A state of flux

These were pictures of someone not even remotely like me.
A message indicating that a transaction had taken place.

I didn't want to panic, I just wanted answers.

I've heard that if you tell a lie once all your truths become questionable. This to me sounds reasonable. When we lie, we are stealing social commodity without having earned it, we are scorching the trust soil that love grows in, we're holding back and wearing fears cleverly disguised as the truth.

For me the worst thing about being lied to is knowing (or feeling) like I wasn't worth the truth. It can be easy to get caught up in the details but the real question is always:

Why?

Not why me. Not why now. Just....why?

I confronted him.
He lied again.

You may have read over the years that I've encountered some liars. Some told lies only once, some pathologically, others never admitted they were lying, even when exposed. But it cost them all something. My trust. And we know that trust, like paper, once crumpled can never be perfect again.

I've been knee deep in relationships of varying depths since my teens. I myself, use to lie to lovers. I was unhappy with the results. So, I stepped back and examined why I, who I would describe as 'trustworthy', would ever lie to someone I cared about? Once I figured out why, I was able to navigate successfully away from that behavior and I have been lie free since.

He finally broke down and admitted to his lie.

He kept using the word 'mistake' and all I could focus on was how unintentional a mistake seems when what had happened here was clearly intentional. I envisioned his trust like an eraser getting smaller and smaller after each lie, only the point left to retell this to myself.

But why?

The delicate dance of dominance and submission we'd been doing for months now felt unsure footed. I thought back to my demands of him, my casual cause for pointing out his character flaws, my overbearing FemDom tendencies that didn't turn off just because we had company or were outside the house, my openly poly lifestyle, my own expectations, our blurring of the lines between kink and love. I didn't blame myself for the lie but I understood the part I played up until now in the relationship.

"I don't know why I did it" was all he could muster to me in between our tears.

Now again, I could get hung up on the details. Why did he contact her? What did they say? How did he find her? But I just wanted to know why.

He trusted me with his literal life---we did extreme breath-play regularly, I trussed him up contorted in rope without thought, dragged sharp objects across his body with playful disregard. And now...this.

We couldn't go back after this. I'd been down this darkened relationship road of deceit far too many times to know that you could never go back to the way it was before. If you were to forge forward it would have be down a different path, a truthful one.

If our relationship was to run like a machine then even I knew forgiveness was the oil. If we were to continue this journey that we had moved mountains to experience wasn't it worth tinkering on the machine? Didn't we want to understand what went wrong rather than catching the next train back to "Alonetown" population: yourself. I wasn't sure.

For me a true relationship represented two unperfect people refusing to give up on each other, despite hurt or pain. Now that's not to say one should continually accept these two things on a routine basis but it is realistic. Show me a relationship without either of them and I'll admit defeat. Great relationships often aren't great because they have no problems, they're great because both (or more) people care enough about each other to find a way to make it work. I know that giving into the anger will just make me smaller but if I can find a way to forgive him it'll force me to grow beyond what I already am...again.

Will it be hard? Yep
Will I regret it? Maybe
Will I be able to say I did all I could? Of course
Will this be the last time I have to forgive him? Absolutely not.

And I've found the more I thought about the 'why' the more I had the answer all along.

Why? Because sometimes good people make bad decisions. They fuck up and let other people down but that doesn't make them bad people. We all do things we said we never would at some point. It's all part of being human. It's all part of being in a relationship. It's all part of life. We're all flawed but we find someone who can admit that they have them too and grow together not apart.