A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:Okay so my boyfriend and me have been together for 2 years. He says that if i lied to him he would leave me. So i did lie to him. My first boyfriend made me do stuff and most of the time i would just kind of pretend it wasn't happening to me. and for some god awful reason every guy i dated after that did the same dang thing. i told my bf about an instance with my second bf and it pretty much kills me whenever i think about it and makes me go through a living hell for months. i told him there were a lot of rumors about me that i weren't true. i'm 20 and he's 21 and this all happened in my sophomore and junior year. what should i do, tell him the truth or just keep the secret? Reply to this Question
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Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
reader, anonymous, writes (15 March 2010): First of all, I don't think it's accurate to say that you've lied to your boyfriend. You simply haven't shared a very traumatic memory with him about something that happened to you against your will. Now dealing with that is not a straightforward or easy process - and it's bound to take some time for you to feel able to share that memory, and consequently to cope with it.
Your boyfriend has no right to accuse you of lying in these circumstances. And provided the secret does not endanger you or anyone else, you shouldn't feel pressured to tell him anything before you're completely ready to do so. However, at the same time, if this is a relationship that you want to last for a long time, you will need to learn to share this kind of memory with him at some point, and he will need to help you work through it.
If you do decide to tell him, I don't think you should envisage the situation as a 'confession'. In fact, I think you should see it more as asking him for help in dealing with somethign very difficult. Tell him that there is something horrible that happened to you, that you would like to discuss it with him because you want to be able to tell him everything and for there to be no barriers between you, but that it really upsets you and you might get quite teary and find it difficult to talk about. You can then reveal whatever it is that was done to you, and explain how humiliated and how degraded it made you feel, and ask for his help in dealing with those feelings. It's vital that he sees the negative effect that this has had on you, so that he can help and support you. If he's a decent guy, he'll immediately rush to do so.
Good luck!
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