What is the biggest lie, by someone close to you, that you have been able to forgive?

I was told as a child that my biological father had abandoned my mother after I was born and that’s why our family had no recognition or ties to his. I believed all this until my teens when I first met the man and learned my mother had left him, she had divorced him and she and her family had forbidden any contact to me except for my paternal grandparents who were sworn to keep quiet or lose out on their visitations.

Yes, I forgave my mother but there are times when I’m still frustrated or even jealous by what I didn’t share in as far as half siblings. The lies were to protect my mother’s reputation and salve the anger her parents had to lose their only child to someone they never approved of in the first place, I understand exactly and intimately the mindset and environment so forgiving wasn’t too hard.

My kids told me plenty of bald face lies when they were teenagers. I have forgiven so completely that I can’t pinpoint one as being particularly bad, although I’m sure some were horrendous.

When I was about 7 years old (54 years ago) my older sisters and I were pooling all of our money together to “buy a pony”. Over a long period of time we had saved up what I thought at the time as truly massive pile of coins an a couple of dollar bills. Buy it was probably not much over $20. Then one day they told me that they had spent the money. I was crushed. I eventually forgave them but our relationships were never quite the same. Trust is had to get back and even today we have communication issues.

Only two examples spring to mind & they both involve my mam.
I was born on the 13th & she swore for years it was a Friday, turned out to be a Thursday.
My surname is Wilson & she told me my middle name was Walter, another lie, used simply to tease, as was the case in the first instance. I forgave her because she was only pulling my leg & it was took in jest…..which is nice.

My oldest son was a compulsive liar starting at age 6. I quickly learned not to put any stock in anything he said, unless I knew it was verified. He had psychological counseling as a teenager, which helped him to rephrase his lies as “what if’s”.

None. I tried to forgive an ex for cheating, but I couldn’t. I don’t deal well with liars as I tend to be a straight shooter.

When I was growing up I was told my grandmother’s live-in boyfriend was her husband…a lie I found out about only when they actually got married. I was about eight years old.

I parrot @Ponderer983 but…what was this “protective” lie about?
You don’t have to answer, but if it involved some sort of unsavory behavior that would have hurt you or betrayed a trust or confidence then the lie was really self serving. Usually when people say they lied because they didn’t want to hurt you the translation is really ” I lied because I wanted to do what I wanted to do and not get any flak for it.”

I dumped a friend of 8 years last year after she lied to me about something and then used her deception to attempt to leverage favors. Self serving lies are the worst IMO.

@FutureMemory: Same! I was 7 when my grandparents asked me to be in their wedding… huh? What I thought was a renewal of vows was actually their legal marriage.

@Coloma I PM’d you the details but I probably wouldn’t describe it as a self serving lie.