Hairy, We, as a couple, have had to really learn how to compromise. Meaning, there are areas in our lives that neither of us will EVER do in the way the other wants and we MUST find ways around this.
One example of this is something that I find quite disgusting. My H likes to give our girls their baths at night. It is their playtime and bonding time. I'm usually off doing the dishes or whatever. This all sounds lovely but he gets lazy sometimes (which is QUITE out of character for him, just as I'm sure lying is for you) and doesn't use soap. He just sorta 'rinses' them with water. Yuck!, I say. So I used to ask, Did you wash the kids? and he'd truthfully answer 'yes' even though he washed them with H20 and not soap! So I wised up to that and now I say, Did you wash the kids...with SOAP? and he will sheepishly say, No.......but I'm goingtodoitrightnow! and we laugh. Actually we are both laughing before I even finish the with SOAP part of the question.
My point is that by injecting a little humor and compromise into our lives, we are able to look at each other and know that we're not perfect, but still find a way around it that doesn't end with one of us berating the other.
Another example (and more serious, imo) is that I can't for the life of me remember to log debit card transactions in our check register. My H fought me tooth and nail on getting a debit card because he said that I would never remember to deduct the spent money. He's right, I don't remember. For years, this resulted in him having raging fits at me and still I couldn't remember. Well, I remembered more often but it was out of a sense of "man I have GOT to remember this or my ass is grass..." instead of any great desire to be fiscally responsible. In all other areas I am responsible with our money and perhaps even better with it than my H, but he's the Keeper of the Check Register, I'm afraid. The solution has been for him to ask me when I return from an outing, "Do you have any receipts for me?" and I hand them over. Or, I keep them in a certain place in my wallet so that he knows to check there if the checkbook is not matching up. I rarely go anywhere so this is not as huge of a deal as it could be but STILL, I know that I should do a better job at this task. I am hit and miss with it when I don't have the distraction of kids and terrible with it, now that I do.
Anywayyyyy, my point is that we could have continued to make this our hill to die on but instead we've found a way around it.
I think that your wife finds this type of interaction really troublesome. She doesn't want to have to "find a way around" things because there is Right and there is Wrong. But IRL, when you are married to another person..a person with flaws, you HAVE to find ways around it. You can't get hung up on small things.
Having said that, a lie is no small thing. Make amends.
