Quote: You are married to a person who expects perfection--and uses her anger and hostile personality to keep you in line
This is the essence of the Enneagram One (the worst side of them). They want to be perfect and cannot tolerate imperfection in anyone else. I don't think any other Enneagram position would have come down on you so hard.
Personally I have never held Truth as the highest value. I make decisions on whether I think a person has the right to know something, whether telling the absolute truth will hurt or help the situation, etc.
Labeling what you did a LIE in all caps is painting the sitch with too broad a brush... to me she is accusing you of being untrustworthy, of being deceitful, of deliberately and maliciously concealing from her facts that she needs to know for her very survival, of trying to destroy her and your relationship, and on and on.
The dog pill thing-- the pills were right there in her hand. You said you pilled them. Two seconds later she knew you didn't. If you had wanted to deceive her and conceal the truth from her, you would have opened then new pills, taking out three... and thrown them away! Aha! I would defy her to find out then!!
See what I'm getting at. She's being a One on a Rampage, nailing you for minor transgressions, proving that you are sooooo imperfect that a perfect person like her cannot trust you ever.
Remember what I said about my friend, "You would trust him with your life, but you wouldn't trust him to return a library book on time?" You told her you pilled the dogs because you didn't want her to be mad. And yes you sabotaged yourself and made it worse. AND you made it worse by not apologizing immediately. But this was not the Crime of the Century and does not mean you need to go to Relationship Death Row. Im sure she would trust you with her life (as I would or probably anyone on this board), but we might not trust you to pill our dogs.
The One has this unique ability to make mountains out of molehills and then convince everyone they are big enough to go skiing on! Don't let her do a snowjob on you [sic].
