New here and seeking suggestions: setting boundaries about lies.

[alo]

Hi, I am a new member here. I am glad to have found bpdfamily for partners of BPD.

I am with my bf (un-diagnosed) for 9yrs(we don't live together) and after the 1st 7.5 yrs of confusion, lots of whirlpool, and a terrible breakup, i came to know the term BPD by searching over internet for answers to his behaviors when i found striking similarities between his behaviors and BPD behaviors.

I was writing my story but it was making the post terribly long so i am only keeping the main point.

This is about setting the boundary which is about not being lied at.

(i have no Ptherapist, i live in India where finding a good therapist is hard and BPD-specialist is impossible to find. For the last 1 year, after he came back to reconcile after a 10months of breakup, I have been trying all by myself to learn about BPD, all i can by reading articles, books like SWOE and others)

I am true to the relationship, i cant handle if he lies which he does often. And he's good at it. Like today he plainly said he is going to a over-night birthday party but i am 99% sure that he is going to some anniversary party about which we had some problems earlier so he plainly lied this time.

If i simply ignore this, it will surely avoid argument and i can pretend like everything's fine. But from the moment i found that he lied, the whole time i had this enormous pit in my stomach, tight chest, feeling like i cant trust this person. Trust is a basic requirement for me to function healthy in a relationship.

I have learned about how non-BP enables and have been trying to change myself to stop being the enabler(SWOE says i am 50% responsible for the change in the relationship) and have found that specific changes in relationship came only when i spoke up, resisted what was unfair,encouraged what was fair. 

So in this case my question is, how to address this issue and set the boundary? I will bring up this topic tomorrow when he is back from party.

i have written the message i'll send him and tried to incorporate ideas from SWOE, like, using "i statements" instead you "you" statements. Like: "i am sorry but i cannot live with lies, it makes me feel insecure" etc such that its not rude but it address the point too. He'll try to prove me wrong, i am sure, and defend saying he didnt lie. I cannot "prove" my point nor will i try to because SWOE says its a bad idea.

Can any person who has some experience in successfully setting boundaries give some tips on this?

i wanna know that how you stick to your boundary. You wont know most of the time if he is lying and even if he is, he wont accept it, isn't it? They discuss about setting boundary like: "if you shout in front of everyone and blame me, i will leave the place and talk to you when things are calm again". But when lying you cant prove that he lied 'cos he wont agree and mostly you cant catch him red-handed. Even if he is found red-handed he wont believe it and try to find loophole and twist the turn to make you look like the culprit( i have seen this many times). So how to deal with this?

If there is already any thread discussing this, then please share the link. I am new, i didn't know how to search keywords in threads. 

Thank You for reading this. I am in a very tough situation, made some difficult career choices just for the relationship (he cant have me living far coz of his fear of abandonment). I myself am emotionally very weak because of the whirlpool of incidents that happened in the relationship. I am so alone b'cos here in India mostly people don't believe in psychological issues. So i have no one by my side. It'll be very kind of you if you could share your views. : ) : )

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[Meili]

Dealing with people that you are almost positive that they are lying can be hard to say the least. You said that you are emotionally weak. Does that mean that if you define a boundary you are not likely to keep it? If that is the case, then it's better to not set one because once the person with BPD (pwBPD) is taught that they can run over your boundaries, they will continue to do so.

But, your situation is very tricky because you cannot "prove" the lie to yourself. It doesn't matter if you can prove it to him or not. As you said, if caught lying he will become emotionally aroused and go into full manipulation mode trying to spin it back on you so that he doesn't have to face his own shame.

As I'm sure that you're aware, you cannot control him; you can only control yourself. So, rather than focusing on him, you need to focus on you. You need to make yourself emotionally strong enough so that you are willing to lose the relationship if it becomes necessary because of his lack of respect for your boundaries.

What can we do to help you find the internal fortitude? What is preventing you from having it now?

[waverider]

This is a hard one, and it depends on his reasons. For many pwBPD it is almost a compulsion and all pervasive, and not individual issue based.

Does he lie, distort and embellish even little things that there is no real reason to?

A pwBPDs motivations are often somewhat different to us, and they are driven to say what they believe will be received the best, or what best express their emotions, as opposed to communicating reality and let you be the the judge. ie they are selling you a notion, or even an abstract, much like an abstract artist doesn't stick to realism to express what they are striving portray.

If this is the case then they will see you as being critical and picky by trying to drag them back to the dull palette of reality. eg if they are complaining someone abused them, even if it is only their perception rather than fact, then they will relay the story that best sells this emotion as that is what they are communicating. This is a deep ingrained personality trait and you have little chance of affecting that by use of boundaries. Just trying to detect these deviations will drag you even deeper into it to the point you will live in endless investigative mode and all the stress that involves.

However, that said, if there are specific issues that you simply cannot let slide then you will need to have boundaries around them. However these should only be enacted when the truth lands at your feet without you having to go searching for it, otherwise as previously mentioned you will make even more stress for yourself chasing the truth. So even in these cases you will have to accept that some will slide by unnoticed.

Ultimately what you are trying to protect is your exposure to discovering untruths, rather than actual untruths themselves. Much the same as you would apply a boundary around bad temper, you can't stop the bad temper but you can stop allowing yourself to having to deal with it.

My wife cannot stick to the truth full stop, so I take what she says as interesting as opposed to making any firm choices based on what she reports.

[Grey Kitty]

What kind of lies? Being lied to is a problem in itself... .but the actual thing he's lying about makes a difference.

If he's cheating on you,  or if he's gambling and losing all your money, for example, the lie is not the only issue!

If he's lying about where he is... .but isn't doing anything that is actually harmful to you when he does it, then the only real harm is the lie itself.

[ArleighBurke]

I've been thinking about this for a few days now, and I think this is my answer:

You cannot control someone else. If they choose to lie, that is their choice. You can ask them not to, but their behaviour is their choice. Having a boundary over them lying doesn't make sense because boundaries are there to protect you, and them lying doesn't actually harm you.

If they lie about having an affair, it's not the lying that hurts you, it's the affair!
If they lie about where they are going, it's not the lie that you care about, it's that you cannot feel trust for them.

So the RESULT of them lying is the problem. THAT is the thing you can have a boundary about. But I still think that it will be tricky to do. In your instance where he lies about where he was - what is your boundary? Perhaps: I want to be in a trusting relationship. When you lie to me, I cannot trust you, and therefore do not want to be in a relationship with you. But beware - if he chooses to keep lying, then you HAVE to leave the relationship - because that's what you said your boundary was. If you choose to stay, then you are telling him that you dont really mean what you say... .

So perhaps lying isn't something to have a boundary over. Perhaps you can simply tell him how you feel when he lies - but you'll have to accept whether he choose to keep lying or not.