White lies hurt too

If you are still lying to your SO - as you noticed yourself, white lies are still lies - you are still actively addicted. Once I had discovered my boyfriend's addiction, I thought that once he knew that I knew and that he had my support and understanding, there was no more reason for him to lie to me. But I was so wrong. Whenever I came into the bathroom or study room and he was suspiciously staring at the home/lock screen of his phone/desktop of his PC and I asked what he was doing, he still kept lying to my face, every time. And even though my intuition told me something was wrong, I refused to believe that he would still continue to lie to me. One year after dday and finding hard evidence that he had still been looking at porn behind my back while pretending to have quit, I left him (temporarily). Knowing that he had lied to me was infinitely worse than being told that he had looked up some sexy pictures for a few minutes. And he also would argue that he was just 'protecting' me from feeling hurt. That is addict-logic. There is no way you can justify lying to your SO. There is no way you can justify deception of the person you love. You are just escaping the responsibility and consequences of your own actions. Because you don't know how to handle the feelings of having hurt your SO. You haven't learned how to deal with the guilt/shame of having disappointed her and her response to your actions reminding you of your mistake. You have learned to avoid dealing with these feelings in a healthy way by becoming addicted to porn. You need to relearn how to deal with feelings of having done something wrong (guilt =/= shame), without escaping them and not admitting them to yourself, lying to yourself and to your SO in the process.

This was and still is a problem in my relationship. Me resenting my boyfriend's actions (=him looking at porn, violating my boundaries) is perceived as me resenting him as a person and feels like an attack on his self worth and value as a person/boyfriend. It triggers feelings of shame. It triggers his fear of being rejected because of not feeling adequate enough as a person/boyfriend. And the only way he knew how to deal with those feelings was to escape them with porn. He has to learn to face them head-on, without him being lead to believe that his whole self is flawed or bad because of a bad/wrong action. Everyone is allowed to make mistakes, it's only human. Especially with an addiction, one is not fully in control of their actions. A bad action doesn't make anyone a bad person or a failure. A healthy way to deal with a mistake is to acknowledge the mistake, take responsibility for it and learn from it. You can never change something and grow as a person if you never admit a flaw in your behavior/actions. Some people just haven't learned that, because of traumatic events in their childhood/adolescence, adopting unhealthy coping mechanisms. My boyfriend for example was bullied in school, which I believe is the root cause for his unhealthy coping mechanisms.

I don't know if any of this applies to you, I don't know how you define a 'white lie'. But as soon as your wife asks you something and you know you are intentionally hiding something from her that you feel like she wants and needs to know, you are deceiving her and betraying her trust. You are not truly in recovery then. Just my opinion.

 

I definitely had a problem with lying which was tied into my addiction. I think it started off when I was a teenager, hiding things from my parents but then went to hiding things from my wife. The thing is with lying is that it's an easy way to avoid the consequences of your actions until things finally catch up with you. Some of the lies I told in the early days of my recovery were about pointless things but I was still trying to 'protect' myself (I literally lied about overcooking potatoes).

I think it's definitely something you need to work on as part of the recovery process. If you catch yourself lying then make sure to correct yourself. One thing I' found is that in the two times I relapsed since starting this process and lied about it, the guilt began to eat away at me until I admitted what I'd done. Before I started the recovery process I didn't use it to feel any kind of remorse for my lies.

 

My husband had to realize that lying about ANYTHING can cause me to reset in my trauma. Any trust he'd built up, was just gone in an instant. He realized this over something stupid. I came back down after trying to put the baby to bed to play, and gave him a kiss. He tasted like he'd had something to drink. I asked about it and he lied. I wasn't stupid and called him out on it. He fessed up after being badgered but the damage was done. We were back to zero. It did push us to do a more formal disclosure, so it produced something but it has me on edge still looking for more lies. From our path, you can't begin to rebuild trust until all the lies are done. Even the tiny ones that have nothing do to with acting out.

 

You are used to lie when you are not confortable to tell the other person about something you did. Is just the way you are, is not going to change with NoFap.
Own the things you do, and don't worry about what other people would say. Don't be affraid of getting criticied. Don't take you so seriously! Everybody have flows, don't make your that big of a deal.
You already open up to her about porn, let it be. If she ask about it be open about it to her. Don't be affraid of her reaction.

 

Wow, my ex girlfriend dealt with stuff a similar way as your boyfriend. After she lied so much about things that were so small, she would still get mad at me and think that I was being disrespectful or attacking her as a person if I questioned her. Very frustrating and made me want to pull my hair out. Hopefully your boyfriend is able to recover, most importantly from his propensity to hide.

 

Greetings @Wvudude89 . First, I hope that you are able to get where you want to be.

If I may share my own experiences regarding this topic and your situation... I had this problem for literally - years. Ever since d-day the lies have held so much weight on my wife and I. It is literally weight, or friction. The lies are an energy sink. I thought that they are necessary in order to save my wife some hurt, but that is the mind tricking me, not for her, but for myself; for my own image. All the lies I told were energized by the lies that I was fed during my growth. I know that seems like a stretch in connection but this is true in my case. Not saying that it was okay for me, but knowing that sort of relieves the pressure, relieves some friction within. The relief of that friction gave me more energy to face the act of lying.

Now, as far as the moment of pressure is concerned, there is a certain art in getting past that compulsion to lie. It will take time and patience. You do understand that, but we must take care of how we use react to that expression, "it takes time and patience". This does not mean that it will magically come about later on, nor does it mean that we can take it easy. No, rather it is like learning a skill or learning to hone in billiards, for instance. It takes work and dedication.

The subtle art, for me, was just to sit there (in conversation) and keep my mouth shut until: my breathing regulated, my body released its tension (not necessarily completely), until the anger or whatever it is also subsided. I kept my body still and I watched my brain develop the story in my head and I analyzed the story. I also tried to put myself in her position. After that I would utter the truth in a mild way, if that makes sense. There are many other things that one can do to get out of the lying, of course, but here are the ones that worked for me.

I hope this helps!

 

It can definitely feel like this. And we do not mean it to. But the trauma takes over without us wanting it to and we start swirling. We start examining everything. Looking for other lies, other traps. Other things so we won't be screwed over again. Head swirling, foggy brain, etc. It sucks. If you find yourself having a hard time answering quickly without lying, maybe discuss with her how you might ask for more time (another minute or two) to gather your thoughts so that you can override the lying in the moment and give a thoughtful answer.