Quote from IWC: ((i don't think i can be OK with him lying to me, but i guess i'm trying because i see it as more of a temporary thing. He is making slow inroads into sorting himself out and i guess i'm expecting the lying and drinking to stop at some point. ))

How long has this "temporary" lying gone on? How long is temporary for you?
How will you know if the lying stops, if he gets sober?

There is a chap living in a unit near me, who has a pile of timber part blocking the path I take between my unit and RABF's. That timber was there when I moved in, over a year ago, and God knows how long it had been lying there before that.

Last week I got my leg injured by a piece of that wood, and next day just missed being in the way of a King Brown snake, (bloody venomous), emerging from the pile.

The timber owner said "it was only there temporary, till he finished changing his bbq area in his back yard, then he would use it for a gazebo.

I told him that he had 1 week more to do his changing and move it from by that path, as temporary to me is not 13 months and still going. He wasn't happy, but sheesh, none
of us oldies here can outrun a 3 - 4 foot snake, and the 85 yr old goes the long way round as the walkway is too narrow for her walker.

Tomorrow is IT IS GONE DAY, and no movement in his yard or the pile up to now.
If it is still there by midday, RABF and friend will be moving it to the recycling centre.

Long winded story, but it is how I see and handle "temporary".

The thing is that even if you were able to accept and not bother about your man's lies to you in the short term, (PLEASE let us know HOW you do that if you ever find out), at some stage you would finally yell "ENOUGH".

How long that would take I don't know, how long do you want to spend being lied to and treated with such disrespect and in a way, as stupid? How much more of what could be a happy and fulfilling life do you give to him to waste for you.

I ask these questions as a 65 year old, who has had 1 heart attack and finds life is precious and TOO SHORT to waste even a minute on someone's drinking, lies and disrespect or worry over what THEY may or may not be doing eg, cheating.

In my experience a lying A is not temporary, they just drink more and lie bigger as time goes on, unless they hit recovery in a big way. That may be years ahead of him yet.

Wish you luck,

God bless

I wish you loved yourself more......

Hugs to you as you work through all of this, HG

Hi IWC

I really feel for you right now, particularly as I've just had to face up to the lying issue myself. You may have read my story.

For me, I had to separate the lying from the alcoholism. In a way, the lying almost made the alcoholism irrelevant. I've educated myself a lot about alcoholism, read 'Under the Influence', a whole heap of other books and spent months on this board, learning from all these wise people. I got that my XABF's drinking was nothing to do with me - he wasn't drinking because of me and whatever I did had no effect on whether he drank.

HOWEVER, the lying is a different matter. That is about me. That is to do with me. That is disrespectful, hurtful, humiliating and abusive. And of course heartbreaking. It cuts deep into my own personal values. Honesty and trust are the foundation stones of all our important relationships whether friends or lovers.

Like you, our relationship was a short one and like you we didn't live together but I understand that when you love someone neither of those two facts make it any easier to walk away.

But in the end we have to love ourselves first, we have to value and cherish who we are and know that we will be better people for walking away. Yes, it hurts and yes, it is so hard to cope with the pain. For me, I had to walk away because otherwise I couldn't love and respect myself.

I send you a hug because like me I think you need one.

Personally, I think you are asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking how can I accept (insert unacceptable behavior here), you might want to ask why you think being with someone who behaves unacceptably is better than being without him.

So, we are in therapy (theoretically - hopefully he'll make the appt on the 16th) together and I am working on me and detachment right now, but I feel you 'cuz my husband lies sometimes and at this point, I am sticking around.

This question struck me. What is it that keeps me around thinking it is better than without him?

Well, I have let go of pushing him to talk or calling him on his b.s. and we are settling down again. He's stopped being fussy/grumpy/crabby and is back to being fun. I can answer easier cuz he's being the good side of him (which is almost always if I don't call him on drinking/lying or make him talk about stuff he doesn't want to).

We spent Sun night laying in bed watching videos on cooking blogs (FUN! Who would think that was fun?). We went cross country skiing together on Sunday. Tonight we are making yeast bread together.
He is tender and loving and easy going. If I pick a movie, for example, he doesn't like, he'll iron clothes or do other chores while I watch, rather than be unhappy about the choice.
He is helpful and appreciative and a great planner (while I AM NOT! LOL!). He is uber supportive of my art and everything I choose to do. He is planning to build a table for a mosaic table top I made.
We give each other fabulous back rubs a few nights a week.
He does dishes every time I cook. He does laundry and is clean. He is the house decorator each time we move.
He doesn't have many expectations of me. He lets me be me. He appreciates me.
Weekend nights we listen to Garrison Keillor and cook dinners together.
He is fit and active (bike riding currently) and handsome.
He is a vegetarian, environmentalist, activist, botanizing, hiking, backpacking, camping, skiing, biking progressive, like me.
We go on amazing vacations to other countries and do adventuresome, engaging things together.
We have very similar musical tastes. He is a music lover (while I enjoy it, but never spend the energy to find it) and he brings wonderful music into our life.
We have engaging conversations about philosophy and politics and ecology and sociology and theology.
He is hard working, dependable, committed, and responsible. He pays bills on time. He fixes things that get broken. He shows up early. He keeps his commitments.
He shares the dream of a house, 2 kids (alternative education for the kids) with an engaged mom AND dad (he's AMAZING with kids).
He works for the parks, like me and wants a permanent job in a park where we could raise our kids (like me).
He shares my taste in house decorating and style. He envisions a similar future as far as type of house, type of neighborhood, area of the country, ecology of the area, etc. etc.
I'm sure I could go on...
The point is, that's an awful lot to walk away from and feels pretty unique...special...rare.
I could be wrong. It's just so good.

Sorry to hijack. Wanting, I am sure you have your own list.
For me, it's all the wonderful. I don't want to lose it.

Alcoholics can be a lot of fun. No doubt about that at all. They can have many, many good traits.

I have a friend whose husband has had multiple affairs, all short and all just-sex. She knows about them, and is fine with them. In her view, the good (nice house, doesn't have to work, wonderful guy when he's home, etc.) outweighs the bad. She's literally able to put his infidelity out of her mind and get on with her life.

She's following her own moral compass, which says that as long as he keeps coming home to her, that's what's important. Her current mostly-happiness is much more important than his 'little flings.' There is not a thing wrong with that - it's her choice, and her life.

We are all different. Being with an active alcoholic who lies openly and freely caused me great distress, because lying ripped the foundation out of intimacy. We had wonderful, wonderful times together, but ultimately all the physical pleasures and common ground in the world could not get me past the fact that I could never fully believe anything that came out of his mouth, and there could be no trust between us.

IWC, I hope you can find a way to manage this situation so it doesn't hurt you. It's all your decision, and I respect that you feel you want to keep trying, but there is no easy way to make lying alright if it elicits such discomfort in you.

If you're accepting the drinking and the lying, then you don't deal with it. Detaching from it means letting go of caring about the lying. You don't need to do anything. Confronting him about it is not detachment OR acceptance. Just accept his lies. He's not going to stop. Accept him exactly the way he is, right now. Accept that you are choosing to be with an alcoholic and a liar and stop worrying about whether he is drinking or lying.

hey there,
the lies are horrible aren't they? I remember begging AH not to lie, I couldn't bear it, stupid lies, that would pull the rug from under me, that made an idiot of me when I referenced situations that he had told me about to other people. I just never knew what was the truth and what was a lie, about anything. he would promise not to and then continue, hey ho.

You grasp that this is a choice, that you can't change him (do you really get that?), that he may never change, and are working on accepting him just as he is, exactly as he is. All sounds like good progress, and you are working out if you can live with that. You are not wrong, this is your life. I have no idea how to detach from someone who lies and maintain an intimate relationship with them without doing yourself harm. There are apparently people who can do that and be happy. I'm not one of them (although I tried, hard, for a long time).

Perhaps you may find answers in Alanon or with a good therapist, if that is your goal?

iwant,

i think part of this, what hasn't been said in this thread, is that one of the reasons you stick with this guy, is the hope.

you really, truly hope he will change, and keep looking for glimpses of it.


the chronic lying seems to go hand-in-hand with the other ways he dissapoints you. my advice, in addition to the great comments you've gotten here to chew on, is:

have no expectations.

it's a given that if you want him to come over or pick you up, and ACT a certain way -- want to do a certain thing, or be in a certain mood -- that there's a good chance that he will not. you keep setting yourself up for feeling let down.

if this man can just show up - spontaneously (because planning doesn't seem to fit his lifestyle) - and you just happen to be free and happen to want to spend some time together - if you can live with that, i think that's your ticket.

you see, you already know this, but there is not a snowball's chance in hell that you two can actually have a mature, respectful relationship. but, if you don't have that notion, or that fantasy, and just want a fun guy whom you care for, in your life from time to time, then you may be able to have that kind of a thing.

the lies? same thing. you don't really care what he says.

my guess is that you have compromised your value system not only by being with him for the last year, but you have decided to continue doing so because of an occasional payoff of feel-good. you cannot care whatsoever about what's in his head - his dreams, his ideas about life, his bank account, what religion he practices, where he went yesterday, or really let's face it, his fidelity. he is showing you a part of him that is difficult for you to handle, but there's also a big part of him that you cannot see.

if that's ok, and it seems clear that it is, ok.
(just don't have children with someone whom they cannot count on)

Hi IWC,

Hugs to you, this is a hard one. Just like so many others here I have lived with the lying, and as we all know, it's a slippery slope. I am a person of integrity. Honesty is really important to me. Yet here I sit, in a relationship with a man who lies even about the stupidest things ... things that would not matter one iota whether the answer he gave me was the truth or a lie. So, in my heart, lying is not OK, yet I've accepted lying on all levels. The question that remains for me is what happened to me? Why am I going against one of my very core values?

As part of finding my voice, I'm taking a course for women on developing my core strength - and that's nothing to do with exercise. It's about becoming true to myself, once again. In the first class, the instructor told us to write this down and tape it to our bathroom mirror, and say it outloud to ourselves 3x/day:

IT IS A PRIVILEGE TO BE IN MY INNER CIRCLE AND ONLY THOSE WHO TREAT ME WELL WILL GET TO ENTER AND REMAIN IN THAT CIRCLE.

Your bf is absolutely in your inner circle, as is my rah. But, the question to be answered is does he treat you well? He likely started out that way, but just you talking about this point makes me think that that has changed. Does he then deserve to stay in your inner circle? And I only raise these questions because I am in the same place myself. I, like you, have an expectation that the lying will end. I am hopeful because my ah is in recovery and working on himself, for the first time in his life. However, just in my Al-Anon meeting today I listened to 2 ACOA women talk about how they learned early on that lying was the way out of everything ... the way to keep things looking "the way they should be". I believe this is also the case for my rah, but whether he looks inside of himself AND decides he wants to do something about it AND then does the hard work to actually change I have no control over. I can only choose to love myself more and remember what my inner circle rules are, and only because he (a) is in recovery and (b) is working on himself, give him a bit more time to figure this out, but not too much. My rah absolutely knows lying is unacceptable to me, and should he choose not to / be incapable of fixing this, I am starting to believe that I will have the strength to bring integrity back to all parts of my life.

IWC, as I have been thinking of my life with my husband, in hindsight I see so many times where I should have said "that is absolutely unacceptable" - because it was - and left the relationship. But I didn't, and now I am one of those "highly involved" people you mentioned in your writing who are sooo invested ... 22 1/2 years & 2 kids. Were I to do my life over again, I would divest much earlier. As you think about your situation, and your value and worth to you (and that's SUBSTANTIAL!!), you have all this insight from these really caring & smart people to help you consider. I only had my own brain, and look where it got me! :)

You are the only one who can decide what is right for you, but I encourage you to give weight to the knowledge that these wonderful people are sharing with you.

I hope you have fun tonight!

Just out of curiosity, have you set a time beyond which you 'can't go on like this?' I ask because it seems that you are basing this relationship entirely on who you know he could be, and not on who he is. And because life has a way of going on, regardless of whether we are living it to the fullest or not. Weeks have a way of turning into months, months into years, and years into decades. I say this as someone who literally spent decades waiting for my husband to become the person I knew he could be, all the while refusing to see who he actually was.

L

I truly believe that with certain alcoholics, they have gone beyond the point of no return. Nothing, even stopping drinking, will stop the lies and the manipulation if it has become ingrained in their thought patterns.

Indeed, merely being in a relationship with an alcoholic of this type - where it has progressed this far, is impossible - you are handing over ALL of your power, your essence, your emotional stability.....everything, to the alcoholic.

You will never be treated fairly or with human dignity and you will never be loved. Too many hang onto the fairy tale.

If your alcoholic is lying about everything, even mundane crap....if they have nothing - no job, no education. If they manipulate, put forth false evidence at every juncture, twist the truth, and tell outright lies about you to preserve their addiction.....I think it is high time to accept that this will likely change and it is time for anyone in this position to enter self preservation mode.

That is why I left last year and I will never, ever....ever go back. I would just as soon serve 15 to 20 in a Turkish prison than go back to that. Uh uh. No way.

Once they are at this point, the will do nothing but take -your money, your love, your good will, your trust, and they will flush it down the toilet every single time.

At this stage, they are now parasites, and they will be parasitic to everyone....they have no family, no loved ones, no relationships at this point, they have but victims and hostages. That's all they see their loved ones as - tools to be used.

"... the definite deal breaker is if he cheats on me. Also, if he hasn't been making any attempts to sort himself out (not just with alcohol)."

I was with my ex a year - not long, really. I found out at just under six months that he had been drinking (bingeing, although who knows how much and when he was drinking). He knew that was a dealbreaker for me. I pushed him to at least get counselling and told him I couldn't be with an active A. Then, I reaaaallly met him. It wasn't pretty. But I also didn't stick to the boundaries I had set and things got much, much worse.

I hadn't "accepted" I was with an active A - after I broke up with him (for a week) at the eight month mark he got an alcohol counsellor. I went back, with a -giant- knot in my stomach (hope to never ignore one of those again).

We had a seven day honeymoon period. Seven days. On day eight, things started to devolve into a relationship I would never have imagined being in with a man I would never have fallen in love with and couldn't have imagined him turning into. Infidelity is a dealbreaker? Was for me too. I went through the process of being introduced to the other woman, told I was "crazy" for feeling off about his new "friend" and then being dropped like a hot rock when the friendship blossomed and, presumably, she didn't mind that he drank.

We had happy times. The first three months I really believe that he wasn't drinking. He's a different person when he isn't drinking. That kept me hooked for way too long. The first time he lied about something important he should have been gone. It gets crazier, and the more lying you accept the more invested you become. Totally counter-intuitive but it will feel like this relationship -must- be important because of all the things you've put up with, let slide, or accepted when they were unacceptable.

Mine dangled sobriety, getting help and wanting to recover every time he confessed to, or was caught in a lie. Until the end when I guess that was too much effort. The other woman was not something I saw coming but I really wish I had been long gone before it came to that.

Being lied to and accepting it will start to make -you- feel badly about -yourself-. It's not an act of love towards either of you. You don't lie to people you love. You don't lie to people if you love yourself. And you can't love yourself if you're an active alcoholic.

Take care of yourself first and foremost. You can walk out of this anytime you choose. You just need to choose and most of the people here have gone to some pretty dark places before they were able to do that. I personally wouldn't wish that on anyone and you can bail before things get more painful (they probably will).

Don't you just love it when they meet new friends? And then tell you that you're off your rocker when you question it?

For me it was the numerous exes, all of whom got her into the drugs and alcohol....if I mention it, I was being controlling. She was even told in rehab to ditch these people.

Then she would come up with doozies like, "I've never given you any reason not to trust me!!"

After all of the endless lies, half truths, and manipulations.....she lied about everything else....why not about the presence of a plethora of exes?

Oh yeah, they were there to enable her, since I wouldn't.

Indeed.

For some, there is nothing that is truth. The past is made up, current events told by them doesn't parse in the least with yours, the future is some shiny coin dusted with pixies. Simply removing alcohol from that doesn't fix a thing, the problem is much much deeper.

I don't think you accept it as in 'this is OK' and I don't think you 'handle it' because you have zero control over it. I think in order to live with a thing that is so opposite of your own moral guide, you must figure out how to cease to care. To say "I will look past that, it no longer matters". You no longer ask him a question, no longer put any thought into his answers, because it simply does not matter. That is a very dangerous slope to set foot on. For me it wasn't so much that I ceased to care - I ceased to let myself feel it. Once you put a lid on all your feelings and tape the mouth shut on that little inner voice, you end up at the bottom of the slope in the land of crazy without ever realizing it.

Why would it stop? If you 'accept' or 'deal with' or 'look past' the untruths why on earth would he stop doing it? What real honest thing is he doing that leads you to believe that he is working on it? Lip service does not count.

Yes! Well said. When I look back over the last 15 years of my life I realize I accepted one small thing. Then it was just a side step of an inch to accept on more small thing. Then it was another inch to the side. Pretty soon I was totally lost. I can't even believe it myself - the things we accept. It makes no sense and yet it happens. Our boundaries crumble slowly, they very rarely come crashing down in an instant.

I see it now and I still have to think so hard when I speak with my xah. My boundaries are so fragile.

When I was still with the XAH my therapist said if my self-esteem was better I would realize he wasn't good for me. My X was a liar. But luckily I got a dealbreaker......found him on Match.com saying he was divorced. He wasn't but is now! It's funny now. Whether you are together almost a year or 50 yrs. married or not living together or not- it is based on trust.......and lying is not .

When I was still with the XAH my therapist said if my self-esteem was better I would realize he wasn't good for me. My X was a liar. But luckily I got a dealbreaker......found him on Match.com saying he was divorced. He wasn't but is now! It's funny now. Whether you are together almost a year or 50 yrs. married or not , living together or not- it is based on trust.......and lying is not .

IWC,

Thank you for starting this thread and thanks to everyone more experienced than I who are replying. Reading this all - twice so far - is making me think more clearly about my own situation. How true that the slope is slippery and how we accept "just a little bit more" and through that all our boundaries collapse.

... and I wasn't going to have a "thinking" night!! How can I not when what you all write make me read it and my hand keeps going up to my mouth to cover the "oh"s?

Thanks again, don't want to sidestep IWC's thread. It is great.

When I was still with the XAH my therapist said if my self-esteem was better I would realize he wasn't good for me. My X was a liar. But luckily I got a dealbreaker......found him on Match.com saying he was divorced. He wasn't but is now! It's funny now. Whether you are together almost a year or 50 yrs. married or not , living together or not- it is based on trust.......and lying is not .