Meredith, Mooka, KAW, Betsey, GBO, Pattie - everyone - you guys are just the BEST - I am so grateful I stumbled across this board. This is yet another of those dead ends I was driving myself into, and you guys have just turned it around. You have identified several things that I really need to get a grip on BEFORE I can tackle NG.
Quote: Can you identify why your H lies? Is it to avoid conflict? Is it to make himself look better? Then, how can you make it safe for him to trust you with this honesty?
I think he lies for numerous reasons. Once he started lying to me, I think he found it a slippery slope that he could not get off - to hide the first lie, he needed to continue. Why did he start - well, I guess about a year ago, when he decided to pursue a relationship with OW, but to this day, insists, he did not want anything between us to change - so I guess the root lies in wanting to cake eat. Deception to avoid me walking out.
Then, he dropped the bomb last October, after about 6 weeks of me getting uneasy about changes in his behaviour. Even then, he claimed an EA when in fact as I discovered in June this year, it was already a PA. Many of his subsequent lies were to make the half-truth more palatable so I would not walk out. I guess I still have a hard time with this - on the one hand he was claiming to have 'come clean' but the manner in which he did so - with partial stories - really deprived me of the opportunity to make a truly informed decision. His rationale - to minimise hurt to me, and to stop me from walking out.
I now see him with our mutual friends and he seems to have slipped into a new mode of convenient and expedient exagerration, deception by omission - all these were not present in NG 15 months ago, so I'm kind of wondering if this is a lifetime habit change
Your thoughts on how to ask for what I want are just great - now I have to sit down and figure out what I really want. I guess for the past month I have been more introspective, and am finding that I have been shortchanging myself in many aspects. I want to change this balance. NG should not consume all my time. So, as Betsey so aptly put it, I am going back to the drawing board, and this time, it is for me.
