Few things upset me as much as someone lying about me under oath. Once, during a deposition an I sat in on an unfriendly witness giving an untruthful statement.
She was sworn in with the usual oath of ” I swear that the evidence that I shall give, shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. … I solemnly affirm that the evidence that I shall give, shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
In her mind, she may have been truthful, yet with the questions her lawyer asked, the spin on that truth made it unrecognizable. The whole time she gave her story, her eyes were blinking more frequently than usual.
She was giving many non-verbal indications of lying, yet I had to sit quietly. The counselor in me was silently screaming “She’s Lying!”
It’s unnerving hearing the a story twisted around so much you can’t recognize it. She also managed adding her own assessment of things to the point where her testimony wasn’t about the what happened, but rather her assumptions about the events.
That episode taught me that courts are not interested in facts. They only care about perceptions and staging.
The lawyer stages their client for a show. They produce what they hope is a plausible story.
A lesson from this episode is that you won’t ever get the ‘whole truth’. Even when you go to court, don’t count on ever getting anything close to the ‘whole truth’.
It’s also important realizing that the truth that you have is not the ‘whole truth’. Rev. Jack Hayford once said, “Don’t make the mistake of believing that you have all the truth“.
This means you make choices based on ‘good enough’ truth, rather than the ‘whole truth’. It also means that it may be years before you ever have ‘the whole truth’ about the affair.
So the bottom line is that you’ll likely never have the whole truth. With that in mind, realize that waiting for that truth is futile.
You’ll still need to go on with your life and repair what you can of your marriage. In the video “How Can I Trust You Again?“, you’ll gain the skills you need for repairing what trust you can.
The two of you will still need some trust between the two of you. You can rebuild a ‘good enough’ trust when you have the tools to do so.
Best Regards,
Jeff
