I can be sweet and kind and I always give people the benefit of the doubt. However, I won’t tolerate a guy lying to me and if he’s doing it, believe me, I’ll find out about it.
- I listen to my gut. My gut sometimes roars at me to GTFO of a situation and I’ve learned that it’s best to surrender to it because I know it won’t go away. If I get a whiff of a lie from a guy, I’m going to be on guard and check for more lies.
- I’ve been known to go into investigative mode. I once dated a guy who was cheating on me and I just knew he was even though everyone around me was saying that I was being paranoid. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it so I started paying more attention to his behavior and social media accounts. I even called one of his friends he was supposed to be out with one night, pretending that I couldn’t get hold of my boyfriend and it was an emergency. My suspicions were confirmed when he said he hadn’t seen my BF.
- It might sound extreme but it works. Yeah, maybe I have been a little OTT when trying to catch guys out in their lies but I don’t regret it. In fact, I’d do it again. What’s more extreme is staying with a guy who’s pulling the wool over my eyes while I’m just sitting back and allowing it. Like hell will I let that happen to me.
- It’s about self-respect. Everyone needs to respect themselves in relationships. I’m not a doormat or a naive idiot. I don’t let people treat me with less respect than I deserve. There’s nothing more disrespectful than lying to someone. I can’t stand it and I want to know when someone’s doing it to me. Catching him in a lie isn’t just satisfying, but it also makes me feel that I’m being proactive.
- I’m not totally unreasonable. Just because I might test guys to be sure that my gut’s right about them, it doesn’t mean that I’m sneaky. I actually prefer to confront the guy right away about my concerns and then take things from there. I expect him to be honest with me about what’s going on. For example, if he’s cheating on me, I expect that he’ll tell me so I can leave the relationship. Is honesty so much to ask for?
- I know the relationship won’t always survive this. Sometimes I’ve anguished over a guy who was lying to me and I knew that by playing the role of FBI in our relationship, I’d probably tank it sooner or later. I mean, how can we trust each other if he’s lying to me and I’m pretending to believe his lies while doing undercover work? There’s no way.
- I know it’s often useless. In my last relationship, I knew the guy was lying to me about loads of things. I was tempted to analyze his words and I was even tempted to snoop through his phone when we were on vacation and he kept taking texts and calls outside. But I stopped myself. I realized that I had to stop trying to be a policeman in our relationship and just GTFO of it already! The mere fact that I wanted to snoop showed that I didn’t trust him at all. I didn’t want to be in a relationship like that.
- Sometimes can backfire. My attempts to be Nancy Drew can really screw with potentially good relationships, I admit. With one guy that I dated, I was suspicious of him from the start of our relationship because I’d just come out of a soul-crushing relationship with someone else who’d practically lied to me from day one. We had a huge fight after I confronted him about two stories he’d told me that didn’t make sense and he said I was being really paranoid. Damn, he was right. I was so used to trying to catch out BFs who’d lied to me that I assumed every guy I met was going to do the same thing. Yikes.
- It stresses me out. It’s not easy being the dating FBI. It’s exhausting, it causes anxiety, and it makes me depressed. As much as I want to trust my gut and be right about guys, it really sucks when I’m proven right, especially if I really liked the dude. Most importantly, I don’t want to be an investigator, which is why the minute I see that I’m falling into that role, I know I’m with the wrong guy.
- I can do better. I want to be in a relationship where I don’t have to feel like I need to watch or feel suspicious of my boyfriend all the time. What kind of life is that? When I notice that I’m doing investigative work, I know that I don’t trust him and I suspect him of lying. If the feeling continues, I know I need to get out. Time to move on and find someone with whom I can be relaxed and happy.
