My (43 M) partner (43 F) have been together for 15+ years. She’s wonderful in so many ways but a recurring issue has been catching her lying and/or withholding from me.
She will make arrangements with friends (including taking a day off of work) and not tell me until the day of, or book a long weekend with friends and only tell me a week before – even if she booked it a month or two earlier. We will be traveling and she will make plans with a friend or relatives and not inform me until the last minute. She will often present it as a last minute idea or surprise opportunity when in reality she’s been setting it up for days or weeks. She makes agreements with friends or family, or investment decisions, without consulting with me – even though it impacts my schedule and finances etc.
Last year her parents suspected they havd COVID prior to visiting our home (we live a few hours drive away) and she didn’t tell me, and told them to come visit us anyway They looked sick when they arrived and revealed “we think we might have COVID again”. My wife feigned shock and disappointment once we were alone together… But days later she eventually confessed that she knew but told them to come anyway because she really wanted to see them. I felt both appalled and hurt.
This has been hurtful and really difficult to process as her partner. What is making it particularly distressing is that when I try to talk to her about it, she gets defensive and refuses to explore what is driving the lying. Instead she will talk about how sad/ashamed and stressed she felt at the moment she was caught lying. She won’t provide any insight into to moment she decided to lie, or explore why she decided to lie in that moment. She essentially says “I feel terrible/embarrassed and I won’t do it again.” But her pattern seems to be that I catch her lying again weeks later.
We were in marriage counseling a couple of years ago but our therapist decided we should put the work on hold due to my wife repeatedly lying/withholding in between sessions. She encouraged my wife to work through the problem with a individual therapist and that we could resume therapy if she made progress with understanding why she is lying. My wife went to therapy but seemed to spend the time discussing work and sibling conflicts, and only really offered my vague lines like “relationships are hard” and eventually started trying to play marriage counselor by printing out worksheets on how to have hard talks together. When I reminded her that she is in therapy to sort out her lying, so that we can hopefully get back to marriage counseling and having hard conversations with a third party professional helping us (vs her playing marriage counselor) she responded with “I have a hard time accepting that” and claimed that she wasn’t able to speak in couples therapy. This is despite our couples therapy being in a “you talk, then she talks” format with no interrupting allowed.
I don’t know what to do here. Her lying still keeps popping up, she expresses remorse but also spends a lot of time justifying/defending her actions. But she still won’t acknowledge that this is what is preventing us from resuming marriage counseling.
To clarify, she doesn’t seem to tell white lies or lie to be boastful. It seems like she lies or witholds information in order to do/get whatever it is she wants at that moment.
How do you get someone who lies to accept their problem and work through the actual lying problem (vs only talking about how hard it is to get caught lying)?
Our marriage counselor assured us “You two seem to be a great team, great parents, but this lying seems to keep eroding trust and preventing you two from being truly intimate with each other.” The counselor seemed genuinely sad and distressed about my wife’s lying but said it’s something my wife needs to address on her own rather than in couples counseling (as my wife kept lying in between sessions and not really expressing remorse during our couples sessions… She would just get defensive and not move beyond that position).
My wife isn’t deprived of friends or family. She’s very social, sees her parents regularly, and I don’t have any family so she’s not having to compete with family obligations on my side. So I don’t really understand why she lies in order to see friends and family.
TDLR: wife (43F) keeps lying to me (43M) but doesn’t seem willing or ready to explore the root cause despite it causing us to put marriage counseling on hold.