I lied about something stupid and now he wants to breakup with me

[dmc123]

ok in a nutshell without typing an epic story........I love my bf dearly and we've been together just over 3 yrs, but I recently lied about something pretty stupid. I told him I was going to visit my parents, when actually, I would go to a friend's house or just drive around the city. I'm having issues with my family and he encourages me to go work them out, but as soon as I drive halfway there, I can't do it. I guess you can call it an anxiety attack. So I turn back and stay somewhere else.(it's quite the long story on the family issues).

 

He knows about my problems with my family and the advice he gives me is "just go and get it over with." I know he wants me to resolve my problems but he also didn't want my parents getting the idea that he's the reason for me not going to visit. As much as I kept telling him he has absolutely nothing to do with the problems going on and to not worry about it, he still didn't believe me. So I lied, telling him I was going home, so he can feel more secure in where he stands with my parents. Eventually, he found out that I lied and now he wants to break up with me. I never ever in the 3 yrs we've been together, gave him a reason to mistrust me. Now that I made this slip up, he wants to call it off. Any advice on how to save this relationship or start to make amends?

[tiki]

now he wants to break up with me

 

Sounds like if he wanted to break up with you, he already would have. What you did wasn't so bad. Just keep him "in the know" next time. If he's that big of a part of your life, why hide it from him? Tell him to get over it, it's your life, your family and your problems, he can't control it. You'll do it when you're ready.

 

And tell him if he weren't so demanding, maybe you would've felt secure enough to call him. But nooo, you felt like you let him down. He doesn't own you!

 

Look, now I'm making excuses for you.

 

Surely he won't dump you though...I think he's calling your bluff. If that's all he's got to complain about...sheesh.

[HotCaliGirl]

Tiki, I don't think he's bluffing. This is serious and there are a lot of guys (maybe girls too but I find this situation mostly with men) who will not put up with even a tiny lie.

 

The last thing you want to do is to justify lying to him with various excuses that might sound good, and on top of it blame it on him, saying stuff like it was due to him being controlling. No no no. Don't even go down that path if you want to save your relationship.

 

You should acknowledge that you were wrong to lie - it might take you a while for you to really believe this so you have to understand that you were in order to express it to him - and convince him that it will not happen again...and make sure it doesn't!

[dmc123]

and convince him that it will not happen again...

 

his philosophy unfortunately is since I lied once, that it will happen again and that's a hard philosophy to talk someone out of, especially someone that can be as stubborn as him.

 

So how do I go about convincing him it won't happen again?

 

Just wanted to add that it just also shocks me that he would want to throw everything away that we had over a stupid slip up. We were even in the midst of thinking about marriage and buying a home. I even went to the bank to see what kind of mortgages were available and what they had to offer first time buyers.

[EC]

his philosophy unfortunately is since I lied once, that it will happen again and that's a hard philosophy to talk someone out of, especially someone that can be as stubborn as him.

 

You messed up..you lied..and theres really no going back.

 

What I suggest you do know is tell him all the reasons not 'excuses' on why you did what you did. Tell him how you would get anxiety attacks and turned around. Admit you lied and messed up but that you love him very much and you do not want to throw away 3 years. Tell him to please give you another chance to PROVE to him that you won't do it again.

 

If he loves you he will want to work it out. And if he doesn give you another chance do not do it again.

[tanbark813]

But see the problem is that he's not considering throwing your relationship away because of this one lie, he's considering throwing it away because he thinks it might be a pattern. I guarantee you that right now he's thinking back over the past 3 years trying to figure out if anything else was a lie. That's the problem with lies is that it's not just the lie itself that's a problem, but it opens up a can of worms and makes the person to whom the lie is told secondguess the truthfulness of everything else.

 

Your best bet is to probably own up to the fact that it was wrong, apologize, and let him know it won't happen again. The rest is up to him.

[HotCaliGirl]

dmc123 wrote: it just also shocks me that he would want to throw everything away that we had over a stupid slip up.

This is not going to resolve until you realize first to yourself that it was not just a stupid slip up. How can you convince him that it won't happen again when you yourself don't think that what you did was a big deal? I have respect for your bf for placing so much value in honesty.

 

If you step back, it is a bit creepy for him to imagine you going to your parents' when in fact you did not. He could imagine that you could in the future say you are going somewhere but in fact be seeing someone else or whatever his imagination can think of. You should treat this as a bigger issue than just an insignificant slip up as it is costing your relationship.

 

As EC said, explain to him how it happened - the whole anxiety bit and all - so he sees that it wasn't a simple slip up, but instead a big big ordeal that led to it happening, that on all other occasions, you would not simply mess up like that but instead it took a huge amount of emotions and anxiety etc. for you to have even done what you did and tell him to please give you one more chance since you love each other and that you will not do this again, will think twice and have learned from your mistake, etc. etc.

 

But please treat it as a bigger deal than it is...and put yourelf in his shoes too to really feel where he's coming from. If he didn't love you a lot he would overlook these things but he wants someone with high standards to spend his life with.

 

We were even in the midst of thinking about marriage and buying a home. I even went to the bank to see what kind of mortgages were available and what they had to offer first time buyers.

Hey, I am a mortgage lender and if you make up, I will be more than happy to hook you up with a great loan!

[from ND]

Yeah, basically, you violated one MAJOR element that is required in a succesful relationship, T R U S T.........now he wonders where you went and if you are REALLY where you say you are, I mean some would call that insecurity on his part, but me being I guy....If I cant trust you, I dont want you, I mean I guess to say look at this in reverse, he says he goes somewhere, but you find out different where he REALLY was, would your 1st inclination be????, however I think if you want to save face, just sit him down, explaining that your anxiety attack caused you to not follow through, and you didnt want to feel stupid so you just covered it up, without realizing that it was wrong to be untruthful, or think about what it would make him think...In Other words, Be HONEST, also, be honest, dont beg for him to not break it off, I mean if this anxiety deal is a real issue and he doesnt understand, then you werent really in the wrong, I would relax, 3 years vs one lie, even though its a lie, isnt really that huge, Im sure it will work out, Its not like one of you got caught cheating , Ive been through 1,000 times worse, good luck

[dmc123]

I am greatly appreciating all of this advice. I truly hope for things to work out between us. I told him that I was sorry so many times and that I didn't mean to harm him in any way, but at this point he doesn't want to hear it, which is completely understandable.

 

I want to give him some time to cool off, maybe send an "I'm sorry" card. Hope he'll even open it.

[babybear]

I skimmed thru the other replies - perhaps this got said already, but you catch someone in a lie once, and you ASSUME they have lied before! Then you run everything in your head and ask, well, did she lie about that? When she was going to visit so and so, did she really go???

 

Maybe he's had trust issues - and you added fuel to the fire.

 

Explain to him really carefully your thought process. Say, I would drive, and feel anxious. I had to pull over. I would go to the store and get a cup of cofee and sit in the car...whatever the story was. You want to make sure he believes you!

 

The lie itself is innocent - but LYING isnt.

 

 

Babybear

[from ND]

hey for what its worth, Its not the type of lie, but YES it is the principal. OK, heres what happened to me, about 2 years ago, Im headed out the door to work, I get picked up by the crew truck......so, my car stays at home all day, which my woman at the time was using, no big deal. I get home from work that night and No car, no GF, when she finally gets home I found out she took the car to go visit her daughter 300 miles away, when i asked where she went she kept saying nowhere, anyhow, she DID in fact go visit her daughter, and her story was that she was afraid If she asked me to use the car to go that far away, I would say no. It made more mad that she lied about it 1st, than anything, like If she would have asked me, i woulda probably said no problem, just the same as if when i asked wjhere she went and she told me I wouldnt have gotten so stressed, but when she kept saying "nowhere" It stirred my curiosity. I wasn't about to dump her over it, thats for sure, but looking at it from her side and yours, she was merely "Afraid" of the outcome had she just asked OR told the truth, not that it makes lying ok, but you know, I did understand what motivated her to not want to tell me and everything was cool. Now a few months after that, her best friend cornered her in our living room and demanded she inform me that she cheated on me, after that there was NO trust and thus I am no longer with her. hope this helps ya.

[faux]

After three years of listening to your family problems, and attempting to help you to overcome them, I probably would have gotten so frustrated at you lying, I would have left as well. You know, all you really do need to do is just go and deal with your family; I've been in the position myself. I have no idea why you would choose to lie about something like that, and be upset that you would get a negative reaction for having been "found out".

 

As far as I'm concerned, if someone messes up once they are out, and I don't see a reason to do a second, or "three strikes" chances sort of deal. You should not have lied.

 

Think about it. This guy was trying to help you overcome something. You tell him you are finally going to do it, and then you end up not doing it, and not telling him that you could not do it. If you can lie about something as silly as that, I'm sure he tried to think of what you would not lie about.

 

I would not keep up hope that simply apologizing over and over is going to make the icky situation go away. If this guy has a strong belief that what you did was wrong, you two may be finished for good now.

[GirlDown]

yeah, see i don't know if i would call this a little slip-up...it was a blatant lie. if you had lied about something not so serious or important to him, say maybe that you bought a new bed when you really didn't because someone gave you one, then i could see wanting him to just get over it.

 

the thing with your lie is that now he is thinking "well, she lied about where she was going...so how do i really know she was just driving around or with a friend and not screwing some other dude." i can practically hear him thinking it.

 

you screwed up, you said you were sorry. don't treat it like it's nothing, because to him it is a big something.

 

i don't think there's anything else you can do at this point but wait.

 

good luck.

[dmc123]

After three years of listening to your family problems, and attempting to help you to overcome them,

 

I've only had family problems for about a year. And I'm not treating it as if it's a silly but more it was a stupid thing to lie about.

 

As for thinking that I was cheating, yes that was asked and discussed and NO I NEVER cheated on him. I think he believes me when it comes to that because when we talked, he said that he would rather I have cheated on him because at least he knows he was doing something wrong.

 

all you really do need to do is just go and deal with your family

 

that's exactly what he says and as I have told him, it's not that easy for me. If it was, I wouldn't be in this mess, plain and simple. And when I tried to explain this to him(way before this incident happened) how I feel, he'd just get pissed, yells and pissed off some more cause he thought my actions also reflected poorly on him, which I kept telling him, it's not him, he has absolutely nothing to do with it, it's me. My problem.

 

I just really wanted to avoid the same mess of me expressing feelings, him getting pissed resulting in an argument crap.

 

And faux, I'm more upset at myself if anything for going the route I did, not at being found out.

 

I would say no. It made more mad that she lied about it 1st, than anything, like If she would have asked me, i woulda probably said no problem

 

hmmm.....I just want to point out that you say you probably would have said no problem, but hindsight is 20/20 also. We make our present choices based on previous experiences and like I said, I wanted to avoid the argument, but obviously went about it the wrong way. My bad. He said last night that if I were having such problems that he would have come along for the ride, which I believe is hindsight speaking, especially since he thought he was part of the reason for my family issues and he didn't want to set foot in my parent's house.

[amerikajin]

So how do I go about convincing him it won't happen again?

 

Ditto what the venerable Tanbark just said, though I'll expound upon that a little and give my own take.

 

What Tanbark said is absolutely, positively true: this "little white lie" is now opening up the floodgates of distrust. It's entirely possible that he's thinking about other times when you gave explanations about things that didn't quite add up to his satisfaction, but he went along with it to give you the benefit of the doubt.

 

I also tend to be a skeptic by nature. Something tells me you're not exactly being 100 percent straight with us here. What's missing? Are you 100 percent sure that your family is 100 percent cool with your relationship with him? I find it strange that he senses problems with his interaction with your family - usually, the people involved can sense on some level whether they've been accepted into the family or not. He obviously feels that he hasn't been accepted by your family, yet you seem oblivious to it. What's the deal here?

 

And that, I think, leads to the real problem here. The real problem is that you're not taking care of your end of the bargain in your relationship. When you have a relationship with someone, they have to come first - if you want that relationship to succeed, that is. If your boyfriend feels that your family is giving him the cold shoulder, then you should acknowledge that and discuss it with your family. By not dealing with it, you're telling your boyfriend that his feelings don't mean s*** to you. In effect, you're saying "Just deal with it, dude."

 

It's not too difficult to see why he wants to break it off at this point, though if you want my opinion, I don't think it's too late to get him back. You've shared three years together, so I think that counts for something. But getting him back means you're going to have to respect him more, and you're going to have to make a choice between dealing with issues or ignoring them.

 

Call him up. Admit you screwed up by lying, but don't stop there. Admit that you have really missed the big picture in your relationship and that you're trying to understand it now. And most of all...you've got to convince him that you're going to take corrective action to change this situation.

[greenhorn]

A lie is a lie whether small or big.

 

A smaller lie is enough for breaking the trust and it hurts more when someone you care for lies.

 

Cheating does not always mean sleeping with someone else but lie also constiture cheating and it is very difficult for to understand that if someone can lie for such a small reason why won't the person lie when the reason is big...

 

it happened with me once, with much difficulty I let it go but trust was indeed broken and next time when it happened again after 3 years, I called it off.on the hind sight now I find there were several lies which I ignored cause I was still trusting and I was such a FOOL to do so.

 

There can always be justification for telling lie but my take is that you can always be honest and do the thing. You could have just said that I am not going to my parents and going to my friends, this would have been so simple. It would have hurt him but not broken is trust.

[dmc123]

Are you 100 percent sure that your family is 100 percent cool with your relationship with him?

 

YES! and it was also assured to him he was no problem by my mom herself when I got caught. They were cool with him from the beginning, very gratious as they could be, but he was always uneasy with visiting them. I would also say intimidated, especially by my mom. Even though he spent the Christmas before this past one with us, he always thought my parents, mainly my mom, wasn't too keen on him, but that was never the case.

 

As much as I don't want to believe it played a factor, I think the fact that we are an interracial couple(he's white and I'm black and from the islands) made him uneasy with my family. The culture and the family dynamics he's used to dealing with are different from ours.

 

His uneasiness was made worse when one day he visited and we were watching the Chappelle Show and if you've watched the show, you know he throws the N word around like it's nobody's business. He laughed, quoted a line containing the word and unfortunately my mom overheard it. She never said a word or let me know she heard what she heard until 2 mo. later after the incident. She said some unkind words about him personally to me(he wasn't there when it happened), we settled it and eventually it was resolved. The subject or even talks of it never came up cause it was long forgotten, but he never believed it was.

 

Now almost a year later, when I have other family issues to deal with, he still thought he was apart of it. And again no matter how many times I told him, he was not an issue and me not going home was not reflecting poorly on him. I wanted to avoid the same argument and stop him from thinking my actions were reflecting poorly on him.

 

He suggested if sending flowers would be a good idea. I said that would be great and I said it pretty much knowing I would get caught. In the end, like I said earlier, he was reassured by my mom that he's not a problem at all, which I told him 5 billion times before.

 

But now, understandably, he hates my guts for lying to him.

[dmc123]

Oh and Amerikajin, I live with him, which makes this situation harder cause we see each other day in, day out. Right now we're not even talking and sleep in separate rooms.