Compulsive Lying/Relationship issues

[MrJ01]

Hey everyone, this is my first post on beyondblue and I’m hoping this is the right category for me to post it in.

Basically, the past 2 years I’ve developed a habit of lying a lot towards my girlfriend and hiding things, mostly out of shame of what I’ve done, or I’ve been scared to face the consequences because I don’t know how she will react and what would happen to our relationship. Me and my girlfriend have been dating for two years, since early 2019, on and off multiple times, and during this time I have lied a lot, and my actions and my lies have caused a lot of strain on her mental health and well-being and also our relationship in general. When we first started dating, the first month things were mostly fine but the night before our first break up, whilst she was at work I ended up cheating on her by txxxting and sending certain pictures to a female friend of mine, after it happened I felt horrible but I was too scared to tell her which looking back, I feel like a coward for. The morning after me and her broke up, mostly due to my guilt of what I had done and I wanted to just run away from what I did rather than face it.

After we had broken up, I had gone and spent time with other new female friends (4 to be exact) and during that time me and my girlfriend (ex during this time) were also talking but as friends, and I ended up giving my ex a coldsore, I had no idea I was even carrying the herpes virus and I had even got tested after she got her coldsore and my tests came back negative. Anyways all of this led her to question me about my activities during our break up, and at first I only told her about one of the girls but hid the rest, and continued to see 1 of them during the rest of the break up.

Eventually me and my ex got back together, and during this time I still hadn’t told her i cheated or about 3 of the other girls i spent time with during the break up, and i even kept one of them as a friend, at some point during our second stint at the relationship I ended up telling her about what I had done and that absolutely crushed her, which also led to our second break up and during that time, I saw a new female friend but instead of hiding it this time, i did tell my girl/ex about what happened. i’m running out of words to use but basically i would continue to lie a bit more and txxxt other girls, one being her best friend. during our break ups, but as time went on i would eventually tell her the truth more and more. part 2 will be in replies

[MrJ01]

throughout 2020, my lying has significantly decreased compared to the first half of our relationship, i still do sometimes but it’s only over smaller things now such as how much pain i’m in or how much i spent whilst shopping. i’m not here to justify what i’ve done, i know that everything i’ve done is absolutely disgusting and i hate the fact i did these things and caused so much harm and strain on our relationship, but unfortunately i can’t change the past but i do want to change the future so i just wanted to know if there was anyone out there who was able to help me to stop compulsively lying.

i’m not looking for sympathy or anything, i understand the weight of my actions and that i deserve the consequences, i just don’t want to be this person anymore

[quirkywords]

MrJ01

Welcome to the forum and thanks for writing honestly about your relationship.

I am wondering when you say that your has decreased compared to first half of your relationship is that because you are no longer seeing other girls.

When you say you dont want to be this person anymore, does that mean you dont want to be a liar or you dont want to be someone who hides things or sees other girls.? I think you have not liked the person who did those things. I suppose taking small steps which you are doing helps .

There are threads on compulsive lying you may want to browse.

I can see you are trying to change . You can not change the past but you can starting doing things differently in the present that will affect your future.

[MrJ01]

quirkywords said:

I am wondering when you say that your has decreased compared to first half of your relationship is that because you are no longer seeing other girls.

When you say you dont want to be this person anymore, does that mean you dont want to be a liar or you dont want to be someone who hides things or sees other girls.? I think you have not liked the person who did those things. I suppose taking small steps which you are doing helps .

Thanks for the reply and for trying to support. I think my lying has decreased over time, because despite breaking up multiple times, my girlfriend has helped me in telling the truth each and every time, so before I would just lie and hide, but eventually I would straight up tell her. However, it’s just that I still had things hidden from the past that I had done and I had only recently told her, which upset her because she thought I had told the whole truth.

When it comes to me not wanting to be my old self, I mean that as in I want to stop the lying entirely and I don’t want to hide anything. Talking to others girls hasn’t been an issue since our 3rd break up in Christmas of 2019/2020. Honestly though, I do hate that I’ve lied so much and all the pain and suffering I’ve been going through is 100% because of my own actions, because of me lying it’s significantly affected my relationship and my girlfriends happiness and mental health, which has led the relationship to become more toxic than before due to all my lying, and I’ve got no one to blame other than myself so I just want to change who I am as a person and stop the lying because I know that in the long run it just won’t do me any good.

[Taco_gal]

Hey MrJ01,

Just letting you know I am going through basically the exact same scenario you have described with my 5 year relationship (and I have also had 2 breaks up from it - but found myself trying to make amends yet again)

As a girlfriend, I got so much better with the compulsive lying and for about 5 months solid I was true about everything EXCEPT ONE THING which was cheating on my boyfriend before our first break-up.

… however after the second breakup, reason being: initially I had made the mistake again of cheating on him.. and couldn’t bare to disrespect him by continuing the relationship (but I did not tell him) FYI: we are still talking now but not exclusively together as he wants me to work on myself first before getting together again.

I don’t understand where this deep rooted compulsive behaviour of both cheating & lying occurs… and I’ve become quite interested about it in the last two months….

I was just wondering if you have any updates at this point in time … as a girl that deeply relates with this issue and hopes to improve, as I only dream to be a loyal woman one day and to be a proud wife to someone someday.