Re: i feel lost and confused

Hi,

I just wanted to chime in a bit about my experience with this. As a reminder, I am not a licensed mental health practitioner (for your safety!).

Lying is a symptom of a much bigger problem. The liar thinks that the truth is unacceptable to the person who's being given the lie. Lying is the lesser evil than telling the truth, the liar usually believes. Perhaps the truth is illegal and might result in severe punishment. Perhaps the truth would cause a scene or an upset that the liar would rather not face... right now....

The only other case I've found has been with a habitual liar, the kind who makes up wild stories, which get more fascinating with each telling. This kind thinks so little of himself that he has to make up someone to pretend to be because what he pretends is, he believes, far more interesting than anything that he can be. Of course, as long as he believes that about himself, it's completely true.

I have experience with both types of liar, since I've been both on occasion, and I've dealt with both, too. But enough about me. Let's talk about you.

Either of these is fatal in a relationship. Being in a relationship means getting to know the other person, ideally at levels of intimacy which we usually can only dream of, and this is impossible when someone is sitting there hiding the "unacceptable" parts of himself, or presenting a completely false persona and hoping that you'll like that.

I'm guessing the guy in question here is not a wild-story, habitual liar. Those are pretty easy to spot when you get close to them. So, we (probably) have someone who's trying to hide those parts of himself that he figures you won't or can't accept.

We've already spotted him doing this with his own family -- hiding the fact of the engagement from them -- so I'm guessing that he's used to operating in this mode. My suspicion is that there are things about himself which he's not willing to talk to you about, probably for fear of rejection. I don't know what it is, of course -- it could be anything, really. Maybe he really likes country music and you've told him how much you hate it. Maybe he's into really kinky sex but thinks you'd find that disturbing. Maybe he has a former drug problem and thinks of you as "pure as the driven snow". Maybe he's got a son living across the country whom he's never told you about. Maybe he and his family are connected to the mob. Whatever. I doubt it's just one thing -- I've never seen it be just one thing.

The solution, usually, is to coax him into tearing down those walls and telling you about himself. And when you do this, you have to be willing to accept whatever he is hiding back there. This is NOT an easy process (usually)! And you need to tear down your own walls, too. Of course, maybe then he'd reject you! It's scary opening up like that, but it's also the one of the most liberating experiences I know.

And once you get past that, you'll find yourself in love in a way you've probably hoped for for a long time but didn't know whether or not you'd ever find it. Well, that's how it worked for me, but enough about me. Let's talk about you.

So... what you've gotta figure out is whether or not pursuing this is worth the time and effort. And he needs to determine that, too. Find out whether or not he wants things to get better. Find out if he even thinks that it's possible for your relationship to get better. So many people only see relationships as a deterioration process, but it does not have to be that way!

Relationships can improve with age, but it's not just a given. It requires some work. Yeah, there is the occasional relationship where the two people involved are already completely open and honest with each other. But don't let these occasional fairy tale happenings make you believe that you can't have a similarly fantastic relationship with your love. You can. You just have to work at it, because one or both of you is still hiding something.

The biggest, hardest part of creating a relationship is tearing down one's own walls and being willing to share one's self completely with the other person. The first time a wall is torn down is the hardest, but it's rarely the one which causes lots of shouting. Usually, it's the little things that people start with first, and eventually one partner will have worked his way up to some degree of courage and will confess to something which is virtually guaranteed to upset the other. If you can endure these upsets, you've got it made. You'll both settle down, eventually, if you're really meant to be together.

If you can't -- in other words, if whatever it is is so truly heinous that you cannot accept it, or he cannot, then a split up is the only option. It's better, however, to know sooner than later. Those arguments and shouting matches you're experiencing are a symptom of this situation (hiding from one's partner), and they'll only get worse if you don't take steps to make the relationship better.

Now, I've only got around twelve years of exposure to my wife, but I've fought hard to realize this information (and sometimes to not realize it, much to my detriment). This is, basically, the culmination of what I've realized about my own relationships and the relationships of my friends and my wife's friends. That's not exactly a huge number of test cases, but this information hasn't failed me yet.

So... get to talkin' with your partner about this. Maybe see if he'll read through this message thread with you and see if anything agrees with him. And then go to work.

Good luck!

=-John-=
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