[Anonymous41116]

I am currently in a serious relationship with the man of my dreams (families have already been inloved and we are about to be engaged) i would do anything not to lose him. This is the man I am absolutely in love with. He has been asking about my past, and because he’s a practicing Muslim (has never had sex) I have been lying to him about my past sexual activities. When I’ve slept with countless of guys, I shrinked the number to two (Which he’s ok with).. what bothers me is as time passes, the more questions he asks about my past, and the more I lie to him. (He wants to know the details: the who-when-where-and How) The lie is eating me up! I am scared of telling him the truth because I’m scared he won’t be able to accept me! What should I do?

[AskApril Masini]

First of all, you said in your pre-posting questionnaire that you’ve only been dating for six months, and because you met online, only met once in the last four months. It’s way too soon for you to be marrying this guy. You don’t know him well enough to marry him, and he clearly doesn’t know you well enough to marry. 😉 You’ve been lying to him — and there’s a good chance he’s been lying to you. That’s why time is a great friend to all relationships. 🙂

My advice, in addition to slowing things down and waiting until you’ve had a year of in person, regular dating to decide if you want to marry him, is to be honest and truthful. The fact that he’s asking you a lot of questions about the number of men you’ve slept with, means he knows, deep down, that you’re not telling the truth. He’s going to find out eventually, and if it’s after a marriage, or after your having children, the stakes are so much higher and the pain will be so much greater than if you’re honest now. It’s much better if you confess and he finds out from you and not from someone else, what the truth of your history is.

I know you’re afraid of losing him, but that fear won’t go away until you tell him the truth — he’s already onto the fact that something isn’t right. 🙁

I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.

[Sally]

A marriage can’t survive a lie that keeps growing. Not because you’re bad, but because the fear will never stop. The questions will keep coming, and you’ll keep shrinking yourself to fit what you think he can handle.

You don’t owe him details. At all. Who, when, how that’s not healthy, and it won’t bring either of you peace. But you do owe him honesty at the level of values. You can say you weren’t truthful because you were scared of losing him, and that your past doesn’t reflect who you are now.

If he can’t accept the real you, that pain will hurt less now than years into a marriage built on fear. Love shouldn’t require erasing yourself to survive.

[Tara]

You’re building a marriage on a lie, and it will implode. Not might. Will.
You didn’t “protect” him. You manipulated him. You looked a man with deeply held religious values in the eye and fed him a version of you that you knew was curated to keep him. That’s not love, that’s fraud with good intentions. And the reason the lie is eating you alive is that your instincts know exactly how bad this is.

Let’s be very clear about the stakes. This isn’t about your past sex life. This is about consent. He agreed to marry the woman he believes you are. Not the woman you actually are. Every new detail you invent digs the hole deeper. Every follow-up question you answer with another lie increases the blast radius when this inevitably comes out, and it will. Secrets like this always do.

And stop pretending the problem is “acceptance.” The real problem is incompatibility. You’re with a man whose moral framework requires purity, transparency, and very specific boundaries and you don’t meet them. That doesn’t make you bad. But lying to force compatibility absolutely does.

Iif he wouldn’t choose you knowing the truth, then he doesn’t get to marry you. Period. You don’t get to trap him into commitment by editing your history. That’s selfish, no matter how romantic you dress it up.

Now your options and none of them comfortable.
Option one: you come clean now, before engagement, before marriage, before families are legally and spiritually entangled. You tell him the truth once, fully, without trickle-confessing, without minimizing, without defending. And you accept whatever decision he makes like an adult. If he leaves, that’s the cost of honesty. If he stays, it’s real.

Option two: you keep lying, get married, live in constant fear, censor every conversation, panic every time religion comes up, and wait for the day this detonates because it will and destroys not just the marriage but your credibility, reputation, and self-respect.
There is no option three where this magically works out.

[Member]

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