As the old adage goes: How do you know if an addict is lying? If their mouth is moving. Addiction and lying are inseparable. More than anything, the vast web of lies and deceit her partner has spun for years is what leaves a betrayed partner immobilized and hopeless about rebuilding any kind of trust or future. Especially for couples from faith traditions, the ability the addict has to lie – often by omitting important truths – leaves the faithful partner knowing her partner is duplicitous and sick. The lies make us sad and leave us wondering if we can ever respect or trust this man again. Do we want to? Who even IS this person? Is anything about who he presented to be real? If his conscience could allow him to lie so thoroughly, does he have a conscience? Is he safe? And this is why, in sex addiction treatment, disclosures and sobriety are often verified with a polygraph.

For me, Dday was days before a house move. My marriage and life were simultaneously being dismantled along with our home that was being packed up. My first talks with my first coach were amidst boxes. My new home felt as foreign as my new life as a betrayed partner. I told her my story on our first free call. I told her how my husband “told me everything.” He assured me of this. He even wrote it all down on a small piece of paper about the size of a napkin. (Very kind of him to write it all down to make sure he didn’t leave anything out.) My coach told me that addicts almost never tell the truth upfront. I didn’t believe her… After all, my husband had a reputation far and wide for being honest to a fault. To make a long story short, he was only giving me a very sanitized version of the truth. That napkin-size list turned into a 14-page formal disclosure. God allowed me (during a time of prayer and fasting) to discover his phone history was recorded on my computer. When we met together in our therapist’s office after he passed the second polygraph (after failing his first one), he said “This is how truth feels.” It was a profound moment. He was lying to himself as much as he was lying to me. That’s why dealing with truth and reality is at the crux of healing for addicts.

This post is very important. We will talk about the key to change for addicts in a couple posts. But it’s worthless unless the matter of truth/reality is taken seriously by both the addict and the partner. Addiction, more than anything else, is a malfunction in the brain’s processing. When you interact with an addict, you are interacting with someone whose brain has permanently CHANGED. Their brain is different from yours. It’s different from the brain the addict was born with. It’s different from someone who is struggling in the same area but not yet fully addicted.

So far in the series, we’ve talked about how all addictions start with trying something that’s feels pleasurable. With repetition the action becomes a habit, which means it begins slipping into the subconscious and becomes automated. Anything you repeat enough will become habituated. Where a habit becomes an addiction is when someone uses it for emotion regulation. This is revealed when someone tries to stop what they think is a nasty habit. Addicts can’t stop. A pleasurable habit can be hard to stop. A chemical habit, a dependency, will be painful to stop because there are withdrawal symptoms that must be endured while getting sober – even this is different than addiction. Once someone is addicted, they have incorporated the substance or behavior into how they function and emotionally process life. They have also dysregulated their neurochemicals so dramatically, that how they experience pain and pleasure are greatly exaggerated. Keep in mind, this now resides deep in their subconsciousness. Their addicted brain “takes the wheel” to stay stable. It becomes more obsessed with getting the next hit. Two things that addicted brains experience in this state that healthy brains do not are craving and confabulation (when a brain lies to itself). Addiction wants more and more control. This is where we see the distorted thinking emerge that characterizes addicts. There are no internal brakes against the slide into the madness of addiction. Their brain is lying to them about their lying…..

A partner is incensed by how the addict behaves because he seems so cavalier and unbothered by it all. But in one sense, a part of him isn’t bothered. His best self (rational thinking) has long been snuffed out by the addiction that has taken over his brain. When people in the past referred to alcohol as “spirits,” they were onto something! His conscience has been deadened by his own brain. Self protection, pain-avoidance, and his drug of choice is what fuels his brain continually. In the recovery world, it’s called delusional thinking. As most addicts will tell you, it’s nearly impossible for an addict to come to believe they are in fact out of control, despite the mounting evidence. To stop this death spiral, the addict must begin to deal with reality on reality’s terms. His brain has lost its ability to test reality. Dr. Kevin McCauley says “People often ask if addiction is a disease or a choice. After all, the addict chose to start the addiction. It’s a disease OF choice.” As the addiction evolves from a habit to an addiction (conscious to subconscious), it moves from impulsive to compulsive – it becomes a master.

Sex addicts choose fantasy and addiction over truth and reality. This isn’t a one-time event. Confabulation is always at work. Addiction structures, once established in the brain, don’t go away. They can be weakened if other structures are built “on top” of the addiction. However, it’s imperative that addicts embrace the truth that they’re always susceptible to distorted thinking. A few months ago, my husband and I were heart-broken to learn that his support group leader, who we thought had been sober for 10 years, was deceiving his wife and his friends all along. When I hear of a celebrity in the recovery world leaving his wife after years of recovery work, I chalk it up to delusional thinking and poor reality testing. Popular culture says “once a cheater, always a cheater.” We know the cheater’s brain is likely in the grip of addiction, and addiction requires specialized treatment.

“The guys I see who are the scariest are high in psycopothy who are high functioning, who look normal, and are good at fooling people – and who take delight at fooling people. One of the things that bothers me is the courts are very happy to keep someone in who is black, toothless, poor and low-functioning. But those guys are the easiest to tell when they have made genuine changes because they’re not manipulative. They will act out and then when things change, you can tell it by their behavior. The ones who are much harder are the ones who are more malevolent. They’re planful, they’re thoughtful, they tell you what you want to hear. They tell the court what courts want to hear. They’re very slick… The hardest to treat is the person who sees it as a game – if I fool you, then I feel better about myself and I win.” – quote from a podcast interview of author of Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, And Other Sex Offenders, Anna Salter

Addicts, sadly, become very skilled at lying. Every betrayed partner reading this post knows too well how it feels to be the victim of lies and withholding truth. This is abusive in the context of an intimate partnership where transparency is expected and brings great emotional and psychological damage to the victim. No one can have a healthy relationship with an active addict or someone who is willing to bend the truth and/or someone who can’t tolerate reality. The sad news is that it takes time to tell whether an addict is ready to embrace the truth about his addiction and himself. It takes work for him to stop gaslighting and manipulating his partner. Author M. Scott Peck says “Mental health is a commitment to reality at all costs.” Author and therapist Jason Martinkus says a recovering betraying partner must tell himself “I’d rather lose her than lie to her.” A full commitment to TRUTH is the first real step toward healthy living for addicts. It’s a respectable thing for an addict to do the work to get sober, become trustworthy, and to use skills that empower him to emotionally regulate in healthy ways – all with his conscious mind! Subconscious behaviors are a dangerous place for a former addict to be. Your addict is always on the sidelines just waiting for a moment to be thrown into the game – he does his work in the automated subconscious. It takes work to integrate all parts of himself so that the addict is the same person in every situation. This is a beautiful place to be and it IS achievable! Truth has a powerful regulating effect on a brain. Defenseless transparency has a powerful affect on the nervous systems for those in intimate partnerships.

“Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding. 24  The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice; he who fathers a wise son will be glad in him.” Proverbs 23:23-24

 “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.” Psalm 51:6

So far, this post has been written out of left brain intellect. It gets more emotionally real when I consider the shock and trauma I encountered Dday and beyond, realizing my husband had been lying to me. My husband was a leader at church and a good dad. He seemed to be a compulsive confessor. I genuinely didn’t think he was capable of lying – especially to me! He’s always been a romantic partner and a lot of fun to be around. (well if you consider nerds fun- and I do!) It took many months to come to a place of acceptance that he could be sneaky. Oh how I hate that word. He could look at porn then take me on a great date. He could tell our kids they couldn’t watch a particular movie, then go watch worse alone. Betraying partners distort reality for the faithful partner, often by omitting truth or making her the problem. However, outright lying, deleting computer history, going places in secrecy, working hard to look extra good, love bombing, and more are also common tools in a cheaters toolbox. It’s a very demeaning feeling to be the recipient of this kind of behavior. Lying and gaslighting create a power imbalance in a relationship. Naturally, the faithful partner isn’t eager to trust the offending party for a long time, and once he has taken extreme measures to heal and earn her trust back – always with accountability and verification.

We spent months/years in recovery with my husband shedding these crazy lies and insane thinking. By shedding I mean that he would tell me this crazy stuff like it was truth and therefore, he couldn’t help himself…. He really believed a lot of garbage about porn, arousal, himself, me…. This is painful to remember. I am so grateful for therapists who acted as a standard showing him that this kind of thinking is off. After Dday a wife hangs on every confession. We are trying to get our mind around every unfaithful act. We are safety seeking by wanting all the truth that has been withheld from us. So when he says “you know it all”, only to discover yet another lie, the trauma begins to compound exponentially. Trickle truth = a complicated healing process. Also in those early days, when I’d be terrified at the reality of where my husband’s mind and mental health were, he couldn’t mirror those difficult emotions for me. Addicts don’t want to accept the truth of who they became in addiction. They have a high capacity for living in denial, and I think they’re shocked to find that we do not… We want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. When he learned to lean into my pain around accepting this horrific new truth, some healing started to happen. It put us on the same team against addiction rather than on opposing sides. Coming to terms with my husband’s capacity to lie to me was no small feat. It shattered my psyche. Putting the pieces back together has been hard work.

Solid boundaries and accountability measures help. Boundaries = safety for me (when they’re maintained). It’s good seeing him grow in holding my negative emotions and triggers. He’s at the point now where he sees a trigger coming before I do. He can ask how I’m doing and agree with me and really hang in there. He’s really grown in honesty around his poor thinking habits and his weaknesses. Authenticity. That breeds safety between us. We will never reclaim the virginal trust we had for over two decades. I am not at the point where I can put a positive spin on what was lost for me when we lost fidelity and trust. There will always be a contingency plan should he choose addiction over me. I will always have to be prepared to put that plan into effect. I lost of a lot of security. We can both assure you the price a couple pays for sexual sin is higher than you could imagine.

“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life 9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:7-9

“In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” Ephesians 5:28

Resources:

book “Worthy of Her Trust” by Jason Martinkus

Martinkus podcast Sitting on Secrets

Center for Peace

Dr. Jake Porter’s Making Saves webinar

https://youtu.be/IpjoN233dvI