Husband Won’t Stop Lying? This Happens Every Time

If you’re realizing, “My husband won’t stop lying.” you’re not alone. Below you’ll find six ways he’ll react if he gets caught.

Understanding these reactions can help you make sense of the situation and take steps toward emotional peace.

Common Reactions When a Man is Caught Lying

Recognizing your husband’s reactions when caught lying can help you decide on the best course of action.

1. He Calls You Crazy

The most common tactic he’ll use is to undermine your perception of reality. By calling you crazy, he deflects the focus away from his actions, placing the blame on you instead. This gaslighting technique can leave you questioning your sanity and doubting your instincts.

He may tell others that you’re crazy too, isolating you from support.

2. He Claims You’re Not Remembering Correctly

Another method of deflection is to insist that you have your facts wrong. By questioning your memory, he seeks to create confusion and doubt, hoping you’ll back down from your accusations.

3. He Says There’s Another Side to the Story

When confronted with the truth, some men attempt to reframe the narrative by suggesting that there are two sides to the story. By doing this, they aim to sow doubt and present themselves as a victim or “just” misunderstood.

When someone is lying, there aren’t two sides to a story. There is only truth.

4. He Undermines Your Credibility

In efforts to protect themselves, men may attack your credibility, telling others that you’re not trustworthy or reliable. This tactic serves to isolate you and make it harder for you to seek support or validation.

5. He Accuses You of Not Trusting Him

When caught lying, a man might try to turn the tables by accusing you of not trusting him. This shift in focus can make you question your judgment and feel guilty for even bringing up the issue.

6. He Claims You Don’t Respect Him as a Man

By alleging that you’re disrespecting him, he diverts the conversation away from his actions and makes it about your behavior. This tactic aims to pull your attention away from the real issue: his lies.

Understanding the Bigger Picture

Lying in marriage is a form of emotional and psychological abuse. For some women, they can be experiencing decades of this type of abuse from their husband, especially if he’s hiding his pornography use or affair. Click here to take my free emotional abuse test with lots of examples of emotional abuse.

It’s sad that when a man is confronted about this type of abuse, he reacts with the same abusive lies.

You’re Not Alone

If you’ve experienced these responses, know that you’re not alone. Many women in our Betrayal Trauma Recovery (BTR) group sessions have faced similar situations. The isolation, fear, and frustration you’re feeling are valid and need to be processed.

Being believed and supported is the first step toward reclaiming your peace.

Being called crazy or untrustworthy can be deeply hurtful. It’s crucial to find spaces where your experiences are validated, and your emotions acknowledged. This kind of trauma needs to be processed with the right support.

When He’s Caught Lying, Here’s How To Know The Truth

The brave women at Betrayal Trauma Recovery developed strategies for women to use when they suspect their husband is lying. To determine what’s going on, enroll in the Clarity After Betrayal Workshop. Gain insights, and learn strategies to protect yourself and your children.

Catching your husband in a lie can often result in him using manipulation to cover his tracks.

If you’ve been called crazy or had your credibility undermined, it’s vital to connect with others who understand. Our online support group for betrayal trauma will be the community you need.

Transcript: My Husband Won’t Stop Lying

Anne: Today we have Angel , a survivor of two marriages that ended due to addiction. She has six awesome kids. Welcome.

Angel: Thanks for having me.

Anne: We’re going to talk to you a little bit about your personal story. You went through two marriages with addicted husbands. Let’s focus on the second marriage and what happened there. Can you talk to me about what your life was like before that D-Day with your second spouse?

Angel: I was divorced from my first husband, who was a pornography addict. And I met this guy who was everything I never imagined existed. He was soft. He was sweet. But not in a weird way. He was just this super awesome, amazing guy. I was not actually a Christian at the time, neither was he. We dated for a couple of years and bought a house together, and we went to church, and we both got saved in that church. And when we got saved, we got convicted for living together.

So we got married. I had already had six children from my first marriage. My children were rather young. It was a pretty normal life. I had the kind of relationship that my friends were jealous of, because my husband was always home. He would do chores. He didn’t leave his underwear on the floor. I had all kinds of health problems, but even despite all that, life was just good. Then after a couple of major surgeries and a foreclosure, we moved and everything changed.

He was very different, and I couldn’t figure out why. Of course, I thought it was me or my kids, because it couldn’t possibly be him. I didn’t know then that my husband was lying.

Discovery Day (D-Day)

Angel: I had been a stay at home mom, which I loved, but I opened a photography studio, so we were a pretty normal couple. didn’t go to church, which was unfortunate. I kept trying to get him to try new churches. But he was very resistant, and as time progressed, he got more and more distant. I started seeing more anger and lying, our intimate life almost disappeared.

And then one day, I was on his computer. I had all his passwords, and he had all mine, we had nothing to hide. So I looked at his computer history, not sure why I was looking at his computer history. Because he swore he never watched online explicit material, and I believed him.

I saw a bunch of meetup groups in his history. And all the profiles he looked at were female. And I thought that’s really weird, but I brushed it off, thinking he was looking for a tech meetup group because he’s a tech guy.

As I kept looking and seeing all these female profiles, it was like a light bulb went off. I out loud said, “My husband’s having an affair,” but I couldn’t see anything. So I ended up combing through his computer trying to find something, and I couldn’t find anything. So I went upstairs and got his phone, and started looking through the phone. I didn’t see anything until I found the Google Voice app.

And when I found the Google Voice app, I read two years worth of texts from his affair partner. So that was my first D-Day. And found out my husband had been lying.

Understanding D-Day

Angel: Yeah, like, as I’m telling it, I can literally feel still reading the texts from her. And at first I thought it was just virtual. But it wasn’t just virtual. By the end of the texting, I realized they had actually met in person.

Anne: For our listeners, maybe some of you are not familiar with the term D-Day. I’ve used it frequently on the podcast, and realized I’ve never defined it. In this context, D-Day means discovery day. The day you discovered your husband’s addiction, husband’s secret life, that your husband is lying to you. Sometimes it happens when you check your husband’s phone. In my case, my worst D-Day was when my husband was arrested for domestic violence.

And I realized, wait a minute, the behaviors I’ve been experiencing for seven years have been emotional abuse and physical intimidation. So, that day when everything came to a halt, that is what we call D-Day. We would love to hear about your D-Day, what you experienced. You can comment anonymously below about what happened to you. We would love to hear your experience about when you found out you were a victim of betrayal trauma in your relationship.

Angel: If I can actually piggyback on the telling your story part, I think that is probably one of the most healing things you can do is tell your story. The more you tell your story, the more healing you get, at least that’s what I’ve experienced. Telling your story is super, super hard, but there is so much healing in telling that story. So please share your stories.

My Husband’s Lying Won’t Stop: Confrontation & Relapse

Angel: I confronted him. Of course, my husband kept lying and minimizing. And then I relapsed myself. I am a recovering drug addict. One of my friends had flown me down to Florida to shoot their wedding, and they had special favors of tequila with their names, and it was super cute. https://www.btr.org/is-there-hope-after-infidelity/

I kept them in my cabinet, but that day I grabbed the tequila, and my own relapse started and didn’t stop for a while. I wanted to kick him out, but I was too busy yelling at him. So I didn’t kick him out. Then I tried to get to the why’s. And of course, it was all me. It was everything I was doing wrong.

I went into this, I have to become a perfect wife because I drove my husband to an affair. That lasted a little while on a longer than it should have. Then the relapse got worse for me and he was still doing things that I didn’t even know existed yet.

And so I led the “recovery” by handing him books, finding him therapists, and trying to teach him how to help me. And the whole time, everything’s getting worse for us. There’s more fights. He’s starting to get borderline violent. He never actually hit me, but he would trap me in rooms when I wanted to leave to escape a discussion. Or he would try to force his way into rooms. If I didn’t want to have a discussion right then and there, the behaviors just really escalated.

Anne: Of course you thought you were doing the right thing by handing him books and finding your abusive husband a therapist.

Personal Downfall

Angel: About 15 months of this chaos, and unfortunately, I did my own acting out. I don’t know, I thought it was revenge. I thought that would make me feel better. All it did was make me feel worse. And to this day, it still breaks my heart that I did that. So 15 months later, nothing was better. Everything was worse. I clearly had PTSD at this point. The symptoms were there. I was a twitchy mess. That’s how I described myself.

So I kicked him out. Two days later, after I kicked him out, the floodgates opened and I found out about all the online explicit material. The men, the prostitutes, and everything else that went along with the addiction. So for 15 months, I thought it was just an affair, and then everything else came out. Because I have so much history with recovery from addiction, I know that change is possible. Even though I had found out my husband was still lying.

I let him come home, because now I had an answer. This is why we haven’t been able to heal. It was because of an addiction. Well, now we can fix the addiction. So I let him come home.

Anne: You’re having ups and downs with your own recovery during this time. And then you get the bombshell of finding out that he he’s been with other women, men, visiting prostitutes, and were you wondering if there is hope after infidelity?

Angel: I was a weird mix of terrified, shocked, but hopeful. Again, I believe in the power of recovery. I know that an addict can change, because I changed. I know that because I know a ton of addicts that have changed.

https://youtu.be/j8CvkDrWyRc

Living In Fear

Angel: And actually the addicts that I know that changed. They’re some of the most authentic people you’ll ever meet. I did have that hope, but I was terrified.

Anne: I feel the same way, by the way. Even with what I’ve been through, my ex husband’s not in recovery. Well, lately I’ve been praying every day that Christ will revive him. Like, literally, like, bring him back from the dead.

Angel: Amen.

Anne: Because I watch him and want our family together so badly, even though he’s my ex husband now. Even though I hold a no contact boundary because of his lack of emotional health, I still want our family together. So as you’re hoping for him to change, what are you doing?

Angel: I did my research, but I did the wrong research. I ended up in the female co-addict, codependent books. And I didn’t find the right path to healing for a long time. I was slowly starting to recover me. Because I had lost me at this point. I was literally unrecognizable within a few months of him moving back home after the second large disclosure.

That’s when the PTSD got insanely bad. Him coming home, nothing changed. I mean, all the behaviors that come along with addiction were there. My husband wouldn’t stop lying to me. He was angry. He blamed me for stuff. We were having circular conversations that made me feel insane.

I did not know my reality was what he said, just true. Am I actually crazy? I wrestled with that one for a long time. And then I got some form of, I guess it’s a agoraphobia.

My Husband Was Still Lying: Agoraphobia

Angel: I was so triggered whenever I left my bedroom. That I basically lived in my room for like a year. I remember there was a period for a couple of weeks where just going to the bathroom was traumatic, which sounds exaggerated. It was really, like I would put my hoodie on and put my hood over my head, for some reason that made me feel safer.

And I would literally run to the bathroom. Like there was this monster in the house that was going to get me. And then ran back, and my bedroom was like my cocoon. It was the only place I felt safe. And I missed a lot of my life for almost a year in that place. And the whole time he’s acting out and of course saying he’s not, he’s claiming his sobriety from the rooftops, and she’s actually just crazy, he just kept lying.

Anne: Was he sleeping in the bedroom with you at the time, or was he sleeping somewhere else in the house?

Angel: After he moved home, he was in the bedroom for a very short time, then he was on the couch.

Anne: Okay, so he’s not in the bedroom with you, and so thus you feel like you at least have a little bit of a safe space, kind of.

Angel: Yes.

Anne: But not really, since you’re still terrified.

Angel: Yeah, that was just my cocoon. We were in this chaotic cycle and the behaviors progressed. I said, I need to stop this conversation. And he grabbed my arms and was trying to force me to talk to him.

Isolated From Church & Friends

Angel: And he did it so hard that they bruised. And I didn’t even realize that was physical abuse. That thought never crossed my mind. He was starting to get mean with the kids. Everything was just escalating, and my children were suffering. Because you know, mom’s locked in her bedroom and dad’s gone crazy. This part’s just a little, a little hard, because I have kids I love and I was so depressed that they didn’t even matter.

And as a mom, that’s really, really hard to admit, but that’s how low things had gotten for me. And I should have explained. I have literally no family, none. He had isolated me from my church and from my friends. So I literally was alone. And so I’m sitting in my car with this bottle. And I hadn’t been to church in a couple of years. All of a sudden I hear this, not, well, not literally hearing, but “call Robin,” her name is Robin, a woman from my old church.

And Robin and I were never close. I mean, I know her, I liked her, but it’s not like we were good friends. I just kept feeling this call Robin, call Robin, call Robin. And I’m like, I don’t want to call Robin. I’m done. I’m done with life. I can’t do this anymore. I summoned up the nerve to call Robin, and I went to her house, and vomited my entire story onto Robin.

That’s the first time I’d ever told my entire story, and she had no advice. She just listened.

Back To Church & Telling My Story

Angel: By the end of it, I got angry. All of a sudden, I asked her for a Sharpie. She’s looking at me like I have three heads, but she gets me a Sharpie. On my wrists, I wrote live free one on each wrist that day. I decided I was done. I was not going to end my life because he couldn’t fix his. And that’s when recovery started for me.

Anne: Wow, you have a powerful story, and I appreciate your candor and sharing this with us today. And I’m sorry for all your pain. I can hear it in your voice, and so many of our listeners have felt similar feelings to what you felt. So when you decided to recover yourself, what were your first steps?

Angel: The first thing I did was go back to church. I knew that I was so far in a pit, I was not going to get out on my own. So I started reading my Bible all the time, and stopped listening to secular music. And I just surrounded myself with the word of God, and I actually sought out people for the first time. Then I started telling my story to anybody who would listen, because I needed help.

I was so desperate that I didn’t care if you were a rock. I was going to tell you my story. Because during all this, I found that five of my six children had struggled with online explicit material. It was just bad. I started going back to church, and I found a couple of different websites that had me doing exercises on like visualizing what I want my life to be. What my values are.

Creating Boundaries To Distance Myself From My Husband’s Lying

Angel: I learned the word boundary, I had never heard of it. Then I started reading books. Piece by piece, I started getting better. I actually kicked him out. And I filed for divorce, which wasn’t what I wanted, but I was literally dying. So I had no other options. And we were a month away from divorce when I heard about a program called Teen Challenge.

It’s actually designed for drug addicts. It’s like a rehab year-long live-in program. And I told my husband at the time, I’ll stop the divorce and see who you are. If you commit to go to teen challenge. I didn’t think he’d say yes, but he did.

He quit his job and lived in a program for a year. He got better for a couple months. And relapsed in Teen Challenge, or so he told me. Now he says he didn’t actually relapse of course my husband is lying. He’s changed the story so many times I don’t actually know the truth. But either way, he wasn’t getting better. So he graduated Teen Challenge.

I was still afraid of a relapse. There were still a lot of red flags for me. So he moved in with our pastor for a while, so I could see how he could handle life on the outside. My landlord in the house we lived in gave us 30 days notice because he was selling the house. So I had to find a new rental that would accept my brood of children and my animals while I’m working full time and still dealing with trauma.

And so I actually let him move home to help me.

Failed Reconciliation

Angel: It spiraled quickly over the summer, and he went back to those old bad behaviors, physically threatening me, the anger, the continued lying to me. And then I caught him with online explicit material and I kicked him out.

Anne: I can’t imagine what you’re feeling. Well, I can actually, sorry, part of me can. So you send him away for a year. You have faith in God, and he’s been through this program. He moves back home, and it all totally falls apart again. I imagine you were completely devastated at this point.

Angel: I started going back into, I call it, PTSD land, where I kind of lived with all the PTSD symptoms. What made me decide to kick him out was the agoraphobia came back again. And at this point, I had regained my life. I was an active mom, and I was who I was. I was fun, light, and doing things outside in the world. And I could handle football games for my son. I was me again.

And over that summer, all the old stuff started coming back in me, and I said, no, I’m not, I’m not going there again. And I kicked him out.

Anne: Wow, how are you feeling about God at this point?

Angel: Oh, I’m angry.

Anne: I would be too. I’m thinking God’s told you to send him to this year long thing, you’ve been doing all this alone. He comes back, and basically he is not changed at all. Why? Why didn’t you just have me end it a year ago? Right, we’ve all been through that thought process.

Reclaiming Faith

Angel: I just went through a year of basically hell, while he’s in rehab. And he’s not even out two months and he relapsed. What am I missing here?

Anne: Right.

Angel: Something’s not adding up. Yeah, I was angry. I felt betrayed by God. I love worship music, but all my worship music reminded me of my husband, so I stopped listening to that.

There’s this one song that talks about I’m going to take back what the enemy has stolen. For the longest time, that song resonated, we were going to take back our marriage. I decided to flip that song around, and it wasn’t about my marriage anymore. It was about what the enemy stole from me. And one of the things he stole from me was my faith in God. He got my marriage, but he doesn’t get to have my faith. He doesn’t get to take the pieces of me.

And honestly, I kind of yelled at God a lot. I yelled at God some more, and then I yelled at him some more. And every time I did it. I could feel him saying, I understand, but I got this. I kicked him out and he moved 900 miles away. We got divorced. The divorce is final. And I actually offered reconciliation. Obviously, it would require repentance and recovery, that has not happened.

And he has basically abandoned the kids. He has absolutely no contact with them whatsoever. Right now, that’s the hardest part watching my teenage girls go through that abandonment.

My Husband’s Crazy Behaviors & Lying Create Chaos

Anne: Yeah, my ex, he moved from a city he was living in temporarily back to the city where we live. He told his friends, I’m so excited to move back. I can spend more time with my kids. And then from the day he moved back, he hasn’t seen the kids for four weeks now.

When you’re talking about the definition of insanity. And where you were in that process of observing your husband’s behaviors, being in that chaos. And not being able to figure out exactly what was happening.

Angel: When you see these behaviors that are insane. That’s what they look like, and they make absolutely no sense. When he won’t stop lying to me, and you have a set of beliefs, morals, and standards. And your actions don’t match that, it creates its own chaos. That’s where you tend to see all the other crazy making behaviors that drive us absolutely insane. Lying, that’s probably one of the most rage igniting things.

Anne: Lying it’s like you’ve got Jekyll and Hyde .

Angel: Well, Jekyll and Hyde, like the wife finds something on the history of the computer, he has to figure out a way to make the two make sense. Lying is a good way to do it. Lying can alter our reality and perception of what’s going on. They’ll say things like, well, it’s not a real person, so it’s not that bad. It’s not even cheating.

I’m a man, I can’t help it. I have a high drive, and besides, all men look at it, right? I mean, it’s a guy thing. It’s just what they do. I only do it a few times a month. It’s not a problem.

Effects Of Inappropriate Online Material

Anne: Women in the industry are not treated well. Many of them are on drugs. Many of them have been exploited. They are miserable doing their job, and the time they spend in the industry is very, very short. Most of them don’t spend a lot of time doing it, because it’s so difficult for them. I’ve talked to someone on the other end. He produced itfor a while, and then stopped.

And he said, I always knew I was ruining the lives of the women I filmed. But I never thought about the people watching it and how their lives were also being ruined. I think it’s very difficult for them to realize that they’re hurting their wife, themselves, and also hurting the woman being exploited. They’re also hurting the people in it.

And so it’s important to teach people that it creates a demand for exploitation. And that demand must stop. As long as people are viewing it, there will also be exploitation and slavery. All the lying is so intense.

Angel: My husband won’t stop lying to me. He twists words to convince me that these lies make sense. Like, I deserve to watch that, because my wife won’t have it with me, even though that doesn’t make any sense. That one is so damaging to women, because one of the big lies is the way the wife looks.

Or they will blame the weight the wife has gained, or the activities that the wife is willing to do. If she did such and such act, I wouldn’t have to watch it. Or, if she took care of herself and lost some weight, I wouldn’t have to watch it.

Lame Excuses, Lies & Projecting

Angel: Or, if she wasn’t such a mean, demanding person, then I wouldn’t need all this stress relief. Or, I’ve had a really bad day at work, all my customers are jerks, and I’ve been treated like crap by my boss, and I deserve to watch it.

Anne: In my case, I was too much, asked too many questions, was too consistent, demanding and controlling. Because I was a woman of my word, I had integrity. I was trying to figure out what was going on, and I was not going to stop until I had the answers.

Although at the end, he told me that I was not attractive. But before that, it was that I was too much, and then it became that I wasn’t enough. And it was very hurtful to me. I had the same issue, my husband kept lying to me. Those lies still ring in my ears. He also lied about small things too.

Angel: Right, mine was good at projecting. He started isolating himself from the family. We would have things that we were going to do, like carve pumpkins. I’d say, come on, let’s go carve pumpkins. And he would say he was working in his office, and he wasn’t. Or, hey, let’s go to the park. Pretty much anything with the family, he kept lying to me.

Well, he said he cheated because I didn’t want him involved in my life. Like he literally would flip everything around, and then he would say things like, I didn’t want it enough. And the reality was that I was starved and turned down all the time.

My Husband Won’t Stop Lying: Gaslighting & Emotional Abuse

Anne: Mine didn’t ever initiate in the first place, and then I stopped initiating. And he didn’t ever do it, and I’m sure he tells people she wouldn’t have it with me. So that was a lie he told about me. And I’m like, well, you only initiated twice during that six months where I didn’t initiate. And both of those times were immediately after I had been severely emotionally abused.

I wasn’t safe. And then you didn’t ever try when I did feel safe. So yeah, that makes sense. But he doesn’t tell people, because I didn’t initiate it for six months. That gaslighting is intense and traumatizing. Gaslighting is part of emotional abuse.

Angel: Yeah, and the gaslighting made me feel crazy, because I didn’t know my reality. Gaslighting is lying. My husband wouldn’t stop lying to me. And that’s such a hard thing to describe, not knowing my reality. But when everything is twisted and all I had was him and me. I didn’t have anybody to tell me, okay, no, that’s not right. Or that’s not making sense. I don’t know what’s up or down, and it’s all because of the gaslighting.

He would say something, and then five minutes later I would repeat it back to him, and he would say, I never said that. And I’m like, yes, you did, but by the end of the conversation, I’m going, well, did I?

Angel: Really didn’t know.

Anne: Yeah, or they say, I know I said that, but that’s not what I meant. And you’re like, no, this is what you meant. This is exactly what you said, but now you’re denying it. It’s strange, yeah.

Educating Women On Abuse

Anne: The reason we talk about abuse is to educate women about the behaviors they can expect. So that they know they’re not crazy, so they can start to observe their husband’s behavior to see if their husband is emotionally safe. Learn about this in The Living Free Workshop. My number one goal with Betrayal Trauma Recovery is to teach women what these safe behaviors look like. So that they can start to establish safety for themselves. Because you cannot heal from the trauma if trauma is continually happening to you.

Angel: No matter what’s going on with him, there is hope for you. You don’t have to stay stuck. Your life can change. Your life can get better.

Anne: You are worth it.

Angel: Amen.

Anne: You are worth it. God loves you, and he wants you to be safe. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to talk with us.

Angel: Thank you for having me.