Before the Lie

What is the worst part about learning that someone you love is lying to you?

I’ll tell you.

The worst part is you never see that person, the one you fell in love with, the same way again.

The lie, or more accurately, the person who was deceitful, takes this from you.

The person you fell in love with is altered…they are now someone different in your eyes. Your dynamic with this person is changed.  You lose the person with whom you put your trust.

When you stumble upon a big lie – the bigger the lie the worse the heartache – told by someone close to you, it is so destructive and heartbreaking because you are mourning the loss of someone you thought you knew. You no longer feel close to them, or view them as the friend you thought they were…someone you believed could hold your heart and treat it with the utmost respect, and never break it.

You view them as a stranger. A stranger you have been living with for years.

How could you lie to me? After all we’ve been through and everything we’ve shared, after 15 years of friendship…

You look at them in a different light for the remainder of the time you are together, whether it be five minutes, five months or five years. The trust you’ve spent a lifetime building between you vanishes the moment you find out you’ve been deceived and going back to loving that person in the same way, before the lie, is nearly impossible.

When I found out about my husband’s affair it altered my perspective on the world. The world I lived in, before the lie, vanished in an instant, because the way I perceived the person I trusted the most changed irrevocably.

I lost a friend, someone with whom I shared, what I thought was, an unbreakable bond. The person who I thought would always have my back, not only didn’t, but stabbed me in it.

He lied to me.

It feels like a death. You feel empty and ashamed you gave him your trust and he carelessly walked all over it.

There is nothing I can do to erase the sting of being lied to by someone I thought loved me, except pray and hope time will take away the pain so one day I will be able to trust someone again.