Dealing with Lies <<– Listen to the podcast
Hi. This is Jeff Murrah and I welcome you to another session of Affair Recovery Radio. We’re continuing with the theme of lies and dealing with lies today. The topic today is going to be how to deal with lies.
Once you know that you’ve been lied to, then you’re faced with the question how can you deal with it. You can only deal with lies if you recognize that you are being lied to. Prior to knowing how the other person is lying to you, how are you going to deal with it? You’re not. You’re just going to fall for it.
I’m going to assume at this point that you recognize some of the lies and that you’ve taken some steps to see them. Now let’s assume we have to head on into action.
In dealing with this topic today I’m not trying to stir up fights between you and your spouse. I am trying to interrupt the whole cycle of you getting sucked into the lies, and then continuing the pattern of lies. Without further ado, let’s head on into it.
Now, in terms of dealing with them and coming up with a way to handle it, the first solution is to reject the lies.
How you go about this, you have to intentionally make a conscious rejection of the lie. When the cheater lies to you, in your mind you’re going to have to say that is not true, or I choose not to accept that.
This is important because when you just sit there and allow the lies to go into your ear and rattle around in your head, they do damage. And for that reason you have to make this conscious effort to stop it right after it goes in. Because if you just take the approach well, I’ll just listen to them and then choose to ignore them, it doesn’t work that way. Because what happens, the lie does get into your head and until it is neutralized by means of being refuted, it still has power.
When we talk about having power let’s just say that the lie still has poison. It may be a weakened poison, but there’s still enough poison and toxin in that lie to do damage.
If you’re going to start being serious about your recovery and doing something about the affair you’re going to have to get serious about rejecting the lies.
I realize some of you are in a situation where you may not have the freedom to consciously say to the cheater you’re lying, or say out loud I choose not to accept that. If you are in that situation then you can do this step just within your own mind. Because the purpose here is to help you make the necessary changes in your thinking and to neutralize the lie, not so much to start fights.
If you go into this saying hey, Jeff told me to tell you that I reject that lie, that’s a sure way to start a fight. We’re not here to start fights. We’re here to help you recover from the affair. And so at this point even if you just have to make the mental note to yourself consciously refuse to reject the lie. And you reject it by saying I choose not to accept it, or I reject that. And then you don’t let it sink in.
Number two, you need to use questions rather than statements in dealing with the lies. The reason for this is when you use statements all the time in trying to counter the lies, or responding to the cheater, they’ll argue with the statements. When you use questions they may not agree with your question, they may not give you the answer that you want, but eventually they are going to have to deal with that question.
It may be 20 or 30 minutes later. It may be several days later. It may be months later. But in their mind they are going to have to deal with them. That’s like I talk about how the lies rattle around your head, when you ask them questions those rattle around in their head.
Questions like are you telling me the truth, is that really what happened, how do you expect me to believe that, how can that be so, how could that happen, how did you come up with that idea. Those types of things go over much better than confronting them with you’re lying, there’s no way that could happen, no woman in her right mind would do that, no man in his right mind would do that.
If you go around making statements like that you’re going to get a fight. And they are going to tune you out.
In terms of your recovery I don’t see that as in your best interest. You may, because I know sometimes when you go into recovery you just want to split the blanket, let’s get away from them, and you have no qualms about going ahead and starting a fight.
Some of you listening really do want to work things out with your spouse. And if that’s the case then using the question versus statement approach is going to be what you want. In both cases I see it as in your best interest, whether you choose to stay with them or not. Because eventually they are going to have to answer those questions, and this is using the same principle that I talked about with rejecting the lies, to where things rattle around in your head. In this case you’re using it on them.
Third thing, to confront the lie. In confronting the lie, I mentioned use questions, but here you want to attack the lie and not the person.
When you confront the cheater on their lies you want to confront the lie. And confronting does not mean that they agree with your version.
By confronting the lie, what I’m talking about here, if they say that they were at Joe’s Bar and Grill at 10 o’clock and you have evidence that at 10 o’clock they were somewhere else, you can say I’ve got evidence that you were over at Margie’s or at Jim’s at 10, and that you were not at the bar. You want to confront the lie.
You don’t want to say you’re nothing but a dirty no-good liar. That’s attacking the person. That’s not what you’re wanting to do. You want to attack the untruth. You want to confront the lie, not the person.
This is going to take some time. Because when we have been hurt, especially when we’ve been hurt personally,. You tend to want to lash out at the other person. When you’re hurt you want to hurt back. That’s a natural human phenomenon. You’re going to have to be careful about that and try not to attack them.
Because what you’re really after is attacking the lie. You have to confront the lie.
Once again I’ll temper this third one about confronting the lie, that’s assuming that you’re in a situation where it’s safe to go ahead and confront the cheater. I realize some cheaters tend to be violent and you’re going to have to be careful how you approach and how you confront even the lies in this situation. You definitely don’t want to attack their person, because when you attack the person that’s when you get strong responses.
I encourage you, when you are doing this kind of confrontation, be careful where you do it and the circumstances. What I mean by that, try to do it at a table rather than standing up. It’s a simple little thing that most of the time when there’s violence in the home people are already standing up. This is not something that you want to do and confront them when you’re standing up.
Another thing. When you do this type of confrontation make sure that the cheater or the person that you’re confronting is not between you and the door. Make sure you can get to the door of the room or the building before they can, in case you have to leave or things get violent. Know where the door is, because otherwise if you’re in a volatile situation this could lead to some conflict and I want you to be safe. I want you to do this smartly, if you feel like you need to at this point. If it is a volatile situation, too volatile to want to risk, then just choose to reject the lies in your own mind and start using the questions rather than statements.
Those first two elements you can apply in any situation. That third element you’ve got to be careful about.
That will bring us to the close of this session in terms of dealing with lies. I look forward to you for future Affair Recovery Radio sessions. Thank you.
