Hiding Behind Lies
Sep 25, 08- (by Mama MPJ)
- 9 responses
- Family and Friends, Sober Salon
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If you ask someone who loves an addict what the most painful thing about addiction is, the answer you’ll hear most often is: the lies. The lies. The lies. Oh, the lies, lies, lies, lies! They hurt and they burn and they sting. Most of the little festering resentments I still have left around my husband’s sex addiction are around the lies he told, rather than the actual behavior he engaged in. The lies keep me up at night. The lies make me wonder what’s real. The lies keep me distant and separate.
Of course, I, the honest and loving codependent wife, never considered myself a liar. After all, when I tell Mark where I’m going and what I’m doing and who I’m going to be with, I tell the truth: which at times, has been known to make me feel better and stronger and morally superior. Yet I’ve found I do lie, and for many of the same reasons Mark does; I just lie about different things.
In junior high school, there was a guy who tormented me. I think about him every now and then, because I imagine that we shared the same pain, differently expressed. He liked attention, and I hated it. He excelled at putting himself in the spotlight and then turning that white hot light on me and pointing out the obvious: that I was terribly uncool. I was nerdy. I was geeky. I wore cheap, hand-me-down, out-of-style clothes. All of which I tried to hide by being very, very quiet. Invisible. Shh.
One Monday, before the teacher arrived, this tormentor of mine strutted into the classroom, a pubescent Mick Jagger, and announced he’d been partying all weekend. He sat backwards on a desk, feet on the chair, and offered his sexual services to the pretty, popular girl who, through the luck of alphabetical order, sat next to me. She giggled uncomfortably. Yeah, he’d been out drinking all weekend, he said casually. Then he turned to me and said, “Do you drink?” And I struggled, not for the truth, but to think of what he and the rest of the class might want to hear. “Yes,” I said, steeling my face defiantly. But he pounced on my lie and minced to the front of the room, swinging his hips and squeaking in a high pitched, snooty voice, “Oh, yes! I drink water, occasionally.”
At age 12, lying as a defense mechanism was already ingrained in me. Who cared what I really thought or felt or did, as long as I could get people to leave me alone by telling them what they wanted to hear? I didn’t even want to be cool, I just wanted to be out of the burning glare of judgment and ridicule.
I struggle with the same thing to this day. If I think I’m going to be argued with or yelled at or laughed at or disdained or disrespected, I’ll lie about my opinions, my taste in music, my politics, my religious beliefs, my schedule, my reasons, my likes and dislikes. I’ll lie to avoid conflict, to escape judgment, to avoid attempts to change and control my behavior, to end conversations, to get people to leave me alone. I’ll figure out what it is I have to be, what it is that other person wants, and I’ll be that. I do it (like my husband does) to hide myself, and I’m driven (like my husband is) by the deep seated belief that drives us, addicts and codies alike: if people really knew us, they wouldn’t like us, right?
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this reminds me of the lyrics out of a Plumb song *my heart is torn, just in knowing, you’ll someday see, the truth for lies*. isn’t it funny how we all inherently glide in that same direction? because despite our liberal movements, behind every hardened, cool, smooth facade is really just our own special pile of goo, wanting to be accepted, loved, forgiven, validated. isn’t it cool,tho, how you can admit that out here in blog-world & it turns out you’re saying it for the LOT of us. <3
Intellectually I get this, but I can’t get past my expectation that the person I make myself most vulnerable to not lie to me. I’m taking the huge risk of staying with someone who has hurt me more than any “worst enemy” ever has or could. Whether they are directed at me or not, his lies impact who I am in the world, how I walk through life. To be betrayed by the one you most trust…I can’t think of anything worse. It makes it feel like there’s no safe place in the world. I feel hardened, disconnected, removed from the immediate experience of life. I know this is my work being set before me, and that I’ll grow from learning to soften, connect and be fully present in the face of all of this. But it still sucks and pisses me off.
I just got done writing an email to a group of Christians and two blog posts with my true feelings about my religious beliefs, and it’s hard. Especially when faced with what their response might be or if they will still “like me.” It is so much better than when I was drinking and seeking approval, but it still lurks there.
All I can say is Right. You are so dead on right. Cat
I fully understand this, but it makes me feel sad that you have to feel that way.
I’ve been the opposite my whole life; lies are so detestable and painful to me that if I’m going to tell a lie there is, at least what I perceive to be, a very good reason.
I face ridicule all the time because of my ‘chronic truth telling’(my mom once told me I don’t always have to be so honest!). My foot is perpetually in my mouth, I’m constantly inadvertently offending people, and I find myself having to defend my beliefs/political leanings/lifestyle etc. often, which can be frustrating and exhausting, but I just haven’t figured out how to cope with my guilt for telling even perfect strangers a lie! I’m not codependent… shut up!
luv and hugs,
muahhh!!
The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves.
“I am not enough.” “I deserve what is happening to me.” “I’m fine.” Blah, blah, blah.
The A.A. Big Book makes the point that recovery is possible so long as we have the capacity to be honest.
You must be doing some deep soul searching to have come up with this post. I’m actually rather in awe of the process I imagine you went through to get from niggle to laptop.
This thought, this inkling of an idea that there is a parallel behavior betwixt addict and codie, must have been hiding in some dusty little enclave of your mind and you were brave enough to pull on your Wellies, cover your nose with a dust mask, and go root out the little Thing going bump bump & scurry scurry at night, keeping you up until the wee hours just enough to keep you up, but not enough to make you get up and go find it. Now Thing has been found.
Not only did you find Thing, but you studied it. You looked it over top to bottom, shined a light into Its orifices, took notes, looked some more, asked It a few questions and, when it was clear you didn’t speak the same language, you went and learned a bit of the Thing’s language in order to get your facts right the next time you did approach It.
After you studied, approached, asked, noted, wondered, and gave more thought to Thing then you probably ever wanted to give to any thing Ever, you may have discovered yourself one hot summer’s evening having a Eureka! moment while sipping decaf iced tea. But, this is not the sort of topic that creates a spinning, giddy, joyful Eureka! moment. Perhaps it was more of an “A-ha, that’s what Thing really is. Crap. I get it, but Crap.” But the more Thing is studied, the more you had to study yourself, the more you looked at Dear Husband, the more you understood Codie and Addict, the more you realized that, “This is why He & Me are We. This is a commonality. We have many wonderful commonalities that brought us together, dazzling bits that make us swoon for each other still; but this piece, this quiet little underlying component of ‘I’ll say whatever you want, as -please- long -please-as-please- you’ll-please- love-please-me. Please,’ was a strong, unknown, unspoken magnet that must have drawn the We together more tightly.”
And after all of these times and moments, these curiosities and lessons, these quests and discoveries, after all of these huge thoughts and quietly ginormous feelings you had throughout this process, you still had enough courage and wherewithal to write up a report, a mind-boggling provocative essay for this codie over here typing up her usual lengthy comment, and then publish it.
I am impressed by your process, in awe of your courage, and grateful for your sharing.
You have given me much to think about for some time to come.
Smoooooooooooch. Smoooooooooooch.
Happy European Style.
I get this. It’s something I have worked passed, but still occasionally find myself doing. I’m getting better at believing in my own worth though and not caring what other people think of me. What they think of me is none of my business! It only matters what I think of me and that I follow my own beliefs and morals. I admire your openness and honesty and how you have worked through this. Acknowledgment and consciousness brings you halfway there!
[...] Three’s a trend, right? Take the false report of Steve Jobs’s heart attack, spread by a CNN website and Digg; a six-year-old report of United Airlines’ bankruptcy, resuscitated by Google News; and a silly story about Oprah and Sarah Palin. And what do you get? Lies, lies, lies on the Internet! Some Web operations are promising to factcheck Wednesday’s presidential debate in real time. Right! I ran a magazine’s factchecking operation, and much to my fellow editors’ chagrin, a thorough vetting of the accuracy of a report does not happen instantly. Passing on some concocted tale that confirms your worldview? That takes no time, or thought, at all. All the Internet does is speed things up a little. (Illustration via The Second Road) [...]