Married to a CL, just found this place

Hi,

I am brand new to this place. Found you guys by googling. Thank you everyone here that has shared their experiences and stories. Just found this place a few hours ago after my husband stormed off in a rage. I read through a couple of the pinned posts about compulsive liars and a lot of my anxiety surrounding my own uncertainty issues and confusion suddenly went away when I realized that my husband fits the compulsive lying description to a T. It's a tremendous relief but at the same time really scary since I see that people say there is really no "cure," that the person needs to want to fix things, that it's really a process they take on their own (that I basically have no control over) and that it will probably never get "totally" better (am I right?).

We have 2 very young children at home and I just feel so pinned to the wall. I love them so much and I have all these plans for what I want for them and if I pursue a divorce, that all goes flying out the window. That being said I can't live like this anymore <--I've said this a million times and in a million different ways and scenarios. And I just don't know what to do. I hope this is not an inappropriate post as I know a lot of people probably see these forums as "safe" places and I don't know if my post will change that. Please just let me know, like I said I'm new.

We've actually come a long way in this process where he has told me a lot about his thought processes, hence I can match what he says to the definition of a compulsive liar. How he feels completely worthless inside, that he has really low self esteem, that he basically "uses" people by using his words to make himself feel better. That he used to lie about little crap for absolutely no reason at all (telling someone that the temperature is 67 when it is 71, for example, just for the heck of it), that when he lies now he usually doesn't even know it and doesn't know how to stop.

It's tricky because he (as far as I know) doesn't make up stories these days; it's not like he comes up with elaborate scenarios about what happened at work today. It's usually a part of him detects that he's "in trouble" or could get into trouble and then the spin-doctor comes out. He's very smart and he is extremely, extremely subtle in the way he lies, just twisting something a tiny bit so that he feels better about himself in that situation and usually it's just so, so stupid. Like it's not even something he would get into trouble for if he was forthright, he just feels the need to lie a little bit. Sometimes I have this sneaking suspicion he gets something from being able to control me just this little bit. A big part of his thing is he is so quick, so quick to "apologize" but something about it is not sincere to me, something about it is off. Invariably, when I take issue with the "tiny" lie, we'll have a long fight where he will spin and lie some more, it blows up into something huge, and then sometimes he has the presence of mind to go through it with me and we discover what it was all about, that he didn't even know he did it, that he "convinces himself of what he said," so on.

I don't really know why I'm really posting except to get it out there, what's happening. I'm sitting in this house alone and I guess I will go back to reading now…Thanks for reading.

Welcome to the board.

Since you already know at least part of the root cause of his lying(low self esteem), that's where to start fixing it.
I have to take issue with the part about not being able to totally fix this problem though, as with any addiction it takes work, is not easy and not always pretty. At the same time, people beat them all the time.
There is hope but as you said, he does have to want to fix it, it is not something you can do for him but you can be there for support.