When Your Lover Is a Liar: Healing the Wounds of Deception and Betrayal

by Susan Forward

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Author: Susan Forward

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 0060931159
ISBN 13: 978-0060931155

Have you ever been lied to by a lover? In this straightforward and supportive book, therapist Susan Forward profiles the wide variety of liars, shows you how to deal with the lies - from the benign to the lethal - that these men spin, and gives practical strategies to stop them before they ruin your relationship and, ultimately, your life.

Once you find out the truth about your lover and his lies, what do you do? Forward offers practical, proven, step-by-step methods for healing the wounds caused by his deception and betrayal. She provides all the communication and behavioral techniques you need to deal with a lover's lies, telling you exactly what to say, when and how to respond to his reactions, and how to present your requirements for staying in the relationship. With understanding and compassion, she helps you decide whether your relationship can be saved and shows you how to move beyond doubt and regret if you feel that it can't. But whether you stay or go, you can learn to love and trust again.

Review

"Susan Forward's wisdom and compassion shines through in this excellent guide for women about a potentially devastating experience in their lives. Fascinating reading!"-- Susan Jeffers, Ph.D., author of" Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway" and "End the Struggle and Dance with Life""Susan Forward does it again with this powerful book that will go a long way toward helping women regain their balance and self-esteem in the aftermath of betrayal."-- June M. Reinisch, Ph.D., director emeritus, the Kinsey Institute, author of "The Kinsey Institute New Report on Sex""Lying is a surefire way to demolish self-esteem and destroy relationships. This very useful guide shows us how to detect lies in those we love, confront the liar, and work through the betrayal so we emerge stronger and wiser."-- Ellen McGrath, PH.D., chair, American Psychological Association, National Task Force on Women and Depression"In this landmark book, Forward describes how lying and betrayal take place in loving relationships. In this practical guide, filled with helpful clinical anecdotes, she shows how people can move to new dimensions of love and healing. A must read!"-- Rabbi Levi Meier, Ph.D., chaplain, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, clinical psychologist, author of "Moses, the Prince of Egypt: His Life, Legend & Message for Our Lives ""Betrayal goes way beyond sexual affairs to include a host of lies and secrets. When Your Lover Is a Liar is an outstanding guide for helping women reduce the trauma of such interpersonal violations, choose a direction, and rebuild their sense of self."-- Janis Abrahms Spring, Ph.D., author of "After the Affair"

From the Back Cover

Have you ever been lied to by a lover? In this straightforward and supportive book, therapist Susan Forward profiles the wide variety of liars, shows you how to deal with the lies -- from the benign to the lethal -- that these men spin, and gives practical strategies to stop them before they ruin your relationship and, ultimately, your life.

About the Author

Susan Forward, PhD, is an internationally renowned therapist, lecturer, and author. Her books include the number-one New York Times bestsellers Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them and Toxic Parents. In addition to her private practice, she has served as a therapist, instructor, and consultant in numerous Southern California psychiatric and medical facilities.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

When Your Lover is a Liar

The Labyrinth of Lying

*You answer the phone to hear a woman on the other end say, "Is this Betty? I thought it was time you knew that your husband and I have been seeing each other for the past two years. He doesn't love you. Why don't you just let him go?"

*You get a notice from the bank that a check you wrote has bounced. You indignantly call the bank, certain that you have eight or ten times that amount in the account you share with your husband. You're told you're overdrawn--and you know you didn't spend all the money.

*Your live-in lover swears he's stopped drinking and has been attending AA meetings regularly--and then you find a bottle of Scotch hidden in his tool chest.

Suddenly you've got vertigo. The world you thought you knew is spinning. Your mind races: Who is this person I thought I could trust? How many other lies have there been? You've been socked in the stomach. You don't know if you have a future with this man--and you wonder if you can believe anything he said in the past. All you know for certain is this: Your lover is a liar.

At this agonizing, bewildering time, finding a rational response is crucial--an important relationship hangs in the balance, and so does your own well-being. Yet no matter how alert we may be, most of us have no idea what steps to take when we encounter lies on this most intimate ground. Most of us don't have a clue about how to confront and counter the poison of a lover's lie. Faced with the disorientation of deception and betrayal, we tend to bounce between two extremes: we may deny and rationalize away our partner's behavior, or become so enraged we can't think. People who care about us may be yelling "Dump him!"--and we turn ballistic, losing our perspective in a fit of anger. Neither path brings us peace or lasting satisfaction.

All too often our lovers' lies leave us paralyzed. We find ourselves unable to make even the simplest decisions with our partners, because trust has disappeared, and we don't know when or if they are telling us the truth. We don't know what's real anymore, and we suffer terribly. A relationship with a liar can destroy our self-respect and our ability to trust our own perceptions and judgments. In the worst instances, an otherwise loving woman can become bitter, guarded, and walled-off, afraid to open her heart for fear of being betrayed again.

A friend of mine recently summed up the dilemma many a woman has faced: "I trusted my boyfriend more than I've ever trusted anyone," she told me, "and then I found out he was still sleeping with an old girlfriend while he was telling me he loved me. I'm afraid I can never trust another man again."

Lying by a lover is frequently one of the most destructive forces in a woman's life.

But it doesn't have to be.

There is a way through the labyrinth of lying in love relationships, and I'd like to give you a map to this subterranean world within a world. In the pages that follow, I will deal with the full range of lies, from the benign to the lethal, and introduce you to the many varieties of liars--from those who'd never admit what they're doing to the chronic confessors who encourage us to forgive and forget. I'll also give you a detailed profile of the one kind of liar you must leave immediately.

I will show you some of the forces that drive men to lie, how they behave, and how to stop them early on. In the second half of this book, I will give you specific communication skills and behavioral strategies that will go a long way toward helping you reground a relationship in honesty or, when that is not possible, decide when to leave a partner who lies. Whatever your situation, I will help you identify your best course of action, and I will support you through the process of bringing truth, self-trust, and intimacy back into your life.

A Diagram of Deception

The words lie and liar are ugly. It's heartbreaking to have to use them to describe someone you love or are interested in, because they're loaded with pain and anger. They put you face-to-face with betrayal and malevolence when what you thought you had was intimacy. The words themselves are so inflammatory that it's important not to use them casually.

Certainly not every man is a liar, not every liar is a man, and not every thoughtless act is a lie. But in this book I'm focusing specifically on men who lie to women because I've seen how resistant women tend to be to acknowledging that the men they love lie to them. Women suffer uniquely when lies pop up in a relationship because, as we'll see, when a man lies to a woman, both of them blame her.

When I use the word liar, I'm not talking about men who mislead us inadvertently (because of oversights or misunderstandings) or with optimistic but unrealistic promises (like "I'll meet you at six" when they're not sure they can even get off work before seven).

And I'm not talking about the harmless little white lies that we all tell or shading the truth to protect a person from something painful. Most of us use flattery and exaggeration in our day-to-day interactions, and life could be pretty cruel if we didn't. The whole truth and nothing but the truth is fine in the courtroom, but we all try to soften otherwise harsh realities. We meet a friend we haven't seen in a few years and diplomatically say, "You look great--you haven't changed a bit," even as we're thinking, "God, you've got jowls just like your mother's, and the same bad taste in clothes." Do our words convey the whole truth? Of course not. But is a lie like this worth worrying about? I don't think so.

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When Your Lover Is a Liar: Healing the Wounds of Deception and Betrayal