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O/T White lies

stepinafrica's picture

My dh has a habit of telling little lies. He seems bemused when I confront him. To me a lie is a lie. No matter how small.

For example today I asked him to feed BS2 an orange. He told me that BS refused to eat the orange. Later on he said that he did not feed BS2 the orange.

He does this ALL the time. Why lie about such things. It just makes me paranoid for no good reason. I find myself crosschecking stuff he tells me.

Comments

stepinafrica's picture

Has your DH gotten better?

I just don't know what to do. He said one time that he lies to keep me from getting angry. Well the lies make me even more angry. They make me very angry and paranoid and anxious on top of it all. My DH does NOT like the idea of counseling. At all. We would probably have to be on the brink of divorce before he would even consider it. He thinks it is like airing our dirty laundry.

In many aspects he is a very good man. He usually supports me and respects me as his wife but then there are these things about him that make me so mad.

moeilijk's picture

I agree - to me, a white lie is a tactful avoidance of a question to avoid hurting someone's feelings, with no benefit to myself other than avoiding hurting that someone's feelings, as in HRNYC's example above.

Avoiding someone's anger (how angry would you really be over an orange??), or avoiding consequences for my actions - that's just lying.

oneoffour's picture

You know how you tell your kids.. "Now tell me the truth and I will not get angry..." The same applies to husbands. In the past (more than likely pre-you) his truthfulness met with some form of punishment despite the size of the lie. "Did you eat the last cookie?" "Yes" WHACK! "Did you flood the bathroom?" "Yes""WHACK WHACK!"

Try telling him that if he lies it only makes you disappointed in him and you do not see him as an equal partner and he is unreliable. And when he DOES tell the truth, do not over react. See, men don't really care about being truthful. But they do care about being unreliable. That insults their manliness.

RainbowsAndDaisies's picture

Lying is addictive. Once you start it's hard to stop. This would be a deal breaker for me. I absolutely cannot stand a liar.

moeilijk's picture

Your DH sounds like some of the other DHs on here I've read about. The ones who take shortcuts and are lazy in their love relationships.

He knows that lying damages trust. He cares more about making things easy for himself than he does about having your trust.

I can't even tell you how confusing I find that. I had a BF who was like that and I just couldn't deal with it. He called me at work to invite me to a movie, I told him sure but to double-check the times because I could only go if the movie ended by 10pm. He agreed, hung up - then called me back 10 minute later to say he'd checked and the movie ended at 10.05. I agreed to go. When we got there, neither showing ended anywhere near 10.05 - one around 8:30 and the other after 11. Did he think I wouldn't notice?

And later, when I was pulling back but hadn't broken up with him yet, he came to my apartment and was ringing my doorbell - I wouldn't let him in as it was late and I had to work the next day. (He was in the film industry and kept odd hours.) Anyways, he kept ringing and ringing and calling my phone and finally stood outside throwing gravel at my window accusing me of having someone inside with me. I was just flabbergasted. I thought to defend myself, until I realized, oh... he's not trustworthy, and he assumes I'm not either.

An conflict with someone like that is never over. They aren't honest and don't expect you to be either. You'll never be truly believed or known or accepted for who you are, because they never really allow you to see who they are either. It's so sad.

Elizabeth's picture

My DH does this exact thing, and I have no idea why either. When I ask him why I always get "I don't know." Like he'll tell me he did something and tell me the outcome, and later I find out he didn't get it at all. He was getting us lunch, I texted him what to get (so he would have it in writing). He comes back telling me he didn't get x, he got y instead. So we have this whole long discussion where I'm like, "I gave you the instructions in writing, why didn't you jut follow them." And he says, "I don't know." After about five minutes of this he admits he got what I wanted how I'd asked. So WTH?!