Help me! Lying is DESTROYING my life.

I know the best thing I can do to address the problem is to get help and I have taken a step in doing so. I Have an appointment next week to meet with a therapist so I can begin my journey to making myself better.
I am scared that I don't have the time to wait a week to being this journey. I know it will take a long time but I want to start making steps now. There is such a hurry because currently, my relationship is crumbling before me. The LOVE OF MY LIFE wants nothing to do with me and is telling me to move on, this is just one day after we had a great night together and were making progress.

I will start at the beginning, I don't exactly know when the lying started or why but I have always lied. Sometimes for attention, sometimes to avoid getting out of trouble, sometimes to make people think I am more interesting than I am. I have always suffered from low self-esteem. I know I am not an ugly person, I just... I have always hated myself. And I do believe the lying has caused it. Relationships have always been hard for me to maintain for this very reason.

About this time last year my boyfriend and I began dating. Very early on in the relationship I fell pregnant. We discussed our options and decided that me not keeping the baby would be best. We spoke all day the day that the pregnancy was supposed to be aborted. One lie after the other, they just kept coming. After that day he believed that I had taken care of it and we could move on with our lives.
The truth was that I hadn't and remained pregnant. Shortly after this I moved in with him, for a few months after this he continued to believe that I was no longer pregnant and I kept lying about not being pregnant to maintain this lie.
I KNEW he would eventually have to know.... in a few short months we would have a child. How was I going to hide that? But I kept it up, I don't know why. I know for sure that I was afraid that he would leave me, I knew for sure that I wanted a FAMILY that would stay together, I just wanted HIM. Eventually, he stumbled upon an e-mail that was my downfall. This confirmed to him that I was in fact pregnant.
It is at this point that trust being crumbling at an astounding pace.
He was generally happy to know that we were going to be parents, he was accepting of it and stayed with me even though everyone told him not to.
It was bliss for a few weeks until I fell again and dug myself into another hole.
Money was tight and he especially was worried about how we would afford a child. So I fell back to lying to put him at ease and make him less stressed. I conjured a lie about having a large sum of money that was left to me by a deceased grandparent. I ensured him that we could make it. It even got to the point that we began to look at homes to purchase.
Again, history began to repeat itself and he became aware of my multiple lies.
Once again, he stayed with me. He tried to work on it with me even though he had NO trust in me at this point.
We got an apartment together and tried to make our lives together work.
But at this point there was so much damage that even small lies cast a HUGE shadow upon us.
Now, I sit here... totally destroyed and desperate to fix myself for the sake of our relationship, and family.
I know a very large factor in ending things with me is the fact that his family very much dislikes me.
I plan on taking steps this week to try to create a neutral zone with them. I am going to pay his mother a visit and try to talk about this relationship and my lies and try to see if she will accept me for the millionth time.

I guess I am just writing this to get it all off of my chest and to see if anyone has any advice or experience with compulsive lying and how to stop. I am also hoping someone has some advice on how to being fixing my relationship and the trust issues I have created for us.

Thanks in advance for reading and hopefully taking the time to leave your thoughts.

Hi Me-liss

I know you posted this over a week ago but your story really hits a chime with my own. I have ruined my marriage by lying to the one person I love most. I will tell my story from the start and be totally honesty for once.

I was working a job that i had come to hate and wanted to leave, I went to a job interview and I didn't get the job but they offered me an opportunity to work for them on good money, doing a job I thought I would enjoy. However they said they would like me to work for 3 months unpaid to see if I took to the job and if it was a good fit. I however told my wife it was a paid position, I didn't want to tell her that the only other job I could get was working for free. looking back If I told her, she would have accepted it but at the time I just feel back on lying. I figured I would do the three months get the job and no one would need to know.

However the 3 months unpaid turned to 4 months then 5 months finally they said there was not the work to keep me on. Once again I had a time when I should sit down and tell my wife everything but instead I did the selfish thing and lied. I started to pretend that I was still working, I would get up everyday and put on a shirt and tie and drop her off at work knowing I was not earning any money. I started to take money out of our saving and put them into the account to look like I was earning money.

At the start of all this as well we decided to have a child, my wife of course thinking that I had a good job and we were secure. So now my wife is pregnant with my daughter and I'm lying to my wife everyday while I move out the money my wife has saved for our child into the account to cover up my lie. To think of it now makes me feel sick to my very soul but at the time my fear of telling the truth or being found out is all that was in my mind. I feel so selfish for only thinking of myself but I can't change what I have done.

So my wife found out yesterday, like yourself I knew I couldn't hide it forever and on the day she found out I knew she would. However I was so weak that rather then tell the truth I let her sit at work and find out, I guess there was a small bit of me that hoped that she would not have noticed and my lie could have gone on. It makes me sick now to think if she had not found out it would still be happening.

So like you my relationship is in a total mess because of my lying. like you i'm seeking help, a week before I can see anyone and then its going to be long and hard. My wife has told me she want me gone as she can't look at me and I understand that. Its not that I lied once, this is a million little lies every time I text-ed her to say I was leaving work, I lied. Every time I suggested we go for a meal together I was sat there lying that I could afford the meal.

I did a lot of horrible things to her over the last 8 months, the worst of all is that I made her love me so much for me to smash everything. Last weekend I took her away on holiday, I say I but I had no money to pay for it, I put it on my credit card and promised myself I would pay it off myself and I will. But this was so selfish, I wanted one last time when we were happy together before every thing fell apart.

writing this lets me see just how much of a bad person I am, but I believe I can change. I'm a good person I just have one huge flaw I lie and I don't know why.

I really hope you read this as it would be great for me to have someone who is going through what I am. My wife will never understand, reading this back I don't understand. I would like to hear about how your therapy is going and maybe we can help each other change and become the people are partners deserve.

I'm going to stop typing now or I will be here all night laying every thing on the table. I hope to hear from you

I read your stories as I am searching the net for any help for my daughter who is now 18. For years she has been lying and not the typical lies that are out of fear for getting into trouble. I am thinking it mostly started as a preteen and just spiraled from there. Maybe it started earlier than that and i just didnt recognize it. SHe has lost friendships over it, boyfriends and struggled with family relationships. I don't trust anything she says as I feel like 90% of what she says is a lie. I have no idea why she is like this or what started it or how to get her help or how to help her stop. I was a single parent raising her all 18 years and she never had contact with her father. I dont come from a family of liars. Honesty was always deeply rooted into my brain as a child and I, sometimes am too honest with people. My daughter will lie about anything, even things that are absurd and ridiculous and anyone hearing her would know its a lie. SHe will lie to get out of trouble, she will tell white lies, she will lie to sound better than others or have a more interesting story. SHe lies about serious issues. I have had her in counseling on and off from the age of 14-17. THey diagnosed her with mild ADD and ODD. She has not had behaviorial or criminal issues with school or the community. I just am looking for some answers on why and what is an effective measure to help her stop. When she gets caught with a lie she just lies again and says she never said what the first lie was and that I or whomever imagined it. I fear for her future and leaving home in the next few months to college because her lies causes so many problems in her life.