Surviving a lie: How big of a lie or secret can a relationship withstand? We hear from a relationship expert about what lies are survivable and how to move forward, perhaps even making the relationship stronger in the process. Plus, we hear from a Capsule reader, who was left reeling after her boyfriend revealed a secret…
Welcome to our series, The Love Diaries – a space for you to share your experiences, advice, fairy-tale endings, setbacks and heartbreaks. We’ll be hearing from industry experts giving practical advice alongside Capsule readers (You!) sharing your firsthand experiences with love – from the woman who cheated on her husband with a work colleague, one woman’s temptation now the love of her life is finally single (although she’s not), and the woman who forced her husband to choose between her and his girlfriend.
Kim felt pretty sure her boyfriend Craig was going to propose sometime soon. They’d been together for more than three years, were living together and often talked about the future.
Instead, she felt her stomach plummet when Craig said they needed to have “a talk”. By his tone, body language and shaking hands, Kim could see this wasn’t going to be a particularly happy, easy chat.
Had he been cheating? Did he want to break up with her? A thousand scenarios went through Kim’s head.
Instead, it was a scenario she’d never imagined.
Craig had been keeping a secret from Kim. A rather huge one:
He had a three-year-old child.
See, a month before he met Kim, he’d had a short relationship with a woman. Six weeks into dating Kim, that woman had got in touch: she was pregnant.
As Craig explained, she was going to keep the baby, and she didn’t expect him to be a part of the child’s life, or to financially contribute, but she wanted him to know. Craig did want to be a part of the kid’s life, and contribute – but, it turned out his involvement (besides financially) was very limited, because she decided to move to Australia, where her mother and sisters lived.
At that stage though, his relationship with Kim was just in its early days and he reasoned that he didn’t want to scare her off, before it had even begun. But then, as time went on it got harder to tell her. The more time that went by, the worse it felt that he had kept it from her, the secret felt bigger with every month that passed, and the harder it was to tell her.
Kim felt shocked – and disappointed. “I was well into my thirties when I met Craig,” she says. “So, of course, I wasn’t expecting a clean slate – I knew there would be some baggage of some kind somewhere, so I wasn’t expecting a fairytale. But the fact he hid it? It was horrible. He described it as keeping a secret from me, but it wasn’t that. He told a lie. Over and over again.”
While Kim reeled from the information – and tried to take it all in – she thought of so many different scenarios where he had lied: the times he’d been in Australia “just for work”. All those times they’d talked about children in the future. The times she’d sat around the dinner table with his parents and family members, and the conversations they’d had, with them knowing that Craig had a baby and she didn’t know.
“I was embarrassed,” says Kim. “I was embarrassed for so many reasons. How would I talk to his family again? How would I explain this to mine? To my friends? It’s one thing if your boyfriend suddenly finds out he has a three-year-old out there – it’s a whole other thing to find out there is a three-year-old that you didn’t know about, but he did. His mother had even met the baby – her grandchild!”
Craig said he completely understood that what he had done was wrong, but he didn’t want to lose Kim – he wanted a future together, which is why he was finally telling the truth. He knew it would take some time, so said she could ask as many questions, and spend as much time thinking it over as she needed.
“I knew what I wanted to do, deep down, straight away,” says Kim. “But I knew I should ask a lot more questions before I made a final decision.”
Relationship expert and divorce coach Bridgette Jackson has seen countless numbers of couples in crisis, due to a lie or secret.
She’s seen relationships go either way in these situations – sometimes, they’re deal breakers and end a union swiftly, other times they can fester and cause the slow demise of a coupling, In other situations, they can also be survivable and even end up strengthening a relationship.
Bridgette says one of the most important components of figuring out whether a lie is survivable or not, is the context around it. “It can help you help decide how you respond, how as a couple you might work through it and whether you can in fact move past it,” she says. “For example, if a lie is to avoid embarrassment, either yours or theirs, this is different to lying to hide what the person knows will damage or destroy the relationship.”
But ultimately, lying in a relationship always ends in turmoil as it goes against what is commonly one of the fundamental understandings on which a relationship has been built: mutual trust.
Sometimes the lies can be large, and other times – as Bridgette has often seen – it can be more of a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ situation, where a lot of little lies add up over time.
“Even little lies can add up over time, and cause the trust and relationship to crumble,” she says. “Usually this is because you both have different views of what innocent lies look like. This is why I always say at the start of a relationship you need to have conversations that enable you both to really get to know each other, as this sets out what is acceptable to someone and what is not. Repeating a lie or continuing to lie to a partner or spouse, in most cases will erode trust, respect for each other and create a wedge between you. Only the person being lied to can decide if any amount of lying is acceptable or not, especially when it comes from their partner. If you have both talked about the fundamentals your relationship is built on, they will be aware of what you expect them.“
Survivable vs relationship-ending lies
Bridgette’s seen it all, so… in her experience what kind of lies are survivable, and which are nearly always relationship-ending in the end? Here are her lists:
Survivable lies:
- Some lies that can come from anxiety and a need for self-preservation
- Not being honest and lying about a previous relationship or marriage.
- Lying to protect self-image and confidence of the liar, and sometimes lying to someone to protect your image.
- Lying to cover about an emotional or physical attraction to someone else.
- Also, lying or keeping secrets about:
- Personal past e.g. breaking the law, drug or alcohol abuse, theft.
- Family secrets.
- Financial issues, such as hidden debt or a secret bank account.
- Not being truthful and then lying to cover hobbies or events a partner would not approve of.
- Bad habits, e.g. smoking, gambling, and eating certain foods.
- Children from a previous a previous marriage or relationship. This can involve multiple scenarios such as contact with them or no contact
- Previous unfaithfulness.
- Resentful feelings and then lying to cover when it comes to a partner’s family.
- Fear. If someone is afraid, they will often lie to protect themselves.
Lies that are nearly always marriage-ending:
- Affairs and infidelity
- Those that involve the spending or siphoning off mutual finances
- Abuse of alcohol or banned substances or a gambling addiction
- Hiding or lying about a previous relationship or current one, even if not labelled an affair
So, how can a relationship survive a lie?
Bridgette says that even though the trust in a relationship or marriage may be broken, it doesn’t mean, that the relationship cannot be salvaged.
“It can be repaired if both are committed to the process and want to repair and rebuild the relationship,” she says. “It is challenging so both need to be committed, open and honest during the process.”
Bridgette says that research shows us a couple must address several key issues in order to survive a lie. Those include:
- The details around the lie need to be shared, as difficult as it can be to hear them.
- The anger and resentment needs to be channelled and released.
- Both of you need to show a commitment to each other, the process and the relationship.
- The trust needs to be rebuilt as does the relationship
From here, both parties need to be committed to the process, knowing that it will not be easy, says Bridgette. “It takes time to rebuild the trust and what helps is know that both are on the same page when it comes to the process and want to rebuild.”
She says, both people need to be vested in:
- Wanting the relationship to work. This also involves being honest and open in all communication. It includes no more telling of lies or simply telling the person it will not happen again.
- An agreement to forgive and be forgiven. While working through the lie, and what led to it, achieving this goal will take some time, however both being committing is key.
- Being open to self-growth and improvement both in behaviour and communication to each other. Breaking trust won’t simply be repaired with a promise to not do it again and change along with the statements of forgiveness. The underlying causes for the lie need to be identified, examined and worked on by both partners for the issue to remain in the past.
- Acknowledging each other’s inner feelings and when appropriate constructively sharing feelings on the issue. If one is left to constantly relive or obsess over what happened this will not solve anything and will only place a handbrake on being able to move forward, together.
So, what did Kim decide?
Kim says she knew in her heart fairly early on, that despite the turmoil she was feeling, deep down she knew she loved Craig and his actions were never about hurting her.
“I understood his feelings of not wanting to tell me right away, because it may have put me off the relationship,” she says. “Which, to be honest, if he had of said in our first two months of dating – ‘oh, by the way, my ex is pregnant with my baby’, I might have felt it was too messy and ended things before my feelings deepened. I get that from there, it would have been hard to bring up.”
Kim says she’s still battled with feeling embarrassed at times, and has resorted to a white lie of her own – she’s dropped in something about his child into conversation and then when someone’s questioned it, she’s said, “Oh, gosh, haven’t I told you about this before?” and acted as though she has always known the information.
“Because, it’s not the information that’s bad,” says Kim. “I am fine with the fact that he has already had a child, but it was the fact that he kept that information from me that was the problem.”
Kim says they have a very open and honest relationship now – that includes contact with the child – who, will soon be Kim’s step-child as they’re getting married in 2024.
