Although engaging in a long-term romantic relationship has the potential to be a blissful and nurturing experience, it also gets tough. Navigating through the years with your significant other is hard work even when the waters are clear and calm. If the road gets bumpy, it can become quite complicated to find a middle ground between the two of you.

One problem that many couples face at least once during their run is lying. The difficult thing about coping with this particular issue is that it can occur in many forms. But perhaps the most sensitive situation is handling the fact that your partner hasn’t been honest with you about their mental health.

Should you forgive them for hiding or minimizing the severity of their disorder in front of you? There is no simple one-word answer here. Here are the factors that you need to consider before taking a decision.

How Advanced Is Their Disorder?

To determine how to proceed, you need to find out how advanced their disorder is. This is important because it provides you with a better picture of what your partner is going through. If their condition wasn’t that advanced in the past, it means that there is a high chance they could manage it on their own and didn’t want to burden you with it.

But as a mental illness progresses in severity, it gets harder to hide. For example, it might be harder for someone to hide their schizophrenia in its the active or acute stage than in other moments, because that’s when its symptoms are most active. If your significant other is struggling with this particular disorder, they might have chosen to reveal it now because it became impossible to manage.

How Long Have You Been Together?

The first important thing that you need to weigh in after discovering your partner’s covert mental health issue is the length of your relationship. If the two of you haven’t been together for long enough, then perhaps he or she had been waiting for the right time to tell you. After all, if you’d do the same if you’d suffer from a serious disorder.

Confronting someone with mental illness from the onset of a romantic relationship is disarming, thus you need to understand that most people that struggle with this prefer to wait it out.

If you’ve been together for a long time, your partner might have been afraid to open up to you about their mental disorder because you have reacted poorly to the truth in the past. Furthermore, it’s possible that they were healthy when they met you, but then their condition got triggered by to stress and other factors.

Consider the fact that they didn’t want to burden you with their issue. There are many reasons for which your partner would hide this from you. Instead of acting harshly, hear them out and make room for an honest and civil discussion.

Why Did They Hide It?

One final question that you need to ask yourself and your partner is this: why did they hide their condition from you? The reasons behind such a choice are many. As previously mentioned, it’s highly likely that they didn’t want to burden you with this information.

However, some people aren’t aware that they are ill and refuse to get help. This can lead them to act aggressively towards their partners and even resort to mental and physical abuse in to mirror their misery in the other person. Doing this to someone, regardless of your inner turmoil, is not acceptable. You are not obligated to put up with your partner if they hurt you.

However, if the intention behind their secrecy isn’t nefarious, keep in mind that forgiving your partner is healthy in a long-term relationship. On top of that, now that the truth is finally out, you have the opportunity to be the moral and emotional support that they need in order to get better.

While it’s by no means your job to save them, you can assist them in saving themselves. Prompt your partner to seek medical help if they haven’t already, and ensure that they stick to said professional’s suggestions and treatment plan. Don’t babysit them, but don’t ignore their turmoil either.

Conclusion

According to Psychology Today, forgiving your partner too soon can leave them thinking that there are no negative consequences to their actions. However, if the person you love most is struggling with mental health issues, you need to keep in mind that it’s not the right time to teach them a lesson in this way.

Find the power inside you to forgive your partner for hiding their illness and support them in getting the help they need. Unless their disorder has hurt you emotionally or physically, there is no reason to hold a grudge. Be glad that you now know the truth and stand by your loved one during this trying time for them.

And if you have been, I feel for you. It sucks being lied to.

That’s why in this article I’m going to go over the main reasons that someone might lie – plus one way you can actually avoid feeling like someone has lied to you.

The first thing to realize is…

Most People Don’t Intend To Lie To Hurt You

Unless he’s a sociopath or a sadist, he’s not trying to hurt you.

Instead, what he’s probably trying to is “avoid drama” or “smooth things over” with you.

Sometimes, the reason that a man lies is because he doesn’t want to deal with disruption or drama in his dating life. He wants to keep things as even keeled as possible.

(For more on why men lie in relationships, read my article here).

There are a few very common reasons why a man might lie in a relationship.

First, like I said before, he might lie to you in order to avoid an unpleasant conversation or drama.

In general, women are more in touch with their feelings than men are. Women tend to feel emotions more deeply, while men tend to want to avoid emotional extremes and keep themselves emotionally centered.

If he’s not sure how you’re going to react to the truth, he might avoid telling you in order to avoid a reaction he wouldn’t like, and in order to keep you happy.

The truth is, a man might lie to avoid triggering tears in his partner. I’m not saying it’s right or even decent, I’m saying that’s the way that a lot of men think.

The second most likely reason a guy might lie is to avoid drama in the relationship. If this is the case, then the relationship is probably on the rocks and headed for troubled waters ahead.

If a guy is lying just to make a relationship feel easier and drama free, he’s mortgaging the future of the relationship for the sake of the present. Eventually, the fights he’s avoiding will happen, and the relationship might not survive.

The third most likely reason a guy will lie to you is the “nicest” – he might be trying to impress you.

Guys might lie about what they do for work, or for fun, or about their true opinions because they want you to think well of them.

If a guy is lying to you about his job or how much money he makes, it’s because he wants to impress you and doesn’t feel good enough for you on his own.

This type of lying is a huge sign of insecurity, and it makes building the relationship on a firm bedrock of trust impossible.

Now, earlier in the article, I said I was going to talk about a way to avoid feeling like someone has lied to you…

How To Avoid Feeling Like You’ve Been Lied To…

As a relationship coach, I’ve had countless women come to me in tears feeling duped, deceived, and lied to by men they trusted and loved.

Most had legitimate complaints of untrustworthy behavior by their significant others, but you might be surprised to learn that many were not lied to… they just felt like they were lied to.

Many of these women went through all the trauma, heartbreak, and dejection of feeling like their man had lied to them and broken their trust – without ever having been lied to in the first place.

In those cases, these women had not been lied to… they had just heard what they selectively wanted to hear from their men and ignored anything else he said or did.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say a man and a woman are going out on dates and spending the night with each other often. He has told her he’s not looking for a relationship, and they continue to be involved with each other… only she believes they’re dating more and more seriously because they’re spending more and more time with each other.

Eventually, things reach a breaking point where she asks him why he’s not taking the relationship seriously, and he denies that they were ever in a relationship in the first place.

End result? She feels betrayed and lied to… when in reality he never lied to her.

The crucial point here is that she was only paying attention to the things she wanted to pay attention to, and selectively listening to only the things she wanted to hear.

He outright told her that he didn’t want a relationship, but because it wasn’t something she wanted to hear she ignored him. Then, she wound up hurt and feeling betrayed when they didn’t end up together.

Remember to always listen to everything a guy says, not just selective parts. This will help you avoid tons of heartbreak and feelings of being lied to.