I suppose this is my commitment to stop lying.  I guess I should be honest (haha) and say that Im very anxious about this commitment. I dont know whether I am a compulsive liar, I do not lie to anyone, besides the odd white lie, other than my husband. I am making this commitment because I have been having an affair and it is time for the lying to stop. I havent been lying only about the affair but for my whole relationship. I have been with my husband since I was 17 (8.5 years), and while we loved each other, and still do, I guess our personalities were very different. I was free, sociable, lively and i guess self centred in a hedonistic manner, i lived and still do live very much for pleasure of the moment and I wasnt used to having someone else to care for. He could be over sensitive, sulky, moody and had a temper problem. The lies were born out, I suppose, of a sense of trying to keep him and myself happy, which is messed up in itself. It wasnt that i didnt care about his feelings or what he wanted but that i saw no harm in what i was doing so i thought he was being unecessarily unhappy. I didnt see it as bad at the time, just that they were white lies. My sense of freedom and carefree-ness to him was the feeling of being careless with his feelings, thinking i might run off with someone else or do something that might hurt his feelings, when in actual fact my actions were innocent and I loved him more than anything. Anyway, these lies snowballed. I didnt lie when I didnt to. I have told the truth in many difficult situations and i dont really remember it being an issue before we lived together (coming up 5 years), we spent three years apart at university and during that time, i dont remember it being a problem. We argued a lot, we have always done. It is a funny thing looking back at your relationship and its faults. He has always had a huge temper and he has always lost it with me, but his temper, while living together, has made my lying worse (im trying to not get off topic) I lie often. Im trying to think clear headedly about the lies i told  before my affair. I didnt lie all the time, we get on really well, in the fact we love each toher and the company we provide each other, so theres not alwasy a reason to. But i guess its a chicken and egg situation of his anger and my lying. they perpetuate each other. I am a passive person who wants to please people and is emotionally lead, he is a dominant person who is very logical and sees things in a very black and white manner, his temper problem means that he is very stressed a lot of the time. I can only say I think I lie to avoid confrontation, to avoid anger, to avoid being controlled. But he would say he gets angry and tries to control becasue i lie. I now notice myself lying for all sorts of things, whether its if ive done something slightly irresponsible like not checked my bank in a week, whether its that i want some space, right up to large things like my affair.

I value honesty and i do not lie to anyone else. Something that my other relationship had was that, complete honesty, I could say anything to him and vice versa and it was wonderful. I want that with my husband ( i have ended the affair to try and work things out with him, hence the support group) but its so hard to break the pattern and habit. It is hard because Im in love with the person I had the affair with and I feel the need to break things off with him amicably and he has been so badly hurt in this it breaks my heart and of course my husband wont agree to me talking to him at all, or communicating to him through friends etc, perfectly understandably, but this is a thing i feel i need to do, this is a thing I want to lie about, but I know he will leave me if I lie and leave me if I do it honestly so I have no choice.  He has been wonderful when i have been honest, throughout the revealing of the affair he has dealt with it very well considering. But he doesnt trust a word I say and he has good reason not to.

I want to make this vow of honesty for us. So thats what Im doing in this confession/commitment.

Day 3