Lying typically feels like the easier route in certain situations, especially if the truth may hurt or negatively affect the other person. The bad part is that the truth almost always comes to light, which causes more hurt in the end. These stories may make you think twice before telling someone “a harmless lie.” People share the biggest lies they ever told their spouses. This content has been edited for clarity.
April Fools
“On April first, I had to come up with a huge lie and make everyone believe it was true. My partner was upstairs doing stuff and her parents lived less than two blocks away from us. I called her parents and her mother answered.
I said, ‘Evelynn, if you are standing up, please sit down. I have fantastic news!’
She said, ‘What?! What?! Please tell me!’
I said, ‘A few days ago we bought a lottery ticket and we won 100,000 dollars!’
She started screaming and laughing with joy.
I hung up the phone and screamed at my partner, ‘Please, please come down here!’
She said, ‘OMG what happened?’
I told her to sit down and then I reversed the story. I told her that her mother won the lottery. She started shaking and crying from happiness. She said she was going over to her parent’s place immediately. At the same time, I knew her parents would start running over. It was a priceless sight.
I can see her parents sprinting towards our house and I said, ‘Look, there they are!’
My partner started running down the street toward them and I could hear both women congratulating each other. They were hugging and kissing with tears running down their faces.
Then her dad said, ‘I know you guys are stupid with money. Give it to me I’ll triple it for you.’
My partner said, ‘What money? I thought you guys won the lottery!’
Then her mother said, ‘I thought you guys won the lottery!’
Well, they went from crying, dancing, and laughing to looking at me saying, ‘YOU’RE DEAD, YOU BETTER RUN!’
I said, ‘Yo ladies, don’t blame me. Blame Mr. April Fools!'”
“Time To Grow Up”
“I was a fairly wild and fun-loving young man in college and through my 20s. I didn’t live a wealthy life by any means, but I did pretty well and was living the great bachelor life in a large metropolitan area in the U.S. I lived a life that many envied due to how much fun I had, the places and events I ended up enjoying, and the complete unexpected nature of what may happen over any particular weekend.
Friends in my circles joked that ‘the right place to be at the right time was with [me], wherever and whenever that may be.’ I never considered myself a very attractive man, but I guess others considered me to be. Much of it was probably due to my personality and the excitement that I brought to the table. I had also earned somewhat of a mysterious reputation for my lifestyle of fun and adventure, which added to my attractiveness a little I’m sure.
I had many wonderful romantic relationships, and some not so great. I had lovers in different cities I could call upon while traveling as well as a few ‘friends with benefits locally. After years of that lifestyle, approaching my 30s, I started seeing my friends all marrying off, settling down, and fading away. It’s not that we stopped being friends, but it’s not always fun being the perpetually single friend coming to the family barbecues and things like that.
Not that I couldn’t find dates, but it’s just different to be in a group of married/engaged/serious couples, tagging along with the bartender from some club I was at last weekend. The gigolo lifestyle is much more attractive in your mid-20s than it is in your 30s. Previously, I enjoyed entertaining women my age up to 15 years or so my senior, but when I imagined myself at 35 sitting at some bar picking up 50-year-olds, it started to lose its luster.
I started to feel like it was time for me to move on, settle down, and grow up. I had met a woman recently through friends and I recall when I first saw her, I said to myself, ‘Wow, I’m totally gonna sleep with her!’ At that time, that’s the kind of thing I did– I found a target, and I made it happen. That was my intention with this woman. She was really hot and I wanted to hook up with her.
And I did. We started hooking up and then dating. She was stable and had a good job. I started doing ‘couple’ things with her. I started meeting her married friends and we all did family/couple things together. I was starting to like it. It was stable, it was predictable, it was easy. I started to think that I was ready to do this relationship thing – ready to be married. In hindsight, I figured she was a great option and I should take it while I could. So I did.
I won’t get into the whole discussion about how she changed after the wedding and how I saw her true side, it’s all true, but doesn’t really matter. What matters is, I knew very soon into the marriage I wasn’t in love with her. I never was. I was ‘conveniently in a happy place’ with her. Sure, we had fun, and there were romantic feelings there, but it turns out I never really did like her friends or her family, and I never really loved her.
I never felt that feeling that I couldn’t go on without her. I never felt that she completed me. And it started to show very quickly. I like to think that ‘the one’ for me wouldn’t have changed like that, and even if she did some that I would have been okay with it because she was my better half. But this wasn’t the case.
We drifted apart, which may have been in her master plan all along, but I digress. We went through the motions for a while, but ‘it’ just wasn’t ‘there.’
A few years later, we were divorced. Thankfully we didn’t have children so the break was pretty simple, but I look back and wonder why I put myself through it all. I may not know what real love is (maybe I do), but I definitely know what it is not. So, was I lying to my significant other, or was I really lying to myself? I guess a little bit of both. The moral of the story is to not lie to either.”
“Just An Infection”
“In 2011, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. The type I had would not respond to chemo or radiation so my surgeon told me we would not even try those options. My only hope was complete surgical removal. We only had one shot at this, so they removed my entire bladder rather than just the tumor.
There was a possibility it had already spread to my ureters. My doctor said if that’s what they found, we would discuss ‘what came next.’ There is no doubt that what came next would have been setting me up with hospice and preparing for end-of-life care.
When I first began to pass blood, I went to my general practitioner. He set me up with a round of antibiotics to see if it was just an infection that we could clear up. When the blood came back, he set me up with a urologist. The problem was I still owed the local hospital for a previous procedure and they wouldn’t allow me to incur any more debt with them. About that time, I stopped bleeding for a while and honestly hoped that it had just been an infection. That is what I told my wife.
When the blood came back, I didn’t mention it. This went on for almost a month before she spotted some blood in the toilet I’d failed to clean up. She confronted me and I came clean. We talked to another clinic that agreed to see me, but in the meantime, I’d waited a month and a half before seeking treatment. I pretty well figured the delay had given the malevolence inside me time to spread. Deep in my heart, I felt like a dead man walking.
When I got back from the doctor, I changed the phrase, ‘We’ll talk about what comes next,’ to ‘We’ll explore other options.’ I had never been able to lie to her before. She had always been able to see right through me. But the fear of seeing her learn of my impending death allowed me to pull it off. She deserved better. If the clock on our lives together was truly running down, she deserved to know. I wasn’t sparing her, I was sparing me.
Thank goodness my pessimism was unfounded. I’ve survived the cancer and our marriage has survived the deception.”
One Last Dig
“The biggest lie I told was to my recent ex-boyfriend. We had been together for two years. He never had any money even when he had a job. I paid for vacations, ski trips, his rent, and his phone bill and he never paid me back. He was constantly stressed about money even though he had me footing the bill for almost everything. In addition, I had gotten a new car and offered to give him my old one because his car was barely running.
One morning, he showed up at my home coked up and wasted, having driven an hour from the after-after-after party. I’m a mom (not to his child) and was sick and tired of his behavior, so I lost it. I broke up with him and said I wanted my car back. A neighbor who is both a sheriff and a pastor saw me screaming at him in the driveway and gave him a roadside, which he of course failed miserably.
The neighbor offered to take him to the bus stop and then gave him bus fare. My ex was distraught because to take the bus and get back home meant he would have to leave his dog with me. I loved that dog and he knew it would be difficult to get him back. He ended up taking the sheriff up on his ride to the bus station and the fare but used the money to take the bus back to my house. He walked into my front door, took the dog, and stole the title to my old car off my kitchen counter.
He wouldn’t give the title back to me. When I threatened to call the police about it, he called me crazy and ensured all our mutual friends knew I was willing to call the cops on him and send him to jail. About two weeks later, I called him and lied and said I was pregnant and needed money. He pretended to care a little but then ignored me altogether.
I began telling anyone I saw in our social circle about how he had not only borrowed over 2,000 dollars from me but had stolen my car and ‘abandoned’ me when I told him I was pregnant. This went on for about two weeks before he texted me that he had money for me. I told him I needed 600 dollars just to make him cough up some cash.
It may not have been the 6,000 dollars he owed me, but it made me feel a little better. I know I should never have supported him financially or allowed him to get away with stealing my car. That last dig at him really did no good, not for my soul, or for him either. It was a juvenile move and I would certainly handle the situation differently now, or rather, never put myself in it.”
I Don’t
“The biggest lie I told my spouse was, ‘I do.’ I don’t mean to say I realized it was a lie after I said my vows, I knew that it was a lie the whole time. I didn’t mean any of it. I absolutely, positively did not. At the time I glided up the aisle, I was fuzzy-brained with anti-depressants and handfuls of Xanax. The videos of this debacle are just tragic. I mean, you can tell I’m high out of my gourd.
I had already married for love, and that had failed. A small pack of ambivalently married women friends had convinced me I was silly to want love, passion, and friendship. They said I should suck it up and find a man who had the potential to earn high and support me so I wouldn’t have to work if I didn’t want to. Just find someone I could tolerate. I didn’t need to like him. Done and done.
Maybe this works for some, but it was a hellish facade for me. I detest artifice. How this guy never figured out I wasn’t really into him is a total mystery to me. I am the world’s poorest liar. It only fueled my suspicions that a lot of men want women they know they can never have. This one didn’t seem to care if I liked him, a marker of poor self-esteem.
I had broken off the engagement a couple of times, but my mom and dad were so disappointed. You’d think that I’d declined acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. And the man wanted me back! Things took on a life of their own. The next thing I knew, I was lying my face off in front of a whole bunch of people and buying a 500-dollar cake. I really thought I could make that work, ha-ha!
Lest you wonder, I owned that lie and did prompt damage control. It’s okay if my ex hates me—if I were him, I’d hate me too.”
Forever
“’Yes’ was the biggest lie I’ve ever told my significant other. He was one of the most amazing men I’d ever met in my life in all possible aspects: a family guy with the right virtues and the right values. He was handsome, smart, forever hungry for new knowledge and ideas, and loyal to a point of insanity.
We were in an on-and-off relationship for almost ten years. It was one sunny summer evening when he got on one knee with the most beautiful tiny, perfect ring and asked me,
‘Will you stay forever this time and marry me?’
And I said, ‘Yes.’
I loved him. I really did. But not in a way a man deserves to be loved by his woman. However, we lived in a society where I, being a woman, was expected to marry a man. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have a life. And he was everything a woman could want.
I thought I could live off of the respect I had for him, the platonic and romantic love I had for him, and I would somehow get through the physical intimacy part or get used to it. Many women around the world have done it, I thought I could too. It should be easy with a guy who is great, right?
I said I’d stay forever, but I didn’t. Instead, I left forever. I keep trying to justify myself with the thought that he better be alone than with a woman who can’t stand the thought of being intimate with him or who feels like being with him is unnatural and wrong. He doesn’t deserve that. No human being deserves that feeling of being unwanted and rejected in that way.”
It’s Not Okay
“The biggest lie I ever told my significant other was that it was ‘okay.’ The truth was, it wasn’t okay at all. I wasn’t okay. Our relationship wasn’t okay. We were two people who, based on our basic compatibility alone, should never have dated. Of course, this wasn’t something I realized while still nestled in the cozy embrace of the ‘honeymoon stage’ we experienced during those first two months or so.
Here was the thing, though. It was within this relationship I began to truly understand the way certain personality traits and dynamics either work together or against each other within the confines of a relationship. While we both possessed many positive traits and qualities, many of these aspects clashed in a way that steadily ate away at our relationship.
One weekend, we completely exploded on one another as we had developed a habit of doing. As someone who is typically anti-confrontational, it broke my heart to see the effect we had on one another. His incessant jealousy was something I could never bring myself to understand, just as my need for independence left him feeling as though I wasn’t the doting girlfriend he wanted me to be.
He thought he was supportive and strong, but I felt he was misogynistic and controlling. I thought I was affectionate and secure, he felt I wasn’t giving him enough. We were trying to fit each other into boxes that wouldn’t have made either of us happy.
Our relationship had become a cycle of vicious fights, derogatory words, and accusations that no longer existed in any realm of rationality. I had become scared of him, I no longer wished to be intimate and he loathed me for it. Meanwhile, the further down this path we went, the more I felt I wanted to rebel against him, to prove my point and push him away even though I was too afraid to end it myself.
I have always been an incredibly honest person and yet, I realized I had been lying to him and to myself. Over the last few months of tears, fights, and violent actions, I had told him it was okay. But the truth was, it was never okay. We were not okay together and we never would be.
Once I stopped insisting it was okay, our relationship was finally able to end. The abuse stopped and the heartbreak stopped with it. From that point on, I’ve learned to never insist anything is okay when it isn’t.”
Phantom Pregnancy
“‘Kelley, do you think Tinker is getting fat?’ husband asked one day. Of course she was, she had a belly full of puppies, but I wasn’t telling him that. He absolutely didn’t want our dog to have puppies but I absolutely did. So I went ahead and let her have a little romp with her boyfriend. Obviously, I knew I wasn’t going to get away with it. There were going to be puppies soon enough but my thinking was that it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
‘Kelley, do you think she could be pregnant?’ he asked.
‘No, of course not. She couldn’t get pregnant without me knowing,’ I said.
A couple of weeks later, Tinker was visibly knocked up. I agreed to take her to the vet for a check-up as I was going to the vet anyway to make sure she was progressing normally. Now at that point, I probably should have confessed, but I wasn’t quite ready to face the music so I told him she was having a phantom pregnancy. He believed me. We worked together at the time. He was the managing director and I worked a few hours a day in administration.
The accountant and credit controller shared an office with me and both knew my dog was pregnant. I was so excited and bursting to tell so I shared it with them. I booked a couple of weeks off to be at home when she was due to have them. It coincided with the run-up to Christmas so my husband didn’t question why I was taking time off.
The 23rd of December arrived and so did the puppies. Tinker gave birth to eight healthy balls of cuteness. I had no choice but to tell him now. I didn’t want to wait until he came home from the office because I was concerned he would be angry and I didn’t want any tension for Tinker and her litter. I probably should have thought of that eight weeks before I started on this road of deceit.
I called him at work.
‘Kelley, you’re on loudspeaker, I’m having a meeting with the accountant. I will call you back,’ he said.
‘No, it’s okay, I will just be a minute. Do you know how Tinker was having a phantom pregnancy? Well, she just had eight phantom puppies.
I heard the accountant chuckling in the background because he’d known about the pregnancy and knew I was lying.
‘I don’t believe it! What the? How the?’ my husband said.
‘Okay then, see you when you get home,’ I said.
I got off the phone as quickly as possible. The grenade was thrown now and I just had to wait for the explosion. He ended up not being mad. In fact, he was more annoyed at himself for believing me when I said she wasn’t pregnant.
The funny thing is that even though I was wrong and he had every right to be furious, he actually found my antics endearing. He says I act like a child but for all the bad things that come with my refusal to grow up, he likes that I’m impulsive and fun too. I better hang on to this guy because nobody else would put up with me.”
First Kiss
“We’ve been together since the beginning of our college and it’s been close to six years. Though I had dated other guys before him in high school, none of those relationships were even close to what we had and still have.
During the initial days of our relationship, we were having a conversation about our past relationships. He had no prior relationship before me, so the whole discussion was about my past relationships and experiences. While having the conversation, I could feel he was getting a bit uncomfortable and unhappy about the whole idea of knowing my exes.
I asked him if he was okay to which he said, ‘You’re the first love of my life and my first kiss. But the fact that I’m not your first bugs me.’
Afterward, on our way back to our homes, he wasn’t speaking much. I tried to talk about something else but nothing helped. We hugged, said our goodbyes, and left. Before going to sleep, he called me.
‘I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have reacted like that. I know what happens in the past, stays in the past,’ he said.
‘It’s fine. You shouldn’t be afraid. I’m yours now and that’s what matters,’ I replied.
‘The fact that I’m not your first really pinched me but I’m totally fine with it. You’re right, this moment is what matters,’ he said.
‘So what if you’re not my first guy, you are my first kiss,’ I said (which was a lie).
I did not intend to say that but in the spur of the moment, I did for some reason.
It’s not true and I still feel guilty about it. I had thought to tell him but he gets emotional when it comes to me. I couldn’t muster the courage to tell him as that would have made him low. And now it’s too late.”
Oops!
“I have gotten myself into an accidental lie before. When I first met my boyfriend, I desperately wanted him to like me. He was always talking about this HBO show Ballers. I mistakenly took it for another show that had premiered that summer. I’d seen the commercials for the other show and wanted to watch it, so I started talking to him about it.
By the time I realized we were talking about two completely different HBO shows, I panicked. By the end of the conversation, I had dug myself into a very deep hole. So, too embarrassed to confess that I’d never actually watched the show, I talked him into thinking I was Ballers number one fan! Yikes!
I kept it up for a few days by dodging any specific questions. The next week when a new episode had been released, he asked me if I’d watched it. I made the mistake of saying yes and when talking about the episode, he called me out. I was incredibly embarrassed and was so worried he wouldn’t like me any longer, but my boyfriend is alight-hearted fellow.
When I told him what had happened, how I’d gotten mixed up and then been too embarrassed to tell him, he just started laughing. As you can imagine, I was incredibly relieved! We ended up having a great time together. When I went home, I wished him a happy night watching Ballers and eating sushi.
Fifteen months later, we are still the goofy people we were then. We also love many HBO series and watch them together now! To my credit, I have since watched an episode or two of Ballers. Still haven’t gotten around to watching the other show, but I can live with that!”
