I was talking to a friend of mine and he recognized a horrible truth. One that has caused me the worst anxiety and the one thing that is proving to have the most devastating long term effect on me both mentally and emotionally... The horrible truth is, I will never get peace from the injustice of…..
The lies.
That has easily been the most difficult thing for me to come to terms with. The infidelity was an obvious breach of trust, but was never that difficult to understand. The lying, scheming, and gaslighting have left what I fear are life long scars.
In the absence of real life data, the brain creates its own reality. All of the blanks are filled in with ideas, scenario’s and images. Where a DS in the fog fills in the “real life” blanks with the affair partner using pixie dust, rainbows and movie romance dialogue a LS’s mind is forced to fill in the blanks created by the lies and betrayal with mind movies filled with conspiracies, worst case scenario’s and distrust.
I guess all of this makes perfect sense from an evolutionary or psychological standpoint. Every behavior is driven by one of two things, to get pleasure or avoid pain. When your imagination is left to color in the voids, it will do so using one of those two drives. The DS fog draws a picture that motivates the DS to seek the reward of dopamine, PEA and all the happy chemicals your brain rewards you with for mating. The LS smog builds its reality to avoid being vulnerable to additional pain. So in the same way a DS lives in the fantasy fog… I’m finding myself fighting through a booby-trapped reality that has me second guessing everything, paranoid and unable to trust.
I’m still uneasy, because I have to be. I will never have the satisfaction of the truth. Her truth is anything but, it’s a reality she built to cope with her own betrayal. She will never tell the truth, not to herself and not to me. She can’t. I will never get answers; never get satisfaction or closure from her.
I’m left to sort through the anger, distrust and wreckage and find my own peace. I’m trying to break down the bomb shelter I built around my soul, and somehow kill all the monsters which have been growing under my bed. All while attempting to co-parent my child with this woman, remain civil and partner with her for the benefit of my son’s emotional well being.
Infidelity didn’t cause this trauma in my soul, lies did.
For the newly betrayed, you wont see or feel the damage of the gaslighting till down the road... It's by far the hardest thing you will have overcome, regardless if you R or D... The elephant in the room will always be the lies.
Pit, I have always thought that the lying is actually worse than the chaeting. It's the lying that f-cks things up so bad in one's head. It causes you to question every single moment of the relationship. What was real? What wasn't? What was true? What was false?
You are right--you'll never know all the details. All you can do is hold onto what you DO know and move towards the future. Don't let what she did punish your new partner(s). It's gonna take you some time but you will get there.
So true. mine left me not only feeling inadequate and rejected (because no matter how much I wanted it for her she just couldn't be happy) then I find out about the infidelity and the fact she wasn't going to tell me, so once my self-esteem was knocked down by her saying she wanted out of the marriage I suddenly had all the mental movies of her sexual affairs (which seem to me about as bad as they get), topped off with all that confusion that resulted not only from her deliberate lies but the seeing how deep she went into her own fantasy, which just brings it back to the inadequacy and rejection of not being able to keep her happy - as a loyal spouse it seems to all come back onto my shoulders in every possible way.
This wreckage will never go away, but maybe I can send it to the bottom of the sea where I never have to look at it again.
You are so right. Even though we're together, it's the lies he told that are coming back to haunt us more than the act of cheating as time goes by.
Your post has me thinking - he is SO good at apologizing for cheating, but we've never really addressed the lying aspect. Maybe I should ask him to separate that from the cheating and think about it - I think that would help both of us. The fact that he is normally a scrupulously honest person - to the point of pain regularly - is very hard for me to reconcile.
I agree 100%. I would have and was willing to R if she had told me the truth. But after finding out the truth, telling her i know what happened, and then be lied to my face all the same, it was too much....
Yes; this really hits home for me. The lies are the worst part and the fact that they seemed to come so easily to him when I look back is especially hurtful. If someone had told me that my husband of 22 years would lie to my face so many times over after I confronted him with his affair, I would never have believed it! But it happened and is difficult to accept at times.
I agree 100%. I would have and was willing to R if she had told me the truth. But after finding out the truth, telling her i know what happened, and then be lied to my face all the same, it was too much....
Same here. I found out enough to be certain that she lied. Amazingly, even when I point out how ludicorus her story is, in the face of documentary evidence, she still lies to this day.
It's insulting. I can see she believes I am an idiot( nobody touch that,please).
That's where the line was drawn for me as well.... When I "let go" of the drive to fix or save my marriage was when I laid down the denial and told myself the truth... I could get around the cheating, I could never get around the lies. I may have been able to keep fighting for it... But somewhere down the road, the damage would have taken it's toll on me and the marriage would have ended. It was very hard for me to tell myself that truth. Posted via Mobile Device
Definitely in agreement with you there. Lying, gas-lighting, and character assassination, denials, half-truths, the irresponsible immaturity of blame-shifting....these evasions of the truth in an effort to avoid confronting the reality of the situation or in an effort to avoid accountability or whatever else they're used for are so painful. It's so much worse than just the simple act of cheating. It's like salt in a wound. It's almost like they not only want to have their cake and eat it too but also want to be both victor and victim in the whole situation just to be selfish. This is the part I'm really struggling with now, myself. Glad to read your post today because it resonates with me, though I am sorry that you are having to feel this way.
Not only are they painful, desert, they really piss one off.
How's this one for you:
Wife comes home at 3 in the morning, so drunk that she is stupid enough to wake me and proceed to tell me all about the fantastic physique of the young bike racing professional she spent the evening with.
Next day, I tell her this this was way over the top. Her explanation for treating me to this description:"Oh, I thought that you would be mad at me for coming in late. So, since you are an ex athlete, i thought you would be intrigued by the description of his fitness level, thus distracting you from the fact that i was out until 3 again."
Now, this is from a magna cum laude law school grad. She fully expected that I was so much dumber than her that I would buy this.
Really tough to have any respect for these a-holes after the crap that they spew. The mind boggling thing is that they are often so dumb that they are not even embarrassed for having said this stuff.
I think that would have been about the toughest thing for me to get past, the absolute dumbness. It would be embarrassing going though life with someone so incredibly stupid. Who would know what type of idiotic thing she might say to my friends or business associates.
Yes; this really hits home for me. The lies are the worst part and the fact that they seemed to come so easily to him when I look back is especially hurtful. If someone had told me that my husband of 22 years would lie to my face so many times over after I confronted him with his affair, I would never have believed it! But it happened and is difficult to accept at times.
All the time my H's A was going on, he continued to tell me how much he loved me. He would talk to her on the phone as he drove home from work, or from "working out", then come into our house and kiss me and lie to me about the events of his day. They would work together all day and then go eat and to the gym in the evening to "work out". All the time the working out was going on he was telling me that he was working out with " the guys at work". So many lies; months worth of them. Now he says he loves me and will spend the rest of his life making this up to me. I don't even know how a person could make this kind of thing up to another person. He lied so much that I don't believe him when he says he loves me( he told her that too). I don't think that he even knows what love is.
The gaslighting and lies were painful because the proof was daily in front of my face, he hid nothing. And when confronted lied. I thought I was going insane and I was.
The most painful part for me was the trust. I had trusted this person and I don't trust easily. That is what blew me away. The lies and deceit were to cover his backup plan but he didn't understand after what he had done his backup plan never existed except in all the fantasies he had created.
It was the demolished trust that destroyed me temporarily.
He never admitted anything, worked on closure myself and I haven't had contact since August 16th. He no longer exists in my new world.
I pray all of your pain begins to lessen. It did for me and the miracle is I look forward to my new days everyday.
Yes. The real hurt from the betrayal comes from the (continual) lies. That's why limbo is so hard - there's zero trust, yet this person is still in your life.
Look at the stories of the true R's. The lies end and the marriage can start healing.
cleaning up the wreckage 
