How Some Choose to Move Forward When Their Partner Lies or Cheats

A Personal Perspective: What some people do once they get over the shock.

My friend in Mexico unexpectedly lost her husband. She was inconsolably consumed by grief. It was an enormous effort to sort through important papers and bills. She thought she was imagining things when she found that her husband had been withdrawing large sums of money from their joint account. She had no idea of where the money had gone until one of her husband’s friends told her that he had a gambling problem. She said she felt like someone had punched her in the heart. How could they have been together for 26 years and he kept his gambling a secret?

“I felt naïve and stupid and was ashamed to betray him by telling anyone what I discovered about him and how devastated I was,” she confided. “My therapist helped me to see that the problem was my husband’s and not mine. He was too ashamed to tell me about his gambling problem, and his goal was not to deceive and hurt me, but to hide his dark side from me and maybe from himself too. I could certainly tell the truth to a few close friends. They were compassionate and helpful, and they encouraged me to focus on my husband’s good qualities, of which there were many. I am starting to heal.”

Another friend in Pennsylvania discovered that his live-in boyfriend of five years had another lover who was 20 years his junior and poor. The boyfriend had been borrowing money from my friend over the last six months, and he had used it to splurge on meals and clothes for his new lover. The revelation led to my friend uncovering the way his partner had lied to and manipulated him the whole time they were together. He raged and swore he would never get suckered into a long-term relationship and would be fine with just hookups. I smile as I write this because despite his initial rage and vow, he is now in a new relationship and seemingly quite happy.

Rebecca, who recently relocated to France, divorced her husband in the USA before she moved because he was unaffectionate, unappreciative, and unhappy. It was an amicable divorce which he did not contest. The last time he came to her house to pick up his belongings, he handed her a letter. “When I opened the envelope and read it,” she said, “I almost fell to the floor. It was a profound profession of love and caring, and he told me how much he valued the 13 years we spent tother.” He wrote that it was the happiest he had ever been in his life. He revealed to her for the first time that his father had been in prison for most of his childhood, and his mother railed about what a mistake she made by marrying him. He had a longing to see his father but his mother didn’t let him visit. When he tried to tell his mother how much he missed his father and loved him, he was slapped. His mother became cold and distant, and he realized that he had become that way too. “I have started therapy and learned that my behavior with you was trauma re-enactment,” he wrote to Rebecca. “I reproduced the most painful part of my childhood, and the shock of your leaving snapped me back to the present and the reality of my own behavior.” Rebecca and her ex are now friends, and she said it’s a mutually supportive relationship.

If I ever wondered how people can live together for many years and not know that they are being lied to or that their partner harbors terrible secrets, my own life taught me how easily this can happen. Many years ago, when I lived in Switzerland, a friend of mine was having an affair with my first husband. She was so laden with guilt that when I divorced my husband, she offered to testify and tell the truth in a Swiss courtroom. Frankly, my choice of a husband was my own trauma re-enactment, and I wanted nothing more to do with the man I had married, or with the friend who had slept with him.

At the time, I wondered how I could ever trust anyone again. But after the shock had passed, I decided that it is detrimental to generalize when someone lies and betrays you. All men are not cheaters and neither are all women or all friends. Shutting down and becoming distrustful is not a good way to enter into future relationships or spend the rest of one’s life. Being observant and present is important, but having a closed heart is detrimental to happiness. It was one of the best decisions I ever made and it led to my long-term marriage which is a blessing in my life.

Judith Fein - Psychology Today Article - Book