You’ve gotten so much good support and advise here. Living with someone who lies about everything and nothing is so hard. For me, it became intolerable. Every lie, regardless of size or reason became a trigger and a reinforcement that there was no safe, stable ground to be found with my WH.
Something unhealthy goes on in the head of someone who's lying, and that would set off warning bells in me, especially if it's my supposedly formerly Wayward Spouse doing the lying.
THIS! All over the place. I don’t know if this describes your WH, but it is absolutely mine. He has spent his whole life lying to avoid any discomfort or conflict and basically do whatever he wanted with no accountability. In our case, he denied me access to the truth so that he didn’t have to deal with me asking questions or disagreeing or knowing things he wasn’t comfortable with.
For me, that isn’t a marriage or a friendship or a decent relationship of any kind.
So I’ll just say that I realized that yes, I needed complete honesty and no lies. Yes, even (especially), the small sneaky lies that were just hiding by making up a completely false narrative.
BUT, I’d say that no lies was more than just necessary for my healing, I realized that in the case of my WH, it was truly impossible for him to ever be healthy and whole and able to be a decent partner to anyone AND continue lying as a casual habit. For waywards like my WH, I think that the lying and hiding and avoiding were the fundamental building blocks of all types of wayward behavior, including what led him to infidelity. Stopping technical infidelity while continuing to lie as a part of his daily routine amounted to the white knuckling of a dry drunk. It just kept the door open to wayward behavior of all kinds.
I know very well that it’s easy to feel swayed by how miserable our WHs are with their choices. It’s just tragic to me that that misery isn’t enough to make them really commit to the hard work of fundamentally changing their (self) destructive behaviors. And yes, maybe for some it’s just too difficult in the end or impossible for them. Which really is tragic for everyone involved.
I spent years trying to save my WH from himself. I nearly lost myself completely in doing so only to finally come to the conclusion that everyone had been telling me for ages: it’s not possible to fix someone else.
You seem like you have a plan to get some space for the moment. There is no down side to taking time to focus just on what you need and your own healing. In the end, he will have to decide how he wants to be for the rest of his life.
I hope the best for you in your journey, lessthinking. This shit is sooooo hard.
