Hi all, throwaway account here.
So for context I grew up in an extremely homogenous, conservative, and deeply poor community. Even though my parents made sure I grew up comfortably and were part of the upper 30% of earners in my home state, I’ve been working on the family farm since I was 8 and our lifestyle was always one of relative modesty; sure, we had nicer things, but my parents never spent money on anything that would mark us as wealthy, and rather, much of our money was used to prop up the farm and help the rest of the family. I won’t get into specifics, but poor southern Appalachia is where I am from. My mother was raised in the Calvinist traditions and my father’s family had no religion other than rye whiskey and Natural Light. They sent me to two separate Christian schools for elementary and middle school, then public school for high school. My community has always had a terribly fatalistic attitude towards anybody and everything, including bottling up feelings, despising others for their own successes and lofty goals, and having a true “mask” identity you assume in public; I will mention I’m male because it seems these things manifest differently depending on one’s expression of gender (especially when conforming to traditional gender norms, though I try my hardest not to), and I mention this for those familiar with Appalachian Fatalism and just sociology/philosophy/ontology in general, but I won’t go into that topic here.
I say all this because my worst lying relates to my upbringing. I was diagnosed as autistic at 19 (I am 22 now), as my family did not believe in mental illness or disorder when I was a child; I have reason to believe that the stress of this as a kid is a big part of why I am where I am today.
In my elementary school, which was an extremely abusive New-Age Christian school, I found out, around 2nd Grade, that lying was the only thing that made people like me or even perceive me as normal. I was also the “poor” kid to them, despite my parents being physicians, so I was already at a strong social disadvantage, as they held that being wealthy and “normal” were baseline expectations. Mind you, not just the other students, but the adults also promoted lying amongst the students, as they would often publicly shame us and tried to mold us into toxically positive, near-brainwashed adults that would be good for extracting charitable donations from later, or at least that’s what I deduced from my recollection of their behavior. Thusly, I would lie about innocuous things, and in 3rd Grade I got a whole lot of looks for requesting an obvious lie in prayer group. Of course I laugh at my prayer request now, but at the time, it terrified me, as they had an all-classes assembly and humiliated me with me on stage in front of all of my peers (this was neither the first nor last time students were shamed in front of the student body with letters sent home to parents for such minute things that kids just do sometimes). It made me realize I had to be a better liar if I wanted people to like me or even just talk to me. I realize that this was so long ago, and it can seem like a cop out to excuse myself in the present, but I’m already this far, and I’m being serious when I say that this is only the beginning of the next 15-ish years of constant lying.
While in the Catholic middle school I was at, I had a Jewish teacher, and she was awesome. I was very interested in religious and cultural history, as I still am today, so I spoke with her about her experiences and traditions, keeping notes.
Some time later, I found out that my father’s family was actually part of the Spanish Sephardic community living in exile in Morocco before they moved here. I was amazed: I finally felt like I had something cool and interesting to talk about that might help me make friends, and it slowly morphed into my whole father’s side of the family being culturally-cognizant, and therefore, Jewish. How? I have no clue. Why? Also no clue. Do I feel truly awful? Absolutely. It’s like I’m living on stolen valor and it makes me sick to my stomach to think about. Despite my love for educating myself on the culture and philosophies of that community, I couldn’t respect them enough to admit to others not part of them that I’m not one of them and that my insights and personal philosophy just comes from my strong background in theology, despite my personal distaste for religion.
Now, back to the present: my fiancé and I have been together for the better part of four years and we have lived together for one. I brought him down from his home state to live with me and we both hate it here, as things continue to get worse for young adults and/or queer people, no need to go into specifics because I’m sure you all can read in between the lines as to what that entails for our greater community (state and/or region) as well. I regularly got into physical altercations in high school over it and still I have to watch over my shoulder and be on alert any time I leave the house, both to be ready to defend myself and protect my fiancé, and to be prepared to deflect or distract from another lie. I truly don’t see myself with anyone else, and while I like to think I’m usually pretty eloquent, there’s no better way to put that I would not have wanted, nor wish I did lie to him about who I was when I first met him, and it hurts me every time I do it, as I continue to do so up until he comes home today. It’s this feeling; I consider it the feeling I would get when I “sinned” in elementary school, where the world slows down, my heart drops, and I basically make a long, analytical query into my psyche in a brief second that ends much like: “What the hell am I doing this for? Who am I doing this for?”
I have never been to a real therapy session other than for my diagnosis; when I got it, I dropped a wad of cash on the table and ran away. I live well below the poverty line, and even just going to get my diagnosis was enough to put me three months behind on rent. I’m lucky that now at least, while I’m still below the poverty line, my workplace has amazing insurance that should cover the sessions that I am obviously in need of scheduling. This, however, is not so much what I am worried about.
Hey! I’m editing my near-novella. This next section is the meat and potatoes behind my question. Thank you to those of you who have read this far!
Instead, I am terrified at the idea of my fiancé leaving me. It was so hard getting even just to where we are now, and it now feels as though everyone around me and even myself is clawing, trying to drag me back down into the grueling depression with which so many people here go their entire lives putting up with; that is, except for him. I never knew how good a hug felt until I received my first real hug from him. I never knew what it felt like to be without worry, fear, and discomfort until he was part of my life. I do my best to return his generosity and love for me by talking him through his own depression and being a strong shoulder for him to cry on or ask for help from, as I have a lot of background in ontology, philosophy, sociology, and psychology, but I feel I always come up short no matter how hard I try; I learned most of these things to help people like him in the first place, and I haven’t even applied the concepts to myself until now. My fight to escape this cycle of depression and poverty many here in my community share has been the catalyst for my sordid attempts to fix myself and be as good a human as I can, to him and to the world. I no longer can do it by myself, and I know my fiancé is very understanding and has his own, significantly deeper challenges and struggles, and I feel as though me telling him will make him believe me to be a self-serving charlatan that uses another’s struggles to gain sympathy from others. In reality, I don’t think he would want to leave me, as we otherwise get along great and share so much while being so different; I’m exactly what he wanted out of a husband, or so he has said, while he is exactly what I wanted out of a husband, even if we didn’t realize it until he drove 250 miles to see me at work for the first time.
I need to let him know I’m here, and that I’m not going to let this happen ever again, but I’m terrified he will feel so cheated that I will be unable to convince him to take one last chance on me. We have so much we want to do planned, and we’re finally going to escape this community, the cycle of poverty, and work on ourselves a lot, but everything around us is so depressing here and in our current situation that I fear he won’t give me the chance to correct my faults and fight for a better life for us, even though that’s what I want above all else and desperately need.
I’m so scared for what is to come when he gets off work, and frankly, I’ve been thinking about what would happen if he were to leave and I really don’t like that I’ve already found a good place to dispose of myself and resolved that if I go up there, it will more than likely happen, and I’m apathetic about it happening if things are over between us.
TLDR: How can I help my fiancé understand I’m trying to undo my 15+ years of lies and not make him hate me for it? The fear is all consuming and I can’t shake it.