Liars Anonymous Community Group
A support group to provide those with a compulsive addiction to lie a place to share hope, strength and courage with others like them; solve our common problem and help others with a compulsion to lie. We aren't alone!
Harry has been lying and it makes Sally crazy.
Lying triggers Sally. When she was a little girl too many times - she was verbally and physically abused, and lied too. Sally grew up fearing others, and eventually, after so much fighting at home and during her career, she became exhausted and eventually withdrew from the world. Sally now lives by herself in solitude, as the unloved daughter, and has had a string of failed relationships, having never found the right man … until Harry came along.
Harry grew up in an environment where he was not able to share his feelings. And then he stopped volunteering emotional intimacy (emotional honesty) to his parents, and his former wife. Harry was not used to sharing his feelings and lived his entire life in total solitude with his authentic emotions being trapped … until he met Sally.
Sally demanded complete open-ness, trust, and transparency because of her fear of the World, and her lack of trust in herself. Harry wanted that too, but he was conditioned to keep his thoughts safe and private. Sally would get aggressive/passive with Harry and demand that he told the truth. This would only trigger Harry, as Sally was acting out like his mother, demanding, unforgiving and unemotional. Sally was always on the look-out for reassurance that she’s indeed loved and valued—and she is, therefore, inclined to be hypervigilant about possible threats—her demands may well seem to suck the oxygen out of the room and cause Harry to withdraw under what feels like a siege to his Castle.
The problem
In most of the situations that Harry has lied to Sally, it is because he is anxious and afraid. No doubt he has done this before, in childhood when it sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t, but more often than not it was effective enough to keep him out of trouble, especially with the many challenges being thrown at him.
The problem with Harry's lies and his own anxiety about Sally’s reaction. He lies to avoid that little-kid (the 10-year-old boy), getting-in-trouble feelings, as well as her "parental" anger and possibly punishment - her withdrawal/avoidance. Sally's reactions have been so violent, and strong, that Harry is wired to fear her, so he strategizes, and works out what to and not to say to Sally.
The Cycle
What now happens is the setting up of a dysfunctional cycle. Sally has her own hypersensitivity to trust and honesty from her childhood experience being lied too by her parents (and possibly violent/unfaithful/dishonest boyfriends) — it is now part of her mental DNA, and she is addicted to the rage, coming in and out of it intermittently.
Going into her relationship with Harry …Sally has tried a few things and does her best to not be overly intrusive on occasion and to take him at his word. But when the lies are so big, and delayed, and when pushed her worst fears to come to the fore, and she EXPLODES - and get violently aggressive, throwing him out of her house, walking out of his house, walking away, withdrawing physical intimacy for weeks, etc. And because of her intelligence, she is always able to intellectualize her actions, to avoid sitting in her real feelings.
When this happens, it triggers Harry's worst fears. His brain is telling him that he was right all along: Telling the truth is not safe, she is not safe to be around, she is crazy, and he actually needs to get better at being secretive and withholding. Plus his past is one of women hurting him. She accuses him of stonewalling, he goes on ice and withdraws to his cave, and then the romance stops.
Harry and Sally could fight this battle ... forever, with Sally getting hurt, getting angry, and trying to get Harry to change and speak the truth making him completely vulnerable and exposed, and all the while Harry could be ducking and weaving to keep Sally off his back and avoid conflict, and avoid feeling trapped.
For his part, Harry obviously needs to do his best to step up and be honest, behaviorally overriding his little-boy, anxious brain yelling at him to keep quiet. He needs to keep his eyes on the prize — learning to stop being so afraid, learning to be an adult, learning to confront and emotionally manage someone else’s strong reactions. And he needs to step up in this way even in those times when Sally's anger gets the best of her.
He needs to calmly make his case that while he is aware that his lying has been incredibly destructive, it is part of his values not to cut Sally off; his lying about the past doesn’t mean that he loves Sally any less, in fact, he loves Sally more than anyone, because he feels safe with her. This may be hard for her to swallow, but if she can try this thinking out, it may help her heal her old wounds.
For Sally, she needs to look at her side too. Her fear of the World. Her lack of trust in herself primarily needs to be addressed. Sally simply does not believe in herself. She trusts no-one because that's the safest way, she won’t get hurt. It is not possible for any of us to resolve the others issues. The reality is that nobody can know if you’re lying or doing or feeling anything else for that matter - and that’s the nature of the madness - the only thing one can do however is to trust yourself, to make a good or bad judgment call & to deal with any repercussions.
Life in other words for Sally involves risk - and she can either reject love or embrace it, and accept that it’s not always going to be perfect. The choice towards the path of unconditionally love is hers.
Bottom Lines
Both partners try to do the best they can.
Sally puts her head down and focuses on containing her feelings (and avoiding outbursts of anger), ceases to tell Harry what he is doing is not good enough, because she wants to help Harry learn to step up and be honest (‘make me proud’).
Harry does his best to step up and speak up, even though he internally fears Sally's wrath, to help her learn to trust him. He must trust that she will not hurt him.
They do their best to break the cycle, doing the constant voice-over that “This is more about me than you, and I’m doing this because I don’t want to hurt the person I care about the most.”
And what if Harry never quite buys into this plan of stopping the lies? Sally can, if she is willing, still work her side of the equation as best she can around her issues of trust, control, etc. Her changes may alter the climate and that, in turn, may motivate Harry to change his behavior (or vice versa, of course). Harry is working hard to reduce the amount of stress in his life and is starting to spend a lot of his energy and time on recovery from lying.
But to ensure that the couple not gets caught in this cycle forever, it helps to have a bottom line about time. They need to put their heads down, resist the urge to keep score, and then look up after three or six months and see where they are at. Obviously, all this not only takes awareness and responsibility but also courage - taking the risk of being honest with themselves and each other in order to discover whether their values are compatible and whether they are able to work through these obstacles together.
I am onedayhonest.
LastLie
Wow. That is quite a powerful post which resonated all to clearly with my situation. Kudos. This helped me calm down and believe that I have a future as an honest person somehow, even if the one I love cannot believe that as possible. Thank you. I'm new to the group by the support I have found here has already been overwhelming. ♡
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