Lying in a Relationship

As we get older there are certain things we shouldn’t tolerate in a relationship. Our lives are complicated enough; filled with careers, family, friends, our plates are full to overflowing. Add a new relationship to the mix and you have one more issue with which you have to deal. If the relationship is a good, solid one and you can get through the minor problems that seem to affect all partnerships, that make life easier.

But what happens when you find out that this new partner has lied to you? Should you stay with someone who has been less than truthful? It all depends on you as a person. How much are you willing to put up with and how much time are you willing to spend with a liar?

The key ingredient in any relationship is trust, especially as we grow older. Coupled with respect and love, trust gives you a strong basis as a couple. While trust is a bond, it is also a tenuous one, easily broken, if one of the partners constantly lies.

When we talk about lying, we’re not including innocent white lies as in, “Did you close the outside lights?” We’re talking about untruths that affect a relationship to the point where trust becomes simply a meaningless word. It no longer is an active part of being a couple. That breaks the strong bond of partnership.

Lies about fidelity and money are the two most common ones that affect couples. They make it almost impossible to have real trust ever again in a relationship. If your partner has cheated or if you feel that he or she will cheat again you have a trust issue. In addition to lying to you, he or she is making you constantly wait for “the other shoe to drop.” You know the cheating is bound to occur again; you just don’t know when and the suspense is literally killing you. Staying together is not an option for you. Life is too stressful.

“They lied about cheating before and I just know he’ll do it again. I absolutely cannot trust them. Once I caught them in a lie that changed everything. I can’t take them back no matter how charming he seems to be right now.”

Lies about finances are also trust breakers. A fifty-something woman confided to me about what her new husband had done that constituted a complete marital trust breaker. In the glow and trust of a new marriage she had put his name on her checking account. There was over $200,000 in it, not a cent contributed by him. A week after coming home from her honeymoon she had gone to cash a check for two hundred dollars only to be told there were insufficient funds in her account. The account showed a balance of $150. Her new husband it seemed had used her money to pay off his heavy debts he had accumulated with his first wife, debts this wife knew nothing about! He had told her that he was debt-free when they were dating.

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