I was asked to share my point of view about why I would lie to my wife even over stupid things. I am not condoning lying. I was a coward and didn’t want to face my wife’s reactions and how she made me feel about my choices and decisions. It was easier to lie. She would always find out and always confront me and so not only did she make me feel bad for the choice I made, she then felt disgusted over my lying. But as I really thought about the lying and why I did it, it was my way of hurting her back. I knew how much she hated my lying, but I hated how much she made me feel bad for any choice I made. She always made me feel less than a man. Like she was saying she would choose to do something different because she was better than me.
The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy. Proverbs 12:22
Lying was my way of payback. No, it was not right. It was vengeance and not taking leadership as a man. Sheila, you said once that people lie because they are getting something out of it, and that made me really think because the lying really was an issue with my wife, but I could not seem to stop. It wasn’t until I realized I was lying as a payback, trying to gain the respect I wanted desperately, and thought lying in some sick twisted way was going to get me that respect. I always thought, “if I tell the truth and you won’t respect it, then I may as well lie and keep my truth guarded and protected.”
And that is what I was doing. Guarding my choices from a very controlling and disrespectful wife that I could not trust with my feelings. Even over very simple things, I would lie and keep guarded from her because it seemed she was never ok with anything I ever did. And it got to the point that if she didn’t say she was not happy with my choice, I would feel it in the air even if it wasn’t there. I just came to a place in my life where I felt she was looking down her nose at me all the time and I was a child that disappointed her. So when I found a woman that looked up to me, showed me that I did no wrong in her eyes, I can’t begin to explain what that did for my self-esteem. Years and years of being pushed down and finally, someone was there to make me see that I was not a joke, that I was not a disgrace and that I was a man.
I used all of that as a reason to commit adultery. None of it was right. I chose running away to someone else over fixing what was broken in my marriage. And I had plenty of people that encouraged me and said I had every right to because my wife was ‘horrible.”
What they did not tell me was how the enemy would entice me, then beat me up over it. No, they did not tell me that once I listened to my flesh, that I would come to feel shunned by God, not that I was being shunned by Him, because He would have quickly forgiven me had I repented. But none of my friends told me how choosing this was going to cause me to feel very ashamed at my decisions, no matter how much I tried to justify it and blame it on my wife for her contentious behavior, I had NO RIGHT TO have an adulterous relationship. And to this day I am trying to make sense of my decision and how I was OK at the time to do it.
It’s not my wifes fault that I stepped out of the marriage. That is my fault. Just like I should have taken the lead in our family and not allowed my wife to keep disrespecting me and mistreating me like this. Instead of lying, I should have confronted her control, disrespect, her mocking, laughing and putting me down all the time in front of my family, friends and to my face. I thought God would understand why I found comfort in the arms of another. I was very wrong.
Signed,
Insight from the other side
