I am a liar - what do you think of me?
Ive been trying to work some stuff out in my head, cause I am ashamed of lying to people. Ive been doing it for years and didnt have any idea why until recently.
I lie about my main identity. Things like name, age etc. I pretty much just lie about my age now. I am 16 nearly 17 but my friends and boyfriend think I am 18. I now believe I do it because I was abused when I was younger. Once I escaped, I was very paranoid about my attacker finding me again, so I completely changed my appearance, and went by a different name and age. I go by my real name now, but telling people my age TERRIFIES me. It is the one thing left that makes me a different person from the one my abuser knew (does that make any sense?)
Anyway, its been nearly 5 years since I escaped, I have stopped isolating myself, am safe and now have a very large social life and a boyfriend. None of which know my real age. However, I reckon they will find out soon because I have a boyfriend now. I mean its pretty easy to keep friends at arms length, but you cant do that in a relationship. So he is bound to find out, or Ill end up telling him, and he is friends with all my friends so they will find out too. I cant really ask him to keep this secret from all our friends and carry on the lie can I.
Also, I had a relationship before the one Im in now and it ended because he found out that I was lying about my age. Now him and his friends hate me and dont understand.
So, I am telling you all this to ask you a question: if you were in my friends and boyfriends position, what would you think of me? If you were emotionally attached to me and had just found out I had been lying to your face all this time, could you forgive me?
@Montiebella
Seriously, there's more to you than your age! I mean, what makes you who you are and what makes you loveable and unique and special stays the same, regardless of your age. So I hope that your bf wouldn't love you any less, even if you told him the truth.
Plus you didn't do it to hurt him, in fact it's been your coping mechanism to feel less attached to what happened to you, so you did it to survive and move on and try to leave that thing behind.
So... I hope he wouldn't feel too hurt or too upset... like maybe that would be his initial reaction, but after a while, once his brain and his trains of thought kick in again, I hope he'd wonder WHY you actually did that and that you must have a reason for doing it. So rather than focusing on being mad at you, hopefully he's more like, interested in what made you do it and the whole backstory.
Cause as I said at the beginning, your personality and all the stuff he loves about you doesn't suddenly vanish because in fact you're about 2 years younger than what you pretend to be. So I really hope he (and your other friends, too) aren't that narrow-minded to let you down and don't even give you a chance to explain things.
Good luck!! =) 