This Is The Best Text To Send If Your Partner Lied To You & You Still Want To Make It Work
There no way around it — lying sucks. Getting lied to super sucks, especially when it comes from your partner. Maybe your partner promised they paid the internet bill and your WiFi drops mid ASOS shopping spree or if they swore they stopped talking to their ex, and you not-so-subtly find out that they're still in the picture (or in the DMs). It can be hard to know the best text to send if your partner lied to you, let alone how to handle your own emotional reaction.
"Texting creates too much room for misinterpretation to be used as a conflict resolution tool," Susan Winter, bestselling author and relationship expert, tells Elite Daily. "The odds are greater that you'll start a fight through texting, rather than resolve a fight through texting. The best text during a fight establishes a time to speak in person or on the phone."
If you've caught your partner in a lie, your first instinct may be to send a string of all-cap texts, or to want to immediately address the problem, over the phone. Yet, taking time to clear your own head or distinguish your own feelings, and using texting to establish a time to talk in person, can be just what you need.
It's not easy to know how to handle your partner lying to you, and with technology and texting in the mix, communication can become even harder. "How you handle your partner lying depends upon how invested you are in the relationship," Winter says. "If you have an otherwise loving partnership that you want to preserve, then honesty is the best policy. Come clean on what you know, and ask your partner why they felt they had to lie to you."
Rather than keeping the truth about the lie to yourself, try opening some IRL dialogue with your boo about why they lied, and how they are going to repair trust.
It may seem impossible to not be filled with rage if your catch your partner lying, but if you want to maintain your relationship, Winter says that the best text to send will be concise and tactful. "If you want to preserve the relationship, state your facts in a diplomatic manner," Winter says.
She suggests these three messages:
I recently learned that (state the information discovered pertaining to this lie). We need to talk about this tonight.
Why did you tell me___, when it's really ___.? This hurts my feelings. Call me.
I'm hurt by the fact that you've lied. That's not how we work in this relationship.We need to sort this out after work.
Winter suggests limiting the texting to simply stating that you've found out about the lie, that you're hurt, and that you and partner will be talking about it later. Being direct but still succinct will leave most of the legwork to be discussed in person, but still enables you to express your pain.
Of course, if you decide you can't get past your partner's dishonesty and may need to reconsider your relationship, that's OK too. "Having gone through a series of battles and rough patches, you may not want to fight this fight," Winter says. "You may not want to work through one more issue with your partner." If your partner is consistently lying, and that is a deal-breaker for your relationship, it's OK to say "thank u, next." It's also OK to want to work through the conflict and keep the relationship going, even after your partner lied. Establishing healthy boundaries, expressing your expectations from a partnership, and opening lines of communication could be a great place to start.
Getting lied to can be super painful, and make you feel all sorts of feelings. Take a second to work out your emotional response, and use texting as a means to establish a time to talk it out in person, rather than to dive into the problem. Direct communication will always pay off in the long run. If you catch your partner lying and decide to work through the indiscretion as a couple, being direct and diplomatic over text can be helpful in starting to repair your relationship.
