Basically the title. We’ve been together for about a year now, and I never anticipated wanting him to be endgame. He feels the same, however, I am ashamed to say this, but I have lied to him about my entire life. He think my dad is a doctor. He thinks I was born and raised in the US. He thinks my major in college was biochemistry. I have a very dull sexual history so I embellished it to seem like I had more experience. The truth is, I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic up until I was 17. My dad works in a hospital as a janitor. My college major was psychology (what was I thinking). I have barely dated.
These lies are obviously because I am VERY ashamed of who I am. I know I need serious therapy and I’m planning on coming clean to him. I know I have to. I didn’t mean to deceive him. I just wanted to feel good about myself and those lies did. I had plenty of opportunities to tell him, but I chickened out. It’s embarrassing!
I’m thinking these lies are obviously major. In my culture (we’re both Dominican) we tend to date to marry. I can understand that he would want to break up with me over this. So what’s the point in telling him ? I don’t know. Reddit, please help. Maybe I’m looking for reassurance that these are not relationship ending lies??
Also, how do I about telling him? I’m devastated and disappointed in myself.
Tl;dr: I told my bf of one year that my dad is a doctor but he’s a janitor, that I was born and raised in the States but I’m from the Dominican Republic, and basically my entire childhood and education. I want us to work out and get married one day. How do I tell him the truth?
5 comments
The content of these lies are not necessarily the biggest deal. But continuing to lie to someone is. How can they trust that you haven’t lied about other things you just aren’t willing to confess to?
It’s worse if you only confess because you got caught. Then the other person is thinking you would never have told them the truth except you were forced to, and if it were up to you, you would keep on lying to them indefinitely.
You will probably get caught at some point, especially if you’ve told enough lies you don’t remember all of them. It sounds like he’s never met your dad. He’s going to meet him at some point, right? Have you enlisted your dad to go along with the lies? Is that something you really want to do?
You may go out with his friends one day and find out one of them majored in biochemistry and starts talking to you about it. Are you going to shut it down immediately like “I don’t talk about that” when you spent years studying it? Are you going to nod along and say, “right, yes, uh-huh” while offering nothing to the conversation?
You can’t marry him if you’re still lying and if you haven’t taken concrete steps to address your compulsive lies, self-esteem, and intense feelings of shame.
>I can understand that he would want to break up with me over this. So what’s the point in telling him ?
You’re thinking very selfishly here and not considering his feelings, like the profound sense of betrayal he’s likely to experience when—not if, but when, *I promise you*—he discovers that the person he loves doesn’t actually exist, and that his relationship with you was built on a foundation of bullshit. Those are the types of revelations that can mess a person up for life and permanently damage their ability to trust others. You owe it to him to let him make an informed decision about whether he stays with you knowing that you’ve been spinning yarns for the duration of your relationship.
Additionally, if you don’t tell him and manage to avoid being caught right away, I think it will disincentivize you from seeking the help you clearly need. And you owe it to yourself to get that help, because nobody should have to live with the sort of crippling shame that makes you fabricate an entire autobiography.
You did mean to deceive him, when you tell him you need to not try to make excuses for yourself and say shit like that because it’s very obviously bullshit. The whole point was to deceive him, and so that you could pretend to be someone other than yourself.
The point in telling him is because it allows him to decide to be with you based on the actual truth, not the lies you’ve told. it would require you to not be selfish, so of course you are having reservations about coming clean.
You just need to tell him, and stop procrastinating as you so obviously are
The only hope is to rip the band-aid off now and tell him before you inevitably get caught in your lies. If it comes out because you get caught, you will not be able to fix it.
Go to therapy and mean it. If you are able to, start now. Be in the process of starting when you tell him, as a sign of good faith on that. Because frankly a lot of people lie about saying they’ll go to therapy.
And know that whatever you do, you still might lose this relationship. That might be the cost of your actions. The content of the lies is not as important as they are to whether or not your partner can trust you.
If you think you really can’t say it to him verbally, write it to him. Print it out, give him a paper with what you’ve said, or show him this post. Whatever it is, just get it done with, so you’re not stuck in this limbo.
You have to rip the band aid off. None of these lies will hold up .Tell him the truth and why you said the lies and hope for the best.