If They Don’t Exist, Create Them

Sometimes the character needed for the story you’re telling doesn’t exist. When that happened to Casey Anthony, she simply invented the person. For the month that her daughter was missing, she consistently made the claim that her child was with the babysitter. But there was no babysitter. After she accused the nanny of stealing her daughter, she was forced to bring more detail to this imagined character. And she did, even describing the details of the woman’s apartment (which was a merely a vacant unit when the police investigated).

When my ex met his soon-to-be other wife, he told her he was divorced and that his ex-wife was remarried. This fabricated “second husband” of mine remained a mere sketch until he tried using the same story with the police. And they pushed for details. So my “husband” and I had been married a year, were on friendly terms with my ex (in fact, apparently he even attended our imaginary wedding), lived in Snellville and had three dogs. Oh, and my husband apparently worked as a chiropractor. Strangely, I appreciate the fact that if my ex was going to invent a life for me, at least it seems he made up a good one.

 

Names of Fictitious People Pulled From the Environment

Of course, the nanny that Casey Anthony invented needed a name. She was given the made-up moniker Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, which was later found to be cobbled together from the names of Casey’s boyfriend’s neighbors. Unfortunately, there did happen to be a real Zenaida Fernandez in the Orlando area at the time. I can only imagine the trauma this poor woman faced as she was questioned by the police and hounded by the media.

My ex was also forced to come up with a name for my fabricated husband. He settled on Mark (Marc?) Mercer. When I learned about this pretend husband’s name from the arresting officer, my mind immediately remembered a prominently-placed billboard for Mercer University. The location? Snellville.

 

Just Write it Yourself

Casey Anthony apparently created several email addresses to send messages as other people. She apparently didn’t know enough about IP addresses to not be fingered as the origination point of these emails.

My ex got into my email account and sent a “Merry Christmas” email from me to him that incorporated the fake fact that we were divorced. The only problem? This email was dated in July because he either neglected to alter the date or didn’t know how.

 

Fake the 9 to 5

For months, Casey Anthony told he friends and family that she had a well-paying job as an event planner at Universal Studios. She would get up, get dressed, and go…well, anywhere but Universal Studios, as they had no record of her ever being an employee. My favorite detail – when the police asked her to take them to where she worked (after they learned that Universal didn’t know her), she walked them into one the buildings, up an elevator and down a hall. She didn’t admit the truth until her back was literally against the wall.

I’ve had to try to fill in the gas about my ex’s fake employment, as he took all of the related documentation when he left, but from what I uncovered, he pretended to have clients in his freelance business for quite some time. He made up assignments, pretended to work on them when I went downstairs to his basement office and funneled money from credit cards when he needed to get paid from his invented clients.

 

If You’re Backed Into a Corner, Just Change Direction

When police discovered that the nanny’s supposed apartment was vacant (and had been for quite some time), Casey Anthony then came up with a new story about the nanny’s location.

When asked by the police why he was recently in Brazil, my ex first denied ever being there. Then, when confronted with the evidence of the trip from passport records, he then claimed that it was a work trip (this was the story that I had been told along with details that even included pictures of the trade show he supposedly was working). The police then proved this claim false with a short phone call to his boss. Although he was no longer freelancing at this point, he then asserted that he was doing a side job for somebody. His other wife soon dismissed this fiction as well.

 

Financial Lies and Bad Checks

Casey Anthony had a problem. She told everyone she had a job that paid well, yet she often had no real source of income. While her parents bought her gas and often provided her with a roof over head, she faked the rest with a series of bad checks.

I don’t have much detail about most of my ex’s financial deceptions because the evidence went with him (but suffice to say, he made many purchases with money that he didn’t have). But I did get to see a series of emails between the band that played at his illegal wedding and he and the other wife. He continually assured them that “the check is in the mail.” I’m sure. He also strung his attorney out who made the comment to me after the divorce hearing, “Not until I get paid first.” At that one, I just had to giggle. And then there’s the one that gave me my only sense of justice in this whole mess. He lied on the taxes and, as a result, I was granted innocent spouse relief. Thank you, IRS, for seeing him for what he is.

 

Garnering Sympathy and Flirting With the Professionals

Casey Anthony would flip between continuing to live her life that nothing had happened and playing the victim. After her case was over and she was found not guilty of the murder charges, she started a relationship with one of the investigators from her case.

My ex (and by extension, his attorney), kept whining that I was “vindictive” because I alerted law enforcement about his bigamous marriage. I know, poor baby. In an email to his other wife and my mother, he then went on to describe me as “impossible to live with.” Of course, the letter then went on to accuse me of doing exactly what he was guilty of. Nice try. His smarmy behavior continued when he went to my attorney’s office to pick up some keys. The paralegal called me after he left and said it was disgusting how he was flirting with her and trying to win her over. Maybe he was looking for wife number three?

 

I know that the possible murder of a child and the deceptions involved in fraud and bigamy are worlds apart. I’m not trying to equate those two situations. Yet, if Casey Anthony did intentionally kill her daughter, it doesn’t seem to be an act driven by malice or even momentary rage. Instead, it would have been an act by somebody who is willing to take extreme actions to get what they want without concern for the consequences.

And by seeing those parallels between her undertakings and my ex’s, I now am starting to believe that he really was capable of taking extreme actions. Maybe even extending to murder.

And that is spooky.

 

My Side, His Side and … the Truth?

Posted on by stilllearning2b
narcissist lie

One of the more infuriating responses I’ve received when others have heard my synopsis of my ex-husband’s actions that led to the divorce is, “Well, you know how it is. There’s your side, his side and then, somewhere in between them, there’s the truth.”

After I swallow my scream, I try to respond with a well-meaning and polite-sounding, “That’s so awesome that you haven’t met anybody like him. I hope you never do.”

In general, I am a huge fan of the concept that there are facts and then there is the way we perceive the facts. And those perceptions can be very different. Give two people the same fictional book and they will not only interpret the characters’ actions in different ways, they will likely build mismatched views of the protagonist’s appearance.

Yet the text is the same.

And that’s where I have a problem with this phrase being applied to the circumstances surrounding my divorce.

Of course my ex-husband is entitled to his own opinion. But he is NOT entitled to his own facts.

Which is exactly what he was doing.

When he told the police that we had been divorced for years, I highly doubt that he was simply expressing some metaphorical feeling that he was keeping under wraps. As he recorded my salary on the financial disclosure as a third more than it was, I don’t think it was because he’d viewed the numbers in a different way. And when he described how his “workday” was going while he was on his honeymoon, I struggle to believe that he was really under the impression that he was working long days on the trade show floor.

Those are facts. And there are thousands more where those came from.

And those facts don’t care about feelings – his or mine.

Now, when it comes to the particular climate of the marriage that acted as fertile soil for those deceptions to grow, I’m sure we have our own opinions and perspectives. I would have loved to have been given the opportunity to hear his side. To try to understand where the unhappiness resided and to learn more about his interpretations and outlook.

But I was never given that chance.

So all I have is my side, my best guesses at his side and the facts.

And as for the truth? I’ll never know.

Telling Stories: The Lesson in the Brian Williams’ Scandal

Posted on by stilllearning2b

I never watch television news.

So I had no idea who Brian Williams was until the news about his false claims about his time in Iraq. All of the tidbits I read online or heard on the radio took the position that he intentionally and willfully fabricated these stories.

Until I came across this one.

It explores the universal truth of fallible and malleable memory, citing studies where false memories have been intentionally implanted and summarizing the results of interviews with memory scientists.

The data is unambiguous – our memories are not.

The article doesn’t absolve Brian Williams of any guilt. It simply asks us to consider the alternative – that perhaps what we are interpreting as an intentional manipulation of truth may in fact be a distortion of memory.

The problem is that from an outside perspective, they are indistinguishable. And according to a study a referenced in the article, people overwhelmingly assume that someone’s twisted truth has been purposely shaped for their gain (while also assuming that their own memory is somehow immune to the errors that may influence others). And the comments in the article support that research; they alternate between people claiming that they have infallible memories and people (often aggressively) concluding that Brian Williams set out to deceive.

And maybe he was. I certainly have no idea. But I do find it strange that somebody in a prominent position in media would choose to publicly tell falsehoods that could easily be disproved. It seems not only irresponsible, but dumb.

It certainly seems plausible that he believed his stories and failed to fact-check before sharing them with the world.

Perhaps it’s because we spend so much time in a digital world, but we seem to have this idea that memory acts like a recorder, filing away experiences as they happen so that they can be retrieved later with a neural click and replayed like a video on a screen.

But it’s not that simple.

If our memories are computer files, then they are filled with encoding errors, corrupt files and sketchy rewrites. Tidbits of original code may remain and the brain borrows from other memories to fill in the gaps.

Many errors in memory happen without us ever knowing. These are the unintentional changes in memory:

Fading

I no longer remember what my ex husband really looked like. The primary image I have of him is more a caricature of the facial hair he had the past few years of our marriage rather than any true visage. Time has softened the memories, faded the edges. I could probably still pick him out of a line up, but a police artist’s rendering based upon my description would probably contain some inaccuracies.

Our memories are more like cassette tapes than digital imprints; time and use damage the recordings. They’re still there, but faded and under a layer of static.

Rewriting

The Brian William’s article compares the way memories change with the retelling of a story to the childhood game of “telephone.” When we have a major event in our lives, we assume that the intensity of the memory leads to its preservation. Yet, the frequent retelling of the story often changes the memory over time. It mutates.

Another way we rewrite our memories reminds me of a documentary I saw about the making of the first season of The Real World. They collected countless hours of authentic and raw footage. Then, the show’s writers were tasked with watching the tapes, sketching out the storylines and editing the footage to match the story.

Our brains do that too. We naturally create “stories” out of our experiences. And then we select the memories that fit and discard the ones that don’t. And just like with reality television, all of that happens behind the scenes.

I’ve seen this happen with my own divorce story. As it is repeated, small errors in memory replicate and carry through. I have to edit and summarize to get the gist across and so some details are left out. It all “feels” true because it’s been repeated, but it’s not quite right. I make a habit of returning to my primary documents – texts, emails, journal entries – of that time period to refresh my memory before any interview or post which requires details from that episode.

And I’m always a bit surprised at what I read.

Because I am no longer the same woman that had those experiences.

Change in Perspective

There was a hill in my childhood neighborhood that was enormous. Until I went back after several years away. I have to assume that the neighborhood pooled their resources to have that mountain shaved down to a molehill. It’s the only reasonable explanation:)

Have you ever read a book or watched a movie and revisited it 5, 10 or 20 years later? Was it the same as you remembered? Probably not. Because you’re not the same person either. We see the world through the filter of our own perceptions and we see our memories in the same way.

No memory can ever completely reflect the moment it happened because you see it through the knowledge of today. That hill in my old neighborhood is both huge and daunting (according to my early memories) and insignificant (as I see it now). Neither recollection is necessarily wrong. My perspective has shifted.

Not all manipulations of memory are unintentional. Here are the ways that memories are deliberately changed:

To Deceive

This is your standard lie. Deliberate. Intentional. Twisting the truth for your own gain or protection. In this post, I dig down into the different types and motivations for deceptions.

Now here’s where things can get interesting. A “fact” can begin as a lie, but as it is repeated, that falsehood becomes the truth to the person reciting it. This is how researchers, therapists or others in trusted positions can either intentionally or unintentionally “plant” a false memory that grows into “truth” for the subject.

My ex stated in a text to my mother that he “started to believe his own bullshit.” It seems like he may have planted and nurtured false memories in his own mind.

To Find Peace

I stumbled across this application of deliberately changing memories accidentally. I changed the names of the people and places involved in my story to protect the identities of the innocent and not-so-innocent. Over time, I found that the fake names felt more real to me than the real ones. The shaped memories slowly suffocating the actual ones.

Once I realized the power of taking ownership of my story, I deliberately shaped other memories. These have no impact on anyone else, so their rewriting was not intended to mislead or deceive. Rather, I deliberately chose to reframe certain moments, delete others and filter some of the most painful experiences through a lens of compassion, even if it’s not fully accurate, because it brings peace to my current life and has no bearing on anyone or anything else.

When I do revisit the primary documents, this intentional rewriting is temporarily stripped away as I face the brutal reality of that period. Yet even though that is the “real” memory captured in those texts and emails, I don’t allow it to take up permanent residence in my mind. Read more about how to separate your memories from your suffering. 

As for Brian Williams, we may never know if his stories originated from an intent to deceive or if his memories mutated over time. He certainly was irresponsible for widely sharing stories that impact others without verifying the facts from other sources.

Because, as science has shown, our memories may be true to us even when they are not true.

We are not mere recorders of our experiences. We are storytellers.