Will he ever stop lying?
This is a question we frequently hear from partners of people in recovery from sex or porn addiction – or CSBD if that’s your preferred term. For some partners, the continued lying makes them question whether the recovery is real at all. Others begin to wonder whether anything they’ve ever heard or been told is true. For anyone who thought they were in a loving, trusting relationship, it’s deeply confusing.
The big lies are bad enough. Learning the truth about compulsive porn use, visiting sex workers, or the real reason why they missed your son’s cricket match. But in some ways, the little lies can feel even worse because they seem so pointless. And that can also make them terrifying. Because if someone can lie about something that doesn’t matter, how can a partner possibly know when they’re telling the truth about something that does?
Why do people lie?
People lie for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it’s to avoid consequences or conflict, sometimes to protect themselves from shame, embarrassment or criticism, and sometimes to protect how they want other people to see them. We may lie to avoid disappointing someone, to cover up a mistake, to gain approval or admiration, or simply because telling the truth feels uncomfortable. And, of course, people lie to conceal things they know others would disapprove of. Most of us have told lies at some point, but when lying becomes a well-rehearsed way of managing difficult feelings or situations, it can become almost automatic.
For some, telling lies starts early in life. Telling the truth may once have resulted in punishment, humiliation, rejection or conflict. Hiding mistakes, changing the story or saying what other people wanted to hear may have felt safer.
Lying can also be about protecting privacy and developing a sense of autonomy. Children gradually discover that adults don’t automatically know everything they think, feel or do. And that what they say can influence what happens next. There can be something quite powerful in discovering, I can keep something to myself or I can tell you something different and change what you do.
In healthy development, children are increasingly allowed appropriate privacy, boundaries and ownership over their physical space, possessions and inner world. But when those boundaries aren’t respected, hiding things or lying may become a way of creating them – this is mine and you can’t get into it.
The same pattern can become particularly strong in adolescence. Very strict or intrusive parenting may inadvertently encourage secrecy, as a teenager lies about where they’ve been, what they’ve done or who they’ve been with in order to gain some agency over their own life. And as fitting in with friends becomes increasingly important, their approval may matter more than doing what a strict parent says. What begins as a way of establishing independence or protecting privacy can then become a familiar strategy for dealing with situations that feel intrusive or controlling.
For others, lying becomes a way of managing low self-esteem. If someone fundamentally believes they are not interesting enough, successful enough, attractive enough or simply good enough, they may learn to present a more impressive version of themselves.
Addiction gives lying another job
When someone is actively engaged in compulsive sexual behaviour, dishonesty often has an additional function – it protects the behaviour. If telling the truth might mean having to stop, being challenged, facing consequences or exposing something they feel deeply ashamed about, secrecy becomes part of keeping the behaviour going.
That may involve outright lies, but it can also include omissions, half-truths, minimising, deleting evidence, changing details or giving technically truthful answers that deliberately create a false impression. Over time, dishonesty can become a way of life.
After discovering sexual betrayal, partners often begin looking back over their relationship with new eyes. Stories that once seemed like harmless exaggerations suddenly feel different. Perhaps he embellished stories about people he knew, jobs he had or things he had done. Maybe he sometimes exaggerates when you’re out with friends, or changes details to make himself sound more interesting, successful or important.
Understandably, this can leave partners wondering if anything was ever true. And the white lies or exaggerations that perhaps you accepted before can suddenly feel completely unacceptable.
Can they ever change?
Yes, absolutely. But stopping the sexual behaviour doesn’t automatically stop the lying.
Recovery is a process, not a destination. Someone can be in recovery from their compulsive sexual behaviours while still learning how to live differently without those behaviours. That means recognising and changing the patterns that developed around the behaviour, protected it, or perhaps helped facilitate it in the first place. And dishonesty may be one of those patterns.
If lying has become automatic, recovery means learning to notice the moment when the urge to lie appears and understanding what sits underneath it:
What am I afraid will happen if I tell the truth?
Am I trying to avoid shame or criticism?
Am I trying to make myself look better?
Am I protecting something I don’t want someone else to know?
Why does admitting I made a mistake feel so difficult?
And crucially, when a lie does slip out, recovery means learning to correct it.
One strategy that can help is what I call the one-hour rule. If a relatively minor lie slips out automatically, agree that there is a one-hour window to come back and say, I’m sorry, what I told you wasn’t true. That doesn’t mean the partner won’t be upset, but they agree to try to manage that upset and recognise the effort involved in coming back and correcting the lie.
If an hour passes, there can be a second window of up to 24 hours – although by then, understandably, the partner may be considerably more annoyed.
The aim isn’t to make lying acceptable, or to give someone a consequence-free period in which to lie. It’s to make correcting a lie easier. If dishonesty has become an automatic response, creating even more fear about owning up can simply encourage another layer of concealment. What you want to encourage is the ability to catch the lie, come back, tell the truth and take responsibility. Over time, the gap between lie and correction should get shorter until, hopefully, the truth comes first.
Providing support without becoming a detective
Partners sometimes tell us they hate the person they’ve become. Rather than feeling able to ask an honest question and trust the answer, they’ve started sneaking around themselves trying to sniff out the truth.
You ask a question when you already know the answer, just to see whether he’ll tell you the truth. You check whether stories match. You notice tiny inconsistencies. You listen carefully to how he tells other people stories. Perhaps you check phones, receipts or locations. And then you worry that you’re becoming obsessive or controlling.
But after repeated deception, it’s understandable that you start looking for discrepancies. Your previous assumptions about what was true have been shattered, so now you’re searching for evidence about what is safe to believe. Unfortunately, constantly testing someone rarely rebuilds trust in the long term. It can leave you trapped in the exhausting role of detective while he remains in the role of suspect. Ultimately, you cannot police somebody else into becoming honest. He has to take responsibility for becoming someone who tells the truth.
You can have compassion for why someone learnt to protect themselves with dishonesty while still being clear that honesty is essential if the relationship is going to recover. You can encourage him to explore why he lies, perhaps using some of the questions above. You can acknowledge when he corrects himself or tells an uncomfortable truth. And you can be clear about what you need in order to feel safe in the relationship. But you cannot do the work for him.
Help for partners
Discovering that your partner has been living a secret sexual life can be devastating enough. Discovering that dishonesty may extend into other parts of your shared history can leave you questioning your judgement, your memories and sometimes the entire relationship. You don’t have to work that out on your own.
The Laurel Centre offers specialist support for partners affected by sex addiction, porn addiction and compulsive sexual behaviour. We can help you understand what’s happened, make sense of what you’re feeling and decide what you need next. You’ll find much more information about our individual therapy and our support groups at the link below
