Am I Over Reacting

[BentMonk]

Hi guys. I'm not accustomed to putting my personal business up for public opinion, but since the lives of four children are involved I thought I would consult you good people.

I have been with my fiance and her four children for six years. When I first met this family, the children were not well behaved, did not do well in school, and two were misdiagnosed with ADHD. My fiance's family have a very low opinion of her as a person and a parent due to the many bad choices she continually made in her life and the children's. To be blunt, they consider her to be a liar and a thief. I was met with a good deal of ambiguity and skepticism based on her previous choices in men. Over the years the children's behavior has improved dramatically, and everyone is better than they were before I arrived. My fiance's family gives me total credit for these changes.

My fiance and I have had completely different parenting styles from day one. I am strict and by the book, and she is permissive and forgiving in the extreme. I never saw this as a bad thing since most of the time we balanced each other out, and did a fairly good job of preventing the children from playing us against each other. This is not to say that we didn't have disagreements, on the contrary, there have been many, some much more heated than others. However, none of these disagreements ever reached the point of being a deal breaker. It was usually me who got mad, vented, and got over it.

There have been several times that we have reached a decision together on a course of action concerning things other than than the children, and my fiance immediately went behind my back and did the exact opposite as we had agreed. The two most severe instances concerned borrowing large sums of money from her family. The fact that she had done this with her two previous husbands and not paid it back, were one of the reasons for their low opinion of her, and uncertainty regarding me. I did not feel at all comfortable borrowing money from her family, especially given the history. We decided together that we would find another way, and as soon as I was otherwise occupied she borrowed the money from them anyway. I fault her family as much as her for giving her the money, but that's another issue. Again, I got mad, vented, got over it, and moved on. As I said this has happened numerous times, the money is just the most serious example.

I recently lost my job. This has of course made things very stressful financially. In the months that followed, my fiance continued to spend money on recreational activities and our small vacation as if we were not having any financial problems. Several times I asked her if we were doing OK financially. Each time I was told that things were very tight, but she was working over time and we were getting by. At this point I should note that while I handled some aspects of the finances, since my fiance made much more money than I did, she handled the bulk of those responsibilities. Well, two weeks ago I was awakened to the news that our van had been repossessed. I had noticed that Ford Credit had been calling, but my fiance assured me that she was taking care of it. The truth was she went three months without paying them anything. I was furious at her lack of responsibility, and the fact that she lied to me when I asked her about it. She apologized and asked for forgiveness. Once again, I got mad, vented, got over it, and moved on. Although I was and am still hurt over what I see as blatant dishonesty and betrayal of trust.

Despite all of these problems I still felt that my fiance and I were working as a team concerning the children and school. We had agreed that since we have very bright children who are in advanced programs and the like, that no grade below a B would be deemed acceptable. The consequences for a C or below would be loss of privileges. It occurred to me today that school has been in session for a while now, and I had yet to see a single report card. To satisfy my curiosity I called my children's schools and inquired as to when reports would be distributed. I was told that two had been sent home, the most recent being right before the Thanksgiving holiday. When I asked what the grades on those reports cards were, I was told about several C's and D's. This seemed strange to me since just the other day I asked about report cards while my fiance and two oldest children were in the room, and was assured by all that they hadn't been distributed yet. When I asked my fiance why she felt the need to lie to me, she said she didn't want to cause me any further stress.

I am currently extremely hurt, furious, and considering leaving my fiance. I feel that she has lied to me and completely betrayed my trust. I can say with a clear conscience, that I have not lied to her, hidden anything from her, or done anything behind her back in the six years we have been together.

I am not asking you folks if I should stay or leave, just how you would feel, and how you might handle this if you were in my situation. I'm sorry this is such a long post. Thank you for taking the time to read it and respond. Peace.

[Dadu2004]

I would say that you two need to get intou counseling. Given your financial status at this moment, some counseling services work on a sliding scale based on your income. The fact that your fiancee is now in the lying mode, this could get very ugly very quickly. You both need to sit down and hash this out before a family gets destroyed.

[Xero]

To be honest, I'd be pretty upset. That's some serious stuff to lie about. And not only that, but with the report card thing, she's encouraging the kids to keep things from you and lie to you as well. I would never tell my kids it was okay to hide the report card from dad, you know? I'm not saying she's a bad person, but that was a bad decision. You know what a situation like that tells the kids. "If I do something bad, mom wont punish me for it and dad will never know because they don't communicate like they should". Which in turn leads to not trying as hard as they should at school. I have to admit that a lot of times when I was getting good grades it was only because I didn't want to get grounded or yelled at lol but I thank my mom for that now. Seriously, if I thought I could get away with it, I didn't do anything in school. I would get straight F's if I knew my mom thought I had A's and B's haha. I'm smart, but lazy. And I hated school, so my mom had to keep on my butt or I would have failed.

I think most kids are in a way like that. They need to be motivated to reach their highest potential. And the idea with the van payments... it sucks, but you gotta be honest because something like that affects everyone, you know?

So if you're asking how I would feel, I would be really upset. And THEN - I would directly afterwards stop and question myself as to why this happened. Like maybe she didn't tell me because she knew I would get mad. Maybe she was scared and worried about it and didn't want the confrontation. Maybe she knew I wouldn't be nice about it? I get like that with BF sometimes, there will be the stupidest things he wont tell me or will lie to me about (kind of) and I'll get really mad he kept it from me but after we talk about it, it was completely harmless and he just didn't want to say anything because I would over react for sure. I just have to think about it and wonder how I would feel if I was him and I try harder not to get mad over stuff I shouldn't or be more understanding about stuff that's hard to deal with.

Not saying that any of that applies to you, just trying to help. It seems to help me. None of that makes it right for her to decieve you like that, but it could help you deal with the fact that she did. Just dig deeper. Cause - why wouldn't my fiance tell me our kids' grades? What's the big deal? You know?

I don't know. But I hope you feel better... it's really not so bad once you think about it. I bet it will pass.

[fallon]

I personally wouldn't be with someone who choose to lie to me over and over about such serious things. I would sit my partner down and tell them very clearly that the lies need to stop now, come totally clean with me about everything and if I catch you in another lie no matter how small I'm washing my hands of this relationship. It may be harsh but there's an obvious lack of respect when someone chooses to be so dishonest

[Xero]

I also agree with Fallon. It might help to make it clear that you wont tolerate lies and you don't deserve to be lied to, I suppose.

[zeitgeist]

Counseling sounds like a reasonable and very positive option. You've both got some communicating to do, and it needs to be done in a calm, civilized manner. Things are less likely to devolve into tempers if you're doing the discussion in front of someone else.

[zeitgeist]

Originally Posted by fallon

I personally wouldn't be with someone who choose to lie to me over and over about such serious things. I would sit my partner down and tell them very clearly that the lies need to stop now, come totally clean with me about everything and if I catch you in another lie no matter how small I'm washing my hands of this relationship. It may be harsh but there's an obvious lack of respect when someone chooses to be so dishonest

I would agree, except that I might not make the ultimatum quite that strong the first time out.

[fallon]

Originally Posted by zeitgeist

I would agree, except that I might not make the ultimatum quite that strong the first time out.

see but he stated this women has a history of lying, so it wouldn't really be first time out. I spent too much of my life being lied to by a man, so I really was just answering what I might do. You'll have to decide for youself how much trust you can really put into this women and just how many lies you're willing to take

[BentMonk]

Thank you all for your suggestions and support. My fiance and I talked for a very long time last night. Fallon is right, the lying with my fiance is a habit. I don't get loud and harsh the first few times her or the kids make the same mistake. I am realistic. People make many mistakes every day. It's just usually not the same mistake. However, when they continue to make the same mistakes over and over, especially the big ones ie: lying to me, I do tend to be a bit loud and harsh, not abusive but there's no mistaking that I'm upset. I know that may not be the right reaction, but I am human and lying IMO is a very big deal. I also don't feel that intelligent people should need 20 or 30 tries to get anything right. I'm not exaggerating here, all of them really do make the same silly mistakes repeatedly and have for the entire time I've been here. The major frustration over this behavior on my part tends to make me get loud and harsh about a lot of stuff, especially now that I'm stressed to the max. This is why my fiance said she felt like she needed to lie to me. She wasn't prepared to deal with what she assumed my reaction would be. Since I made my feelings about the need for honesty and trust in a relationship very clear to her before we even officially had one, I don't see how she thought lying to me would not have hurt me and made me far more upset than the truth ever could have. Furthermore, if she had come to me as my partner and told me about the van situation, I could have borrowed enough money for a payment or two from some close friends. Also, my daughter's bad grades were not the result of her goofing off in school. She is apparently having genuine difficulty and is being tutored. My mother would ground me until my next report card for a D or F I got as a result of laziness. However, when my Algebra teacher wrote her a letter explaining that I was trying very hard, but just didn't get it, my Mom understood and got me help. I would have reacted the same if my fiance and daughter had had enough faith and trust in me to be honest about the situation. I guess that's my point. It's not the loss of the van or a couple of bad grades that has me so upset. It's the complete lack of faith, trust and honesty that my fiance and oldest children have shown me. At the end of our discussion last night I agreed to chill out a bit, but did tell her that if she hid one more thing or told me one more lie I was walking. I also agreed not to threaten to leave again. This is the fourth and most serious time I've come close to walking away from her. I do love them all very much and in the end that's what matters most. I had a very long talk with an old and dear friend last night. Like any true friend, they told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to here. They reminded me of some things I said I would never do if I had kids, and how strong I truly am. They told me that their memory of my strength is what helped them survive times that make what I'm going through seem like a picnic. So, hopefully both myself and my fiance can make genuine positive changes in ourselves and get our act back together. Thank you all again for your support. I'm glad I found this forum. If there's ever any time I can return the favor, please don't hesitate to ask.

[fallon]

I truely hope everything works out for you