IT CAN NOT BE SAID IN PLAINER OR SIMPLER WORDS.
THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.
LIES ARE CHAINS AROUND YOUR HEART AND SOUL AND THEY BREAK HEARTS BEYOND REPAIR.
TRICKLE TRUTH … It’s something that you are going to hear lots about on this forum, so you might as well learn about what it is. You might as well learn WHY you’re going to be guilty of it and you might as well learn how you have only one chance and one chance only to prevent it from hurting your marriage further.
Quote from YoBananaBoy - You know the only thing worse than cheating on a partner? Lying about it. Continually. Constantly.
Bluntly put, you’re here because you got caught with in an affair with your pants down or your knickers up. Perhaps it hadn’t even gotten that far. Perhaps you were “just friends” and she had only invited you up the hotel room to look at her sketches. It doesn’t matter how. It just matters that your here.
You might have heard about the steps that you need to take like No Contact, Transparency, Establishing Boundaries, Writing a Timeline and of course, the corner stone of it all, honesty.
This brings us to Trickle Truth.
What is it? Well, when the cheaters (that would be you and me) don’t tell the entire truth at first and we end up spilling the beans (facts) over a period of time and after being asked many questions, time after time, well, that’s known as trickle truth.
And the chances are almost 100%; you will be guilty of this at one point of time or the other. Regardless of the unique and special circumstances that that brought you here, there is one thing that all WS’s have in common and that’s the ability to lie.
Adultery creates an environment in which honest people learn to lie and the liars learn to sound honest
To get to and to continue our affairs, somehow, somewhere we practiced deception. It might have been a lie to your spouse such as “I’m working late or it’s just a call from work”. It might have been a lie to yourself. Regardless, it starts off small and builds up and the longer the affair, the bigger the lies we tell.
So, now you’re being asked to be open and honest and truthful by your BS.
This might be the most difficult part to master in the first days following D-day. After all, in the process of having our affairs, we all mastered the skill of lying to our spouses and to ourselves. Now is the time to learn how to be honest again. No trickle truthing. No telling “little white lies” to protect yourself or your BS from the hurt that you think she will feel if you tell her the truth. You do not want to be Bill Murray in the Groundhog Day movie. You need to learn to tell the truth. Since we’re talking about it, you might as well hear a little truth right now. The real truth will come out no matter how hard you try to hide it. It will hurt less in the long run if it comes out now instead of in dribs and drabs. As most of the WS will be able to tell you from firsthand experience, each TT event resets the marriage clock back to zero again!
Sad to say, most of us can’t do that the first time around. No matter what we know in our head, our hearts and minds don’t cooperate. We say, yes, honey, this is all of the truth and inside, we know we’re lying. We get asked a question; we notice our lips moving and it turns out we just lied. Again.
Why? Well, sometimes we lie to try and protect our spouse. It can be to protect the OW. It can be to protect us from more shame. There are a million reasons but they are all wrong. But no matter what the justification or the explanation, a lie is a lie is a lie.
We can use a lot of words to describe the lie. We can say it was just a fib, I was just being economical with the truth, I accidentally misrepresent the facts, I tried to diminish the effects, and I simply minimized how many times we slept together. We can say it was a lie of omission, a plain old oversight, a misunderstanding, a lapse of memory, a mistake in the choice of words or a Freudian slip. We can justify it as splitting hairs or plain old self- defensiveness but it all comes down to lie. If it’s a lie to you, it’s a lie to her. If you can’t admit it to yourself, chances are that you won’t tell her. At least not the first time around.
Let the lawyers argue what they will. In the strictest legal sense, they all might be defensible arguments but in the mind of a BS, they’re going to be the biggest most glaring bunch of lies that have come out of your mouth. And that was right after you just finished saying, it’s the truth, I swear to god, you have all of the truth.
And when you do get caught in your lie, all you’re going to be able to do is hang your head and feel stupid and worthless and stupider than you look.
And here is the hard kernel of truth that you better be prepared to face if you end up trickle truthing. If you did this more than once, it might be the very end. The letter R is gone and it’s been replaced with the letter D. If you don't believe me, then read the posts on the Wayward side.
Trickle Truthing is hateful insofar as it continues the deceit. The affair might have been a mistake but the lies are seen as deliberate. They feel no trust in you right now – and they’re 100% justified. If ever there was someone in the world they felt they could trust, it was you – until now. Now, they have difficulty believing anything you say. They are driven to check up on everything. Let them. Better still, help them. Overload them with access. The era of “covering your tracks” must end and be supplanted by total and voluntary transparency. You must dismantle and remove every vestige of secrecy.
The good news is that you don’t have to be a liar anymore. Your SO is asking for the truth! Why? Well, they have the right to know. They have a need to know. They simply want to know.
Accept that. It’s a fact of life and you’re wasting your time arguing to the contrary. Argue enough and they tend to walk away from the marriage and from you. I would simply ask you to trust the wisdom of the SI community and accept the reality that the Truth will come out.
Trust us. It always does, no matter how elaborate the lies. After all, liars have to remember every little detail so they can’t get tripped up and most of us aren’t that good or else we wouldn’t be here on SI, busted! So, you going to get caught lying. But each time you do lie, it just gets worse. It’s the single largest contributor to failed reconciliation. Thread after thread on SI speaks to how TT is what put the last nail in the coffin to any chance of R.
Quote from stillnpain. - Healing is a Journey and without Details – it’s an even longer journey.
Without details, the puzzle can never be completed. There are puzzle pieces missing that are important and valuable. Without details, the ‘Journey’ to heal has no road map. Attempting the process without details is like driving without lights – at night – in unfamiliar territory – with no map. Without details, the story can never be written and placed in the archives. A Journalist must know What – When – Where - Why – Who – and How to complete a story and put it to rest. A Betrayed Spouse must have these details to do the same. Otherwise the story is never completed. Never put to rest. There will always be doubts, worries, unknown facts, suspicion, mistrust, and insecurity. The case will never be closed.
YOU HAVE TO DECIDE NOW IF YOU WANT TO BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF AND YOUR SPOUSE OR IF YOU WANT TO CONTINUE TO BE A LYING TWO TIMING CHEATER.
That means that if you want to tell the truth, then you need to have a certain comfort zone and you have the right to ask for that. Might not always get it, but you can ask after you explain that you might be more forthcoming with truth in these circumstances. To make it easier to tell the truth to your partner, tell them that you prefer a time and place that feels safe and conducive to truth. Practical things you can do to make telling the truth easier include the following points.
Pick a suitable time and place. At home, not in public. Do it in private and when your SO will have time to cope with the information. That means pick a time when your SO can reach out to others for support. Don’t pick the middle of the night before bed time or just as your spouse is on their way to work. If there is no time to talk in private, then maybe you can consider if writing can be an alternative method?
Don’t shock them out of the blue. If this is a huge truth, tell your SO that you have something which you need to talk about and that it might be something which may be difficult to hear. That lets them decide if they have the time/energy to hear it now. Remember to ask your SO to listen and react calmly to what you have to say. When disclosing information, try to be factual and not opinionated. Don’t blame shift. Don’t deny your responsibility. The truth is difficult enough to hear without your SO feeling you’re your blaming them for the situation.
Be prepared for the shit storm. Picture the worst reaction possible and plan for it. Will you need to have alternative sleeping arrangements prepared in the basement? What if they want to keep talking and talking and you need to get sleep? What then? BTW, do let them know ahead of time that being threatened with divorce each time that you disclose facts is not good for the process as it typically means you feel threatened and then you stop answering everything.
Don’t make things worse by becoming self-defensive as they react to the truth. The truth is often hard to hear, especially if it comes from the one person who is not supposed to be lying to you. If your SO lashes out at or attacks you, you need to accept this as the price you pay. You have to recognize that while you think you’re telling the truth, to your SO, they just sound like more lies that have been exposed.
So, there you go. You know about trickle truthing. You know of why we do it and why we should not be doing it. You know of some coping strategies for telling the truth. I hope this helps
A pearl of wisdom from Gamine - Make a decision and discipline yourself not to waver. Don’t be someone who stands for nothing. Stand for what you decide and back it with the full force of your character and conviction. Decide. Choose. Commit. Period.
