Telling blatant lies and/or withholding information or the truth from your partner is a form of betrayal. Noone accepts a lie by anyone about anything; if it is your marriage partner it is especially destructive. When a relationship depends on loyalty and virtue (such as marriage) truth is an essential tool! Our humanity makes us subject to commit all sorts of mistakes, no one escapes this. It is not the doing but rather the accumulation over time and the subject of which you are lying about. For me it was the “finding” of items. The dip in his desk while looking for a stamp. That struck me. He supposedly had quit years before. When did he start back? Why was he hiding it? Besides it being a gross habit it can be health harming as well. I have to confront him with my finding and he apologizes and says it is not a lot that he does it. He gets bored working from home, etc. Me coming home from work and him meeting me in the garage and I could tell he’d been drinking so I ask him. He would say “no” many times. But I knew. He did finally admit one day he had been lying and started sobriety from alcohol. But not the ADHD meds I had a problem with him taking. It was SO odd that he even started them in the first place. I have never met someone as “collected” and put together. Neat, organized, a scheduler, list-maker and follow-througher; a person whose routine you could probably set time by. He was typically up by 5 am, could lay down and sleep no problem by 8 or 9 pm. I will never understand why he felt he has ADHD? I was diagnosed late in life and I STRUGGLED IMMENSELY with all the things that I considered attributes of his. I could not set a task and follow through on completion. I am a “doom piles” maker (if youve never heard this expression look it up) I could not read, COULD NOT READ a paragraph and retain the information. If I made a list I would forget it at home. Chronic insomnia and varied schedules resulting in “what planet am I on?” brain fog. Being diagnosed and taking meds was a game changer for me. And I hate taking synthetics; I typically won’t even take it on the weekends to ensure I will not have to take a higher dose in the future because my brain does not respond to the current one. When I asked him why he went to the clinic to get the prescription he said he thought it “helped him”. But he could not look me in my eyes. He finally said he would stop taking it. A couple months later I was searching for something I needed from the truck, guess what I found? He kept promising to have a conversation with me about it but there was always a “reason” not to. It was huge that he quit drinking but is it really sobriety if you’re taking pills, dipping and ripping on a vape-pen with thc every day? The jury is out on whether or not he “needed” adhd medicine. But my gut tells me it he does not need them. Years ago I had the feeling he was “hiding” his phone from me. You just get a feeling. If I walked into the room, he’d exit out of the current screen. Or he wouldn’t look at texts as he got them if we were sitting on the couch together. I found it unsettling and I committed the ultimate “sin”: I looked at his phone once when he left it unattended. He had a “friend” that was bragging about multiple affairs he was having behind his wife’s back. To say I was sick is an understatement. To see “way to go boy” and “high-five” exchanges between my husband and that filth was GUTTING. The friend would also send pictures of these ladies to MY husband. My husband never said “dude, what are you doing?!” Or “what about ______, she’s such a sweet, loyal girl!!?” He had known her for years, he should have considered her a friend. He never said “I don’t feel right about this, I’m married as well and this is wrong”. None of that. It was “get it, do it!” When we had the knock-down-blow-up-fight about it he said “that’s just how guys talk”. Is it? Every guy? Or just those lacking in morality and marriage code of covenant? The worst part is that wasn’t the only friend of his that committed adultery and the common denominator is that my husband wasn’t the one saying “come on now, this is wrong and I cannot stand by and say nothing!” What if he had spoken up? Maybe he could have been real help for his “friends” and their precious wives. I knew them both; I had to be around both knowing what I knew!! He put me in that position and I have great regret for not telling them. But if I had I knew my spouse would be madder than a hornet and that is not something I wanted to have happen. Over the years he would express regret about these “episodes” but not fully grasp that in my soul I felt he capable and maybe had cheated on me if this was his sentiment of marriage. Why not? How am I so special that it should not happen to me? Those women were/are beautiful, smart, loyal, loving wives and it happened to them.

He tried to tell me in the end he “corrected” all the mistakes he made with this situation and others. But when? Immediately? No!! I had to stand by for at least a year or so after while he would take phone calls from this friend, and say later “I know you hate _____ but let me tell you….” something about their conversation. Then one day he stopped responding to this friend and would tell other friends how he learned this was a flawed person/friendship and probably needed to not have this type of friend in his married life. But recently he accused me of “severing” relationships in his life. Which ones? I liked all of his friends except for the ones that cheated on their spouses. Raise your hand if you’re in a relationship or married and WANT your person to be “best pals” with someone cheating? Especially if your person is not even being a good friend/person and trying to steer them on the right path? Noone? Yes, exactly. It is hard to forgive or trust someone after that. I thought I had worked through it but something always happened to trigger that doubt. Afterall, guess who implemented and kept a lock on his cell phone from that moment until the day we separated?

But “trust me and move forward or it’s YOUR fault”!