One of the worst things your partner can do is lie to you. After all, they’re supposed to be one of the people you can trust most. So when that trust is broken, it can be incredibly painful.
One woman’s life was flipped completely upside down by her husband’s dishonesty. In fact, it’s hard to say what he was actually truthful about. He lied about his family, health, money, career, and pretty much everything else. Unsure how to get out, she turned to Reddit for advice.
Read the full story below.
One woman’s life got turned upside down after she found out almost everything her husband told her was a lie
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Now, she’s looking for a way to get out of the marriage
A year later, the woman returned with an update on how everything had played out
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She also explained how the lies finally started to unravel
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And since people wanted to know what exactly her husband had been hiding, she shared some of the biggest lies
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The “love hormone,” oxytocin, might significantly influence how much we trust people
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For better or worse, people are reportedly inclined to trust others. Professor Paul J. Zak at Claremont Graduate University wanted to understand why, so he looked into what happens in our brains when we decide whether someone can be trusted.
“I knew that in rodents, a brain chemical called oxytocin had been shown to signal that another animal was safe to approach. I wondered if that was the case in humans, too,” he wrote in a piece for Harvard Business Review. He went on to explain that his research found oxytocin to be positively linked to how much people tend to trust others.
Oxytocin, often referred to as the “love hormone,” is also known for promoting warm and positive feelings. According to a study on the hormone and romantic relationships, oxytocin levels are substantially higher among new lovers compared to single people.
This could suggest that those in happy romantic relationships might be more likely to trust others than those who are not.
Scientists have also looked into what happens when trust is broken and what role oxytocin may play in those moments. One hypothesis suggests that the hormone could help reduce fear mechanisms linked to the fear of betrayal, while also affecting how much people rely on positive feedback when making future decisions.
As described in Scientific American, the release of oxytocin, whose effects are reportedly specific to interactions with real people, “facilitates the expression of trust even after breaches of trust have occurred.”
Secrets and lies can irreversibly damage a relationship
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Trust is crucial in a romantic relationship, especially in a marriage. So when it’s broken, the relationship is bound to suffer. While trust can sometimes be rebuilt, other times the damage is too big to undo. And lying to your spouse about almost everything in your life definitely falls into the latter category.
Relationship and codependency expert Darlene Lancer, JD, LMFT, also suggests that some lies go too far for a relationship to recover. In a piece for Psychology Today, she emphasized that lies and secrets get in the way of real intimacy with a partner, which depends on trust and authenticity.
They can also lead to cover-up lies and omissions that become hard to keep track of, which seems to have been the case with the Redditor’s husband, as she shared in one of her updates.
Lancer also pointed out that lies can deeply affect the person on the receiving end. They may start doubting themselves, and their self-esteem can take a serious hit. The expert noted that victims of betrayal may need counseling to recover from the loss of trust, which is something the woman also recommended to people in similar situations.
Judging by the personal stories shared in the comments, she was unfortunately far from the only one to go through something so upsetting.
Readers were impressed by how the woman handled the whole ordeal, and some chimed in with similar stories of their own
