Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth

"When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her." —Adrienne Rich

I'm a honest person. I once shoplifted purple eyeshadow from a department store on a dare when I was 12 and was so filled with shame that I couldn't even use it. I routinely confessed to things that my parents didn't even know enough to ask me about. And any time my friends and I would wonder, aloud, if we could ever cheat on our husbands, it always boiled down to one thing for me: "How could I ever look him in the eye after cheating?"
So, to discover my husband's double life was more than a shock to me. It was an assault on the value system I thought we shared. If he lied about the big things, he must lie about everything. Was anything true?
And so I began calling my husband out for every single mistruth. I began to notice lies that I'd previously overlooked. Things that I would have called harmless before D-Day, I was beginning to see were part of a pattern.
He lied to avoid conflict. He lied to avoid consequences. He lied to seem nice. He told people he "couldn't" do things that he simply didn't want to do. He told me that he was late due to traffic instead of admitting that he got distracted at work and lost track of time. He told me he came to bed at midnight when it was 1 a.m. He told his mother he "had" to go visit a nearby friend rather than sit with her when the truth was she annoyed him. And on. And on.
I'm no saint, of course. I've told friends I like their new haircut when I don't particularly. I've professed to love meals that I choked down. Or to love gifts that I didn't.
I've tried to dedicate myself to radical honesty, ever since D-Day. But it's hard. Really hard. Sometimes a little lie is kinder than the truth. But each time I lie, even with the best intentions, I feel a little smaller.
Because I no longer believe that lies are harmless. I'm questioning if it's truly kinder to lie than to tell the truth to "spare" people's feelings. I'm beginning to think it's disrespectful to the person being lied to.
I was recently invited to join a writers' group. The others have been meeting for a few years and I was warned about one person in particular who's prickly about criticism. The others told me to "be careful" about what I say to her. They admitted that they tippy-toe around this person's work because they don't want to "hurt her feelings."
I listened to them and then I said that I wouldn't do that. I would, of course, be considerate. But it's a disservice to an adult writer to not be honest in my opinions of her work and how she might improve it. I don't claim to have all the answers. My opinions might be completely wrong. But she is a grown woman seeking input.
And I owe it to her to be honest, but also to myself.
Honesty is tough. But if we set the bar at "total honesty", then we're a lot more likely to at least get close to it. But if we set the bar at "honesty unless it makes us uncomfortable", then we're going to be living a whole lot of half-truths.
The other night, I suggested to my husband that we should take the dogs for longer walks because, as I pointed out, we could both stand to lose a little weight. 
"I don't think I need to lose any," he said.
"H'mmm...but you think I do?" I said.
He said nothing, which, of course, says a lot.
But at least, he's being honest. 

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

It's not the sex, it's the dishonesty, say many women who've been cheated on. Which is why even emotional affairs, in which there's no sex, can be as devastating a blow to a marriage as full-frontal betrayal.
It seems counterintuitive. When we have yet to be struck by betrayal, and we're hypothetically working out how we might respond, few of us, I would guess, say, "the sex is okay, but he'd better not lie to me about it!" We think that it's the sex outside the marriage that's the biggie. Then it happens. And a lot of us realize that it's the dishonesty – the steady buildup of outright lies, lies by omission, blurring of truth – that creates the biggest hurdle to get over.
When your reality turns out to be fiction, your whole world seems topsy-turvy. And betrayal becomes trauma. Nothing feels safe. No-one is to be trusted.
It's important to recognize that believing someone you love isn't stupidity. It isn't gullibility. It's generally loyalty. And trust.
But it's equally important to recognize if there was a voice, even a really quiet one, urging you to question. To investigate. To delve deeper into something that just didn't feel right.
That voice is your wiser self. The one we need to learn to listen to. The one too many of us have silenced over the years.
I've often heard betrayed wives, post-betrayal, note that they knew their husbands were lying because their mouths were moving.
Liars will lie. Once we know this, we act accordingly. And protect ourselves.
If your spouse, who's lied in the past, expects you to trust again, he needs to recognize it won't be easy.
It will require complete transparency on his part. He will have to answer any and all questions with absolute honesty and be prepared to prove that he's telling the truth, if you ask.
Your new code of conduct? Trust but verify. Need to check his cell phone messages? Go ahead. Want to see his Facebook messages. Right on.
Be careful you're not pain shopping (more on that in a later post – basically it refers to behaviour that prolongs the agony unnecessarily). But if you're genuinely feeling anxious and need proof that he's being honest, then he should be happy to give it to you. Each time you question and he proves himself moves both of you a bit farther along the path of healing.
If he's giving you a hard time about it, he clearly just doesn't get it. He lied. He betrayed. The onus is on him to support you in your healing.
Betrayal is a bitch.