truth is important to sobriety...if your wife has a spending problem then that needs to be talked about when you reveal what your earned...saying where the money need be spent is just good financial planning...and telling her to keep her spending in check is communications that a married couple need to have....hugs bill but do not trust me I am divorced LOL

Well its important to me. I'm challenged in this area, as I tend to tell stupid white lies with shocking regularity. I didnt even *realize* this till I got sober. Now when I think of telling one, I catch myself most times and tell the truth.
Example...talking with my sponsor tonight. She was saying maybe I could go to a meeting on the beach on vacation. I said "oh I did that last summer," then remembered no, it was in a park *next* to the beach so said so. I know it sounds small but for me, its about being honest as I can be and not just stretching the truth to people please, or to somehow make myself or my story more interesting.
Its like being sort of pregnant. Its either true, or its a lie.

The only time I think it's right to lie is the kind of thing when you're confronted with a "do you like the cake I baked?" or "how does my new dress look?" by someone fragile.

I live in a country where it's accepted to greet someone with "gosh you look awful today." That kind of roughness angers me, and I think is an excuse to attack in many cases. Maybe the questions to ask are: is the lie used to avoid an important problem or pump up my ego? Otherwise I agree 100% with Stickywick!

I was thinking about this this morning and realized that lying to prevent her from spending money we don't have is just enabling her to continue. Problem now is, I think we are both too old to change. So now when she wants to know what I have I try to deflect the question to, "I have such and such Bill coming up which needs to be paid and I have enough for that.

But is beating around the bush a form of lying?

Just sayin

Mark Twain said it all:

"Being told I would be expected to talk here, I inquired what sort of talk I ought to make. They said it should be something suitable to youth-- something didactic, instructive, or something in the nature of good advice. Very well. I have a few things in my mind which I have often longed to say for the instruction of the young; for it is in ones tender early years that such things will best take root and be most enduring and most valuable. First, then. I will say to you my young friends and I say it beseechingly, urgingly

"Always obey your parents, when they are present. This is the best policy in the long run, because if you dont, they will make you. Most parents think they know better than you do, and you can generally make more by humoring that superstition than you can by acting on your own better judgment.

"Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any, also to strangers, and sometimes to others. If a person offend you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick. That will be sufficient. If you shall find that he had not intended any offense, come out frankly and confess yourself in the wrong when you struck him; acknowledge it like a man and say you didnt mean to. Yes, always avoid violence; in this age of charity and kindliness, the time has gone by for such things. Leave dynamite to the low and unrefined.

"Go to bed early, get up early-- this is wise. Some authorities say get up with the sun; some say get up with one thing, others with another. But a lark is really the best thing to get up with. It gives you a splendid reputation with everybody to know that you get up with the lark; and if you get the right kind of lark, and work at him right, you can easily train him to get up at half past nine, every time its no trick at all.

"Now as to the matter of lying. You want to be very careful about lying; otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught. Once caught, you can never again be in the eyes to the good and the pure, what you were before. Many a young person has injured himself permanently through a single clumsy and ill finished lie, the result of carelessness born of incomplete training. Some authorities hold that the young ought not to lie at all. That of course, is putting it rather stronger than necessary; still while I cannot go quite so far as that, I do maintain, and I believe I am right, that the young ought to be temperate in the use of this great art until practice and experience shall give them that confidence, elegance, and precision which alone can make the accomplishment graceful and profitable. Patience, diligence, painstaking attention to detail these are requirements; these in time, will make the student perfect; upon these only, may he rely as the sure foundation for future eminence. Think what tedious years of study, thought, practice, experience, went to the equipment of that peerless old master who was able to impose upon the whole world the lofty and sounding maxim that Truth is mighty and will prevail the most majestic compound fracture of fact which any of woman born has yet achieved. For the history of our race, and each individuals experience, are sewn thick with evidences that a truth is not hard to kill, and that a lie well told is immortal. There is in Boston a monument of the man who discovered anesthesia; many people are aware, in these latter days, that that man didnt discover it at all, but stole the discovery from another man. Is this truth mighty, and will it prevail? Ah no, my hearers, the monument is made of hardy material, but the lie it tells will outlast it a million years. An awkward, feeble, leaky lie is a thing which you ought to make it your unceasing study to avoid; such a lie as that has no more real permanence than an average truth. Why, you might as well tell the truth at once and be done with it. A feeble, stupid, preposterous lie will not live two years except it be a slander upon somebody. It is indestructible, then of course, but that is no merit of yours. A final word: begin your practice of this gracious and beautiful art early begin now. If I had begun earlier, I could have learned how.

"Never handle firearms carelessly. The sorrow and suffering that have been caused through the innocent but heedless handling of firearms by the young! Only four days ago, right in the next farm house to the one where I am spending the summer, a grandmother, old and gray and sweet, one of the loveliest spirits in the land, was sitting at her work, when her young grandson crept in and got down an old, battered, rusty gun which had not been touched for many years and was supposed not to be loaded, and pointed it at her, laughing and threatening to shoot. In her fright she ran screaming and pleading toward the door on the other side of the room; but as she passed him he placed the gun almost against her very breast and pulled the trigger! He had supposed it was not loaded. And he was rightit wasnt. So there wasnt any harm done. It is the only case of that kind I ever heard of. Therefore, just the same, dont you meddle with old unloaded firearms; they are the most deadly and unerring things that have ever been created by man. You dont have to take any pains at all with them; you dont have to have a rest, you dont have to have any sights on the gun, you dont have to take aim, even. No, you just pick out a relative and bang away, and you are sure to get him. A youth who cant hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in three quarters of an hour, can take up an old empty musket and bag his grandmother every time, at a hundred. Think what Waterloo would have been if one of the armies had been boys armed with old muskets supposed not to be loaded, and the other army had been composed of their female relations. The very thought of it makes one shudder.

"There are many sorts of books; but good ones are the sort for the young to read; remember that. They are a great, an inestimable, and unspeakable means of improvement. Therefore be careful in your selection, my young friends; be very careful; confine yourselves exclusively to Robertsons Sermons, Baxters Saints Rest, The Innocents Abroad, and works of that kind.

"But I have said enough. I hope you will treasure up the instructions which I have given you, and make them a guide to your feet and a light to your understanding. Build your character thoughtfully and painstakingly upon these precepts, and by and by, when you have got it built, you will be surprised and gratified to see how nicely and sharply it resembles everybody elses."

Mark Twain: "Advice to youth" 1882

Well Bob, Just a few thoughts here "to old to change" tell that to many that found recovery in there later years. Without change there can be no growth.

On lying I'm sure you was taught in recovery about honesty and practice the principles in all are affairs.

I'm thinking "what principles"? If you're lying to your wife and she catches you (which we wives are prone to do), don't you know that she may deduce by your dishonest behavior that if you would lie about how much money you made, what else would you lie about?.

How about trust being the foundation of relationships?

Have you asked yourself "rigorously" how much harm am I doing, not only to my wife but myself?

Sorry Bob, but I find many more questions than just the one you asked. Grow up and stop treating your wife like your mother.

I recall truth being an issue for you in the past with your marriage (not sure but I think so).

This may be something you want to look at deeper. Perhaps there is a real sense of a power struggle going on with your wife? You telling her the truth with stuff kind of opens the door to vulnerability and gives her "power." Lying is an act of rebellion in a way, and there is got to be reasons underlying why you seek to rebel and distance yourself in this situation.

Bob Communication is the key . If we justify one lie where do we draw the line. The program teaches us a new way of living and the promises do come true. We cannot be selective on what we are willing to do.The book does in fact tell us that half measures avail us nothing. So be truthful with your wife. If you feel she is spending above her means then tell her as much. Set up a budget.
As man to man I have found that telling my wife what she needs and doesnt need may not be in my best interests.
Communication Bob. set a budget not her choices.( No where is it written that you have to like it) Greg

My first thought in reading these was to punish myself. But that's probably what I would have done when I was drinking. Now I handle things different.

I am grateful for these "truthful" replies and I am grateful for Mark Twain, and will take all of these responses into consideration next time I feel a need to stretch the truth.

Peace!

One other thing I forgot to mention and I know I will get some flak for this but it is ok,

I really feel comfortable in "my own truth" as I call it. I try real hard to tell the truth at all times but sometimes my ocd takes over and prevents that from happening, like when I use to buy liquer without thinking about it or, don't know how to explain, it was sort of an automatic thing, go to the store for some milk er something and pick up some beer at the same time.

What I mean to say is that old habits are hard to break!

Peace!

Bobby..

A friend once ask me some advice, she said that she had been over paid a thousand bucks on her pay check and wanted to know what she should do. I told her to report back to her boss what had happened. Well, two weeks later she called me thanking me and I said. for what? She said that she had gotten a promotion to accounting, a pay increase and that her boss told her she could keep extra grand.

We never know when honesty will pay handsomely

Advice is also cheap!

Gnon I know exactly what you mean. I have had things like that happen to me which is more encouragement for me to be more truthful in every facet of my life.

Thanks!