According to research, men are found to lie more than women in married life. And a lot of wives feel unhappy, confused in their married life because they feel like their men are lying and hiding things. And it is not always so easy to spot a man’s lies, especially when he has turned into a habitual liar. As a wife, if you have a similar experience, you might read on.
Why does your husband lie to you?
Men lie over things for a variety of reasons. It may be to dodge a problem, hide a dirty secret, maintain the status quo, or turn things in his favor… In particular, a man often lies because he does not want his woman to have an emotional meltdown. For example, if a man returned home late because he hung out with some dubious fellows in a bar, generally he would not open up to his woman about where he went that night, instead, he might say he was stuck at work; in this way, he tried to ensure peace at home; he knew well that if he told her the absolute truth, his woman would be disappointed with him or even hit the roof.
Therefore, when you are confused or angry about why your husband lies often, you might try to reflect upon yourself by looking at this issue from your man’s perspective. If you admit that you are kind of rough on him when you find that he did something unsatisfactory/unpleasant, you need to change yourself; probably, if you could react in a less volatile manner to what he said/did, he would have been willing to share more with you.
Be aware that his lies can backfire often:
A lying husband manages to fabricate the truth in order not to let his wife know what he is doing. But more often than not, those lies backfire. Initially, those lies were made up to avoid conflict or avoid hurting his wife; but eventually, they often inflict more damage on his wife than by telling the truth directly. Especially as lies build on themselves – a lying husband has to make up a bigger lie to cover up his smaller one, a more and more false version of reality increasingly distances both sides from each other. Therefore, don’t misunderstand that the habit of telling a minor lie can be allowable in married life.
Do you often fall for his lies? How to know better whether your husband is lying:
The following points out 6 common signs of a lying husband:
1 He deliberately questions your questions:
In general, a seasoned liar would not like to answer a direct question. A lying husband may use some tactics to deviate his woman from a currently sensitive topic and redirect his woman’s question towards herself. The odds are his woman will fall for it if she does not give a moment’s thought to it; the classic dialogue example below can make this point clear:
Amy: Do you take a fancy to that woman?
Jack: How could you possibly think I am attracted to her? Tell me!
…
In the dialogue above, Jack is trying to raising a rhetorical question to get more time to think about how to cover his lies and his faults that he may have committed.
To prevent this situation, when you feel your husband is lying, you might be stern and ask him to answer in a simple “Yes” or “No”. If he takes time to answer at the moment, chances are he is hiding something serious from you.
By the way, another relevant trick to check whether your man is lying is to check whether he has gaslighted you with his lies. Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person makes a victim question their sanity, memories, judgment, or perception of reality; and people experiencing gaslighting may feel anxious, confused, and unable to trust themselves in the heat of the moment. So you might reflect on whether you have had such an experience when you were questioning him about something suspicious that he did.
2 He frequently uses “word-filters” to respond:
A lying husband usually needs a relatively long time to process his lies and make them sound truthful and believable to his wife. During a conversation, he may try to buy more time through the use of word-filters (e.g. “ah”, “umm”, and “er”) to prolong the process of formulating a believable lie.
Surely, that can be another matter if your man has already formed the long term habit of using those word-filters when he speaks. But if you just realize that recently he has started to frequently use those word-filters, it is noteworthy. By the way, you might check if he is being tense, nervous, sweaty, or fidgety while he is speaking.
3 He responds slowly to your questions even though they are easy:
Even for those questions that could have been answered within seconds with a simple “Yes” or “No”, a lying husband may find an excuse to escape because he may be afraid that those questions may put him in a tricky situation. On the other hand, it takes both time and effort to spin a lie; and he knows well one thing: if he chooses to hastily answer your meaningful, targeted questions, his words can not flow smoothly; and he may become increasingly incoherent when you point out there is a slip-up in his speech, and that will be more likely to arouse your suspicion. Therefore, when he is trying to cover up his lies, he may either avoid answering your questions or respond slowly to them.
From time to time, a lying husband may have to pause to search for the right words to justify himself when his wife is questioning him. And he may attempt to make the delaying action look natural. For example, you saw your husband return home, you came forward to ask him a question that could have been answered with a simple “Yes” or “No”, but he did not answer immediately; instead, he answered you after he had taken his coat and shoes off and arranged those in the closet.
So if you notice your husband has exhibited such a behavior pattern during conversations with you, chances are he is trying to keep a secret from you or hide some problems. To further confirm whether he is lying to you, you might go on to ask some follow-up questions to observe whether his response to those is still vague.
4 His speech patterns have changed obviously:
Ironically, a lying husband may often use a higher pitch to cover up his wrongdoings or distract his woman’s attention from the truth (A suddenly higher-pitched voice means the speaker gets anxious, nervous, ratty, fed up…; and at the moment, his woman may be very disappointed because it never enters her mind that he has become so bad-tempered).
And a liar’s hesitation in responding can be experienced through grammatical errors and slips of the tongue; a lying husband may talk particularly fast because he wants to end the uneasy conversation as soon as possible. But the more he wants the conversation to end fast, the more likely he is to trip over words.
In general, most men seldom stammer. But when they are lying to their women, they may have a slight speech impediment. Stuttering and using word-filters go hand in hand often because they are both virtually involuntary reactions to those untrue things that a liar says.
Furthermore, when a lying husband is pressed for details about his lies, he tends to give his wife a long, drawn-out explanation. But that kind of a prolonged explanation just goes to show that he’s got something to hide.
In short, a significant discrepancy in the speech patterns can be one of the warning signs of a lying husband.
5 Decode his body language:
It is hard to inhibit our natural body language when we are lying, even if we are just uttering a lie.
Likewise, when a man is lying to his woman, he may have already framed a convincing reply in advance, but his body may still unconsciously exhibit some suspicious signs of emotional stress. So, when you try to figure out whether your husband is lying to you, you might observe his body language to take some cues. For example, you might keep an eye on your husband’s eye movements during a conversation; if he avoids making eye contact with you, then this may reveal that he is reluctant to tell you the truth; even though he maintains eye-to-eye contact with you when he is lying to you, maybe you can observe that he squints or blinks his eyes frequently, or maybe you can observe that he still feels uncomfortable somewhere; maybe his hands/legs shake unconsciously…
In particular, a person’s facial experience is most likely to dramatically change when they are lying. For example, a lying husband may support his fabricated lies with a smile, but probably the smile is just a constrained smile that does not reach his eyes; he may rub his eyes/nose, cover his face frequently to evade confrontation; or maybe when he utters a lie, he can’t help blushing, sweating, biting his lip…
6 His has different lie versions:
When your husband is lying to you, he may inadvertently make up different stories about the same issue: the more times you probe about a very suspicious issue, the more likely you are to find that he is telling different versions of stories. Any inconsistencies in recalling an event as well as its minor details can be solid proof that he is lying. Even sometimes, he just has told you a convincing story around his lies; but later, he may give another version of the story and goof up in details when you ask him to tell his lie story backward.
A husband who was not lying can easily retell his story word by word; however, a lying husband may not know where to start when asked to recall his lie story, or he may need some time to think back on it; eventually, the lie story may be found to be edited again by him.
The final word:
When your husband is lying to you, especially when he is telling a big lie, probably you feel disconnected, distant, hurt, and even betrayed because he breaks the mutual agreement with you and even breaks the commitment to you… Being lied to is damaging to a marriage for a plethora of reasons, and yet one major issue that should be urgently addressed to move the relationship forward is lack of mutual trust; lying erodes the mutual trust; on the one hand, as a wife, afterward you have been inclined to question anything he says, and you feel difficult to trust him like before just because you can’t forget he has ever deceived you; on the other hand, he also feels depressed because it seems very tough for him to gain your trust back after being caught lying, no matter how hard he works on improving himself.
Anyway, as long as you believe your marriage is still worth saving, it is possible to rebuild a marriage after trust has been broken. For more marriage-saving tips on how to confront your lying husband, you might go on to watch the video below to follow the comprehensive guidance that is offered by Brad Browning, a marriage coach with 12+ years of experience:
Maybe, you are also interested in the related posts below:
How to survive an emotionally disconnected marriage.
Suspicious signs your husband has emotionally checked out.
How to keep your husband happy and faithful – Be a better wife.
What should you do when your husband says he hates you.
How to deal with an emotionally distant husband – Make him open up.
Should you forgive your cheating spouse and move forward?
Is your spouse cheating – Signs your spouse is having an affair.
10 basic tips on how to prevent your husband from cheating on you.
How to deal with a spouse’s emotional affair – Save the marriage.