Honestly I think anyone on here who tells you to keep your mouth shut or do anything else than tell the truth is just absolutely terrible at giving advice.
He places a lot of value on honesty. So what does that mean your next step should be? That's right, be honest. It's the only right thing to do.
Lying about it or not mentioning it (which is really the same as lying) is exactly what will make him feel betrayed once he finds out. Which he will, for the record.
Just be honest! Explain why you told the people close to you, and that you would've never told them had you known how badly he wanted you to keep it a secret. Let him know you can be trusted and that that's why you're being honest with him now.
Also, don't feel like you betrayed him. You didn't. (You will if you continue lying, though). I would've done the exact same thing.
MikeW Wrote:One of the things I love about forums: Ask for an opinion and that's what you get, opinions--and often they're diametrically opposed. Personally, I'm not a very good lier so I'm forced to be truthful *most* of the time by default. Some truths, though, need not be told; it depends on the situation and the people involved.
I don't think feeling guilty about it is particularly helpful. You shared information with trusted friends to help you deal with it, friends who do not know this person and may never meet him (who knows). Now you need to decide how you need to deal with it based on who you are and the developing relationship. Other opinions can be helpful but, as you see, they're never going to be unanimous. (Personally, I'd be even more skeptical if they were!) Good luck.
Mike you just inspired a future thread that maybe this is the wrong place to start it in. As part of that complex I told you a psychiatrist told me I have, I spent a great deal of time analyzing lies and when I told my Dad and that psychiatrist what I came up with they both were pretty rattled --- in a good way.
I wrote it down for the future in case things get boring and I want to rattle more people.... and gee... why would I of all people do that?
Yep, you betrayed him from the start. First off, if the things he told you were so hard to live with, you should've told him that you may need to share some of the stuff with your closest allies so you could handle them better. To take personal information....deeply held secrets from someone, esp. someone with whom you're romantically linked and give that info out without telling him is dishonest and certainly no way to start a relationship....even if its only an online dalliance at this point. Are you too diluted to not think he might find out someday....like when finally meeting your closest friends? I'm sorry to say...and don't want to be hurtful, but you would totally derserve it if he decide to drop you now and run for the hills, in hopes of meeting the honest man he obviously thought you were. No matter how it goes, take it as a life lesson, learn from it and become a better man. Good luck, sweetie
Guys I know all of you must hate it when I go off on one of my philosophical adventures but I really have to say something to the OP after seeing the way comments are stacking up... so please forgive me.
back when I was in 4th grade I overheard my dad and another doctor talking about a 7th grade guy in our school that I thought was really cool back then. By osmosis I'd absorbed enough medical jargon to know what they were talking about. The 7th grader, named Swynn had a bad form of cancer and didn't have long to live. Swynn's parents decided they didn't want the other doctor or my dad to let Swynn know anything about it.
After a few weeks maybe Swynn was back in school and I didn't just come out and say what I'd heard but I asked if he was okay and stuff like that. Swynn said he'd been sick with an infection that had spread to his spine. I knew it was a lie and I could tell he believed it. The bog problem for my mind back then was I'd just caught my dad in a lie and as far as i knew my dad was the only person on earth who never lied until then. Like with so many other things you don't want to know about, rather than start asking questions I started investigating and trying to figure all this out for my own. I started at that age keeping notes on lies I caught people telling.... and that went on up into 9th grade. I also had my one best friend that I told about it and he worked with me on it.
We caught our parents , the priests, nuns, teachers, coaches, brothers, and everyone else telling lies!!!!!!!!!!!! This really fed our idea that adults could not be trusted. Then one night when we were in 10th grade and started talking about (drinking liquor a woman I was screwing had given me)... he and I had a moment of alcohol induced clarity. We understood why people told us all the lies we'd been told as kids and even came up with a formula for them.
The formula doesn't apply to lies about bragging or trying to pull some shit over one someone but it covers lies about getting out of trouble, and a whole bunch of others. All those lies fit this formula.
"How much truth do I think I can tell you without harming myself at this minute (measured against) how much truth do I think you can handle hearing without being harmed at this minute."
It wasn't but a month or so later that I had to do something with what I'd discovered. My 26 year old brother was home and dad was closed up in his office at home. My brother told me to leave dad alone that he was real upset. Finally my brother came out and told me about it. There was a boy I only knew from him being in the Boys home, an orphanage and foster home that had been operated on for testicular cancer it had spread to everything in him. My brother said dad was trying to decide how to tell the boy.
Me being my smart ass self i went right into dads office and gave him a lecture. I explained what lying was all about to him and if it was me instead of that boy I'd want him to lie to me. After a bit Dad told mom and my brother he and I were going out for a ride. He took me to my grand dad's house and told him what I'd said about lying. Then... believe it or not... the three of us sat there and drank until I was so drunk dad made me spend the night there so Mom wouldn't see me like that. great memory.
So in answer to the OP..... If I was the guy you're interested in now I'd want you to lie to me now Don't be ashamed. All you're doing is keeping some pain from happening.
And if things work out for you and him... you can get around to saying something one day, like,
"do you remember all that stuff you asked me never to tell anyone?"
"yeah, what about it?"
"I told some people and I felt really bad about it for a long time."
"Gosh! that was so long ago. It was really no big deal now that I look back and think about it. I'm sorry you felt bad about it."
"thanks. That means a lot."
Just stick to the formula.
Now that's done I'm going back to stirring up shit and picking on sluts.
memechose Wrote:So in answer to the OP..... If I was the guy you're interested in now I'd want you to lie to me now Don't be ashamed. All you're doing is keeping some pain from happening.
And if things work out for you and him... you can get around to saying something one day, like,
"do you remember all that stuff you asked me never to tell anyone?"
"yeah, what about it?"
"I told some people and I felt really bad about it for a long time."
"Gosh! that was so long ago. It was really no big deal now that I look back and think about it. I'm sorry you felt bad about it."
"thanks. That means a lot."
So the strategy is to just wait long enough so the chance of him not getting mad about it gets smaller? 'Justified' by telling yourself "oh if I tell him, it'll just hurt him, so it's better to lie about it."
Well I'm really sorry, but to me that's just bullshit. That's not the kind of thinking that leads to a good and healthy relationship.
Maybe you'd want him to lie to you, but if it was me, I'd be freaking pissed if I found out someone'd been lying to me for ages about something that was important to me.
Evan Wrote:So the strategy is to just wait long enough so the chance of him not getting mad about it gets smaller? 'Justified' by telling yourself "oh if I tell him, it'll just hurt him, so it's better to lie about it."
Well I'm really sorry, but to me that's just bullshit. That's not the kind of thinking that leads to a good and healthy relationship.
Maybe [B]you'd want him to lie to you, but if it was me, I'd be freaking pissed if I found out someone'd been lying to me for ages about something that was important to me[/B].
Same here....it hurts like hell when it has happened to me and then I get cold as ice...and I have nothing to do with them anymore. Even if I see them...I will be OK...but I am not available to them on any level....and they know it....I make it clear.
By not telling him, you face the possibility someone else will inadvertently tell him if you introduce him in the future to a person you've told this information if that person doesn't realize or remember you weren't supposed to share the information. It would be much worse coming from someone else than it would coming from you.
Evan Wrote:So the strategy is to just wait long enough so the chance of him not getting mad about it gets smaller? 'Justified' by telling yourself "oh if I tell him, it'll just hurt him, so it's better to lie about it."
Well I'm really sorry, but to me that's just bullshit. That's not the kind of thinking that leads to a good and healthy relationship.
Maybe you'd want him to lie to you, but if it was me, I'd be freaking pissed if I found out someone'd been lying to me for ages about something that was important to me.
In the first sentence or two of that comment I said I was expressing myself because of the ways the comments were stacking up. I went into the gray areas between the two extremes. I wanted to save it for another thread and another heated debate but felt the OP might need to hear an opposing viewpoint. I'm pretty cool headed about it when I find out someone close has lied to me. Instead of getting mad about it I take time to understand what could have motivated them to do it --- what could have been so important that they'd run the risk of possibly pissing me off by lying to me. I'll even sit down in a real nice way and ask them about it so that I can understand what they were thinking when they did it.
That doesn't apply to people lying to me to try to use me or pull some crap over me. When that happens it's a different story. I don't see that the OP will be trying to use or pull any crap over the guy he's interested in. All he did was make a mistake in discretion in a fresh relationship. I don't know when but I'm sure I've done the same thing in the past month and imagine you have too.
Please don't take this as me trying to put up a defense for my opinion. As an opinion and doesn't need much more of a defense than that. I do have trouble when any issues are compartmentalized into absolute wrong and absolute right/ black or white when in the real world most issues never really are that simple.
Most people don't realize they're being lied to constantly, especially by "important" people.
It isn't an exaggeration to say that our whole society is built upon lies. There are even academic fields that study public perception, presumption and 'myth'. It is a cornerstone of the military's concept of "full spectrum dominance." It is not enough to 'subdue' a subject population. Success depends upon that populations 'perception' of its relation to the governing body. (A perfectly subjugated population doesn't perceive itself as such.)
Philip Zelikow observed that, "contemporary history is defined functionally by those critical people and events that go into forming the public's presumptions about its immediate past. The idea of 'public presumption'," he explained, "is akin to William McNeill's notion of 'public myth' but without the negative implication sometimes invoked by the word 'myth.' Such presumptions are beliefs (1) thought to be true (although not necessarily known to be true with certainty), and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community." That ever so politely stated "relevant political community," is the subject population, aka, you and me.
For those of you who do not know, Philip Zelikow was the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, appointed by president Bush as the liaison between the (Bush/Cheney) White House and the Commission itself. Zelikow vetted everything, including seeing to it that when the Commission heard the testimony of both the president and vice-president, they spoke together, in private, not under oath, and with no notes taken or records kept. Just let your little whirly gig brains spin around the national-security implications of that mostly forgotten historical fact.
My often repeated motto: "Whoever controls your perception of reality controls you. Whatever you believe to be true will be the basis for your decisions, whether it is true or not."
ETA: I posted this in another forum earlier today. Relevant here in the context I've veered off on, thanks in part to memechose:
I feel like I betrayed a guy I'm dating with
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Capricorn
