A comment left by a reader on the blog brought to light a challenging relationship question. That question is “What makes it so difficult to uncover the truth?”
Although you hear couples talk about being honest, they find uncovering the truth about the affair and their relationship is challenging. “Why?” you might ask. “Isn’t honesty the best policy?”
For example, a husband will say to his wife that he would never lie to her, and he expects that she won’t lie to him either. He is 100% right in expecting this from her, but there is one huge problem: people want others to be honest with them without being ‘truthful’ with them.
Talking about honesty and truthfulness is different from being truthful.
These days, spouses will talk about being authentic and honest. At those times, they are emotionally honest, but NOT factually truthful. Emotional reality and factual reality are two different things.
One of the hard truths in this area is that you can be honest about believing a lie. You can honestly believe a lie is the truth. This is why it can be very difficult to uncover the truth.
Another challenge is that some spouses have believed lies for so long, they don’t realize the truth. They don’t recognize what is true. They believe the lie and take it as reality.
In order to help couples move toward uncovering the truth of their relationship, I developed a workshop that gives them some powerful questions they can ask each other. The questions lead to clear answers about their emotional reality.
The questions are like “truth serum.”
They have grown comfortable believing lies they tell others and themselves. When you become comfortable with lies it becomes an ingrained habit. It becomes your ‘truth’.
When lies are that ingrained, the person lying is not intentionally being malicious, they just want to avoid hurting others with the discomfort that truth brings.
When you ask someone to tell the truth, they will automatically try to avoid hurting your feelings. The distress of being truthful makes many people recoil from the task at hand.
The key is to help couples who are in a stuck place recognize that the best way to be honest with each other isn’t through words alone. Honesty comes from asking questions that address the root issues and factual truths.
Some cheaters view the pain of the factual truth as something worse than telling and believing the lies. What this amounts to is taking the easy way out of an awkward situation.
Another variable is substituting a collection of facts for ‘truth’. Truth makes sense out of the various factual data points, while isolated facts presented out of context leads to erroneous conclusions.
Truth includes motives, actions, intent and the effects of them, while facts only look at a few things.
Truth makes people squirm. It leaves you feeling uneasy, compared to the comfort of lies.
Whether you want to believe it or not, there are lots of ways to be dishonest without being intentionally deceptive.
The truth about someone’s undying love for their partner is often a comforting lie that leaves the lover feeling secure and loved.
Although factual truth is uncomfortable, it provides a more solid foundation for your marriage relationship than lies do. With lies, you’re never sure what people did or whether they are really with you or whether you can truly trust what they are telling you.
Lies leave you unsure of where you stand in the marriage. Truth on the other hand, is uncomfortable, but you know where you stand. You clearly know what you are dealing with.
A final challenge about truth is that of ‘whose truth’ matters. Each of you may have different truths about a situation. When there are two or more truths, how do you choose the one to go with?
You can turn your marriage around when both of you start valuing the truth and work toward uncovering it.
Have you ever been betrayed by someone you loved?
If so, then the video “How Can I Trust You Again?” is for you. It will help you understand what it takes to rebuild trust in your marriage and how to move forward with a new level of honesty and openness. You deserve that much from the person who promised to love and cherish you forever.
This video will show you the steps involved in rebuilding trust after betrayal, including understanding why it’s important for couples to be honest with each other about their feelings, thoughts, fears, desires and needs.
You’ll learn how to communicate more effectively with your spouse as well as how not to take things personally when they’re said or done without malice or intent. And finally, I’ll share some tips on how not to repeat mistakes that led up to the original breach of trust – because we all make them!
Click here now if want some helpful advice on rebuilding trust after betrayal!
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
