Ask the experts: I caught my partner lying - will I ever be able to trust him again?

Shame often drives lying and hiding. Photo / Krists Luhaers, Unsplash

Opinion

Do you have any sex or relationship issues you’d like help with? Send your questions through to our experts at questions@nzherald.co.nz.

Please help me. I have been with my partner for two years now and I recently discovered that he slept with another woman once early on in our relationship and that he used to have a gambling problem but he sorted it. I have been hurt in past relationships with men lying to me and he knew that yet he kept these things from me. I know I might have been a bit upset about the one-off sex with another woman but can honestly say I could have dealt with it and it would have been [easier] than him hiding and lying like this. He has not been upfront with me about a lot of things despite me telling him early on that honesty was important to me. He says he is so sorry and he will never hide or lie about anything ever again, but I find that hard to believe and I’m worried - how will I ever be able to trust him again? - Tiffany

Dear Tiffany,

It is possible for couples in your kind of situation to rebuild a relationship based on honesty and a strong connection they can trust. However, that process takes time. Right now, it’s necessary for you (and your partner) to accept that he is not trustworthy. What you know for a fact is that he can, and has, deceived you.

So, right now, trusting your partner would not be wise. You have not had a relationship built on courageous honesty. It sounds like you hope your relationship can get there, but you do not yet know if that is what will happen.

Humans don’t tolerate uncertainty well; it makes us feel very vulnerable, so we tend to push for answers for certainty when it isn’t practical. It remains to be seen if you can ever trust him again. Finding out is going to take time. Sitting with this uncertainty may be very hard for you, particularly since you have been hurt by dishonesty before.

There is one person whose trust you can determine right now – yourself. Can you trust yourself to cope with whatever happens? If he proves untrustworthy (deceives, withholds information, lies or cheats), will you be able to deal with the pain? Will you act to care for yourself? If you know that you’ll cope with what happens, however much you don’t want to, then you can afford to risk finding out if your partner can grow and change to become consistently honest and upfront.

Something makes him avoid being honest and upfront about important things. Unless he is a sociopath, psychopath, or narcissistic “player”, the most likely explanation for his deception is that he has some serious insecurities, perhaps a fear that he is not good enough or unimportant, not safe or a failure. Many of us try to “disprove” our insecurities by seeking validation and approval from significant others. Sadly, in that process, we learn to avoid risking displeasing people who are important to us by keeping mistakes from them. Shame often drives lying and hiding. It sounds like your partner has not had the strength of self to practice “Honesty is the best policy” in the long run. He is avoidant of short-term risk and discomfort and likely struggles to self-validate when those he loves are disappointed or disapproving of what he has done.

To stop being deceptive, your partner must work out what insecurities drive him and find other ways to manage them than lying and hiding. Only when he has done that consistently over time does it make sense for you to trust that he is being open and honest with you.

That is the path to rebuilding a relationship you can trust. We advise you not to accept empty assurances such as “I promise I will never do it again”. Don’t be impressed with remorse alone or them being on their best behaviour and extra nice, loving and warm to you.

Do not accept justifications or explanations that end up somehow blaming you. For example, “I couldn’t be honest because you would not have handled it”. Resist doing the work for them of figuring out why they were so conflict-avoidant and relatively comfortable hiding things from you. Be clear that you need them to take a long hard look at themselves and work out how they came to have this unhelpful, hurtful behaviour pattern. Expect them to do a lot of work in this area and expend energy and time. You are looking to them to own and take responsibility for their problem behaviour.

Here are four things you should look for your partner to do to rebuild trust:

1. Become self-aware of the insecurities that power his deception and have a clear plan for how to manage them differently in the future. Plus he needs to share both of those with you vulnerably. This is a level of intimacy that many find frightening, but he needs to tolerate it so you can feel confident you know what he is going to do next.

2. He needs to use that self-awareness to become reliable. Firstly, in the practical sense of reliably following through on doing what he says he will (and, especially, NOT doing those things he said he wouldn’t). Secondly, being reliable in the emotional sense of being there for you - especially learning to tolerate your distress about his deception. Your upset is a consequence of his choice to deceive, and he needs to support you (so long as your behaviour is reasonable).

3. Show empathy. If he’s doing the self-awareness work, your partner will be in touch with old and deep pain for himself. He must also show interest, understanding and care for the pain he has caused you. (Many people in his situation “collapse” into shame and can’t show empathy. That’s a warning sign that someone is not safe to be in a relationship with.)

4. Be persistent. He needs to keep doing these things for months and years without complaining or blaming you for how hard it is to regain your trust. He put himself in this situation, and he needs to accept that it takes a long time to build trust when you have damaged it.

Of course, if you ask your partner to be open and vulnerable, you need to handle what they tell you. If you want them to talk about difficult and painful things, you need to not react strongly to what they say by venting emotionally or angrily or taking it personally. This part is crucial. You did not make your partner lie or hide, but there may be patterns in your behaviour that you need to look at to stay more in connection with your partner during difficult conversations. You both need to keep in more deep contact, including over difficult issues.

Suppose you can settle down with your new unpalatable learnings about your partner’s level of insecurity and unhelpful behaviours. If you also realise that by being fully awake to what has happened, you can keep yourself relatively safe in this relationship. And if your partner can own and take responsibility for his deceit, do his work to unpack this behaviour and work hard to develop new, more courageous habits. Then there is every chance you can work through this together and, in the medium to long term, go on to have a relationship free of excess worry.

• Verity & Nic are psychologists and family therapists who have specialised in relationship and sex therapy for more than 25 years. They have been working on their own relationship for more than 40 years and have two adult children.