About a year ago, a close friend of mine discovered the person he was dating for many years was not who they said they were by any means. In fact, the name, marital status, and other pertinent information of this person were found out to be all lies. But what has shocked me the most out of that situation though is that one year later, my friend has decided to take another chance again with the very same person, which I have struggled with greatly on what stance I’m supposed to take being their good friend.
Let me first say I’m a firm believer that telling any type of lies is just poison to the soul and poison to anyone they are directed towards. They corrode our every fiber and at some point, the more a person continues to tell them, the more they and those they affect become spiritually sick.
This is specifically why I honestly can’t imagine ever taking someone back nowadays who lied to me for years and years, even if I still loved them quite deeply. Look, it’s one thing to tell a lie here and there out of fear and then later own up to it when the guilt sets in. But to carry on such deep ones for so long and build a relationship around them is something else altogether. And the only reason why my friend ever even exposed them in the first place was solely because he did some serious digging due to his increasing doubt. With that being said, while I believe forgiveness can happen in situations with lies as deep as these ones went, gaining trust back is going to be extremely difficult.
Nevertheless, when my friend told me the other day he had gotten back together with this person and already spent a weekend with them, I chose to remain non judgmental. The reality is that I too have been in his very same shoes more than once in my life and I can safely say that even when friends told me their strong opinions on how I should get out of those relationships, I stayed in them anyway. Why? Because I was seriously codependent, afraid to be alone, and completely clueless on how much better I deserved in life. But the sad thing is that the longer I allowed any of those past relationships to go on where I was being regularly lied to, the greater I became depressed, worried, anxious, and fearful and the more I felt miserable on a regular basis.
Thankfully, I’m not in a relationship like that anymore. I actually have a partner now who is working on being 100% honest with me. While we did have a time almost two years ago now that was based around a pretty serious lie that I discovered, we were able to work beyond it through prayer and the grace of God. Thus, this is precisely why I have no business judging my friend on his return to a relationship that was originally based mostly around lies. The fact is I’m not God, which means I don’t know where his relationship will head from here. For all I know, maybe it will be based upon nothing but the truth from this point forward. Regardless, I only pray that my friend isn’t hurt again, because in the long run, a relationship of lies will only end in ruin and I know my friend definitely deserves a lot better than that…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson