Photo by: Noel Hendrickson
Everyone makes mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. As much as we might not like to admit it sometimes, everyone messes up sooner or later, especially when it comes to the relationships we have with other people. You talk it out, forgive the other person, and even if you don’t forget, you move forward from there, right?
Not always. What happens when the guy you’re dating makes a mistake that you’re finding hard to forgive? What happens if he didn’t just tell you a little white lie, but a bigger one with hurtful consequences? Cheating seems to be the most obvious thing that a guy would lie about, but even if he didn’t cheat on you, finding out that your guy tried to hide something big — like his feelings about your relationship — from you can really affect your connection.
What happens when he lies to you?
When Kate, 22, found out that her boyfriend hadn’t come clean about cheating on her, she was “more hurt by the fact that he lied to me about it than his actual actions.” Other girls said they felt the same way.
“If you’re in a relationship where you find out he lies to you, that’s not much of a relationship anymore,” says Allyson, 20. “Why would you want to waste your time on a guy who doesn’t tell the truth?”
So why do guys — even the ones you’re just hooking up with — lie in the first place about cheating and other things that might hurt you? And even if you recover (with difficulty) from a lie, can you really forgive them?
So ... is he really lying?
Jason, 20, once lied to a girl “because she couldn’t handle the truth” about their relationship. “She had unrealistic expectations for what a relationship is,” he says. “It would have taken too much work to set them straight.”
Jason says he believes that telling her the truth would have hurt her more, had she found out. Withholding information was “for the best,” in his case, he says.
James, 21, doesn’t make a habit of lying to the girls he dates, but when he does, he makes sure that they don’t realize he did.
“I really can’t think of a single time they’ve found out,” James says. “I’m neurotic about my lies. I make sure my track is always doubly covered. It’s kind of scary.”
Both James and Jason say that they’re more likely to lie to a girl they’re hooking up with, as opposed to one they’re seriously dating, but it depends on the circumstances of both the relationship and the situation they're tempted to lie about.
“I’ll be more likely to lie to someone I’m hooking up with, but that doesn’t mean you’re safe if we’re in a relationship,” he says.
No matter what kind of label you’ve put on your relationship, James says that repeat offenders shouldn’t be tolerated. But if your significant other lies to you just once, it’s possible to work through it.
“A couple can eventually gain back each other’s trust if they care enough about each other to work through it,” Kate says.
Can you work through it? Or should you move on?
Finding out that your significant other lied to you once is something you can move past, but it can definitely have an effect on your relationship, says Michelle, 21. Discovering that her boyfriend had lied to her made her realize that the relationship might not have been worth the effort she was putting into it. “I just realized we were at different levels and he didn’t have enough respect for me,” Michelle says. “It almost turned me off to him completely, even though I knew he wouldn’t do it again.”
Sometimes, the nagging feeling that your significant other might lie to you again can stay with you for a while. “There’s always that nagging notion at the back of your mind that he did it once, so it could happen again,” Allyson says. “Your trust in his loyalty is pretty much gone.”
Of course, deciding whether lying is something you can move past varies from one relationship to the next.
“There is a fine line between forgiving and letting him walk all over you, and you need to make sure that you stay true to yourself and your feelings,” Kate says.
If he proves to be a repeat offender, then you might have to rethink things. “If his [lie] is just one of many times that he has mistreated you, it may be a red flag of some other underlying issue in your relationship,” Kate says.
The bottom line? Sometimes mistakes are just that, but if you realize a guy is constantly lying to you, he’s not worth the effort — and it’s time to move on.
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