Lies are not born of a particular situation. Lies are conceived internally, inside the man usually as a result of deep seated fears and compulsions he may not understand or want to analyze. It was my inability to truly look inside myself and attempt to understand what motivated my behaviors and actions that allowed me to lie so flawlessly for so long to so many women.
The lie itself may have been about where I was, what I was doing or why I did not fulfill a promise that I had made. But the reason for the lie grew within me before that situation ever occurred. For example: when my ex and I first met, we were at a social function and she approached me and we started talking. She was very appealing to me, immediately there was an attraction and we sat down and talked the evening away she shared her feelings about past relationships and spoke earnestly about what she wanted for her future.
A man that was honest, available, faithful. Everything I was not. I distinctly remember her asking me if I was the kind of man she was describing. I sat there facing her still as a statue terrified she would see beneath my carefully crafted veneer and see me for the lying master manipulator I had become. I had no idea how to respond, but instinctively knew the truth was out of the question. She excused herself to go to the bathroom and when she returned I had transformed myself and my life into the man that she told me she was looking for. From that day forward I hid my true nature from her and every interaction was tainted with my fears she would uncover who I really was and my efforts to hide myself from her at all costs.
By the second year we were together I had developed such resentment for her and all the hopes and dreams she had because it was easier to blame her for who I had become than myself. We grew apart; her anxiously looking for the man she hoped I was and me running scared and angry that she was never satisfied with who I truly was, even though she never met that person.
It was at that time I began confiding in a woman that I met. She had such an unnatural attraction for policeman that it was almost a fetish. It did not take me long to realize she was a liability and in my efforts to extricate myself from that relationship I handled it so clumsily, she became angry and vindictive. I knew she was not a woman that I wanted sexually yet I participated in the deception because I was lonely within my existing relationship and needed someone to tell my sad little stories to.
Her efforts to get back at me for not having sex with her and ending the affiliation caused all kinds of mayhem. My sloppy interaction with her created a trail that led my ex directly to her and when they spoke she lied and told my girlfriend we had had sex together in our home and in the bed we shared. Finally, after all the lies and cheating I had done my entire life in every other relationship I was caught in a lie that I did not tell. My ex never believed that I was not unfaithful to her, and it was her belief in the fact that I had brought another woman into our home and our bed that was the death of our relationship, we never recovered from it.
My downward spiral caused by her leaving me was the catalyst that helped me get into counseling and to begin for the first time in my life to understand how my childhood experiences had influenced my ability and my inability to develop healthy relationships with other people, especially women.
Men lie for all different types of reasons, but they are rarely simple and usually the result of influences the women in their lives cannot begin to fathom. The origin is based on fears, fears that they will loose the woman in their lives.
What I have learned is that no one is more important than the truth of who I am. Like an alcoholic vigilantly protecting his sobriety, I safeguard my truth. Now the women I meet cannot shut me up when talking about who I truly am, it is with pride and complete candor that I reveal myself with them. The utter transparency that I bring to my new relationships is liberating, even when it scares some away. But I persist believing that there is a woman with enough love, compassion and understanding to appreciate who I am and what has led me to this place. And when she embraces me with love, acceptance and the patience she will surely need as I learn how to love a woman, she will receive my whole heart and all of my devotion.
“I would rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not”
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