Do you sometimes wonder how to tell if your partner is lying to you? You might suspect they’re  lying about something small. Maybe you’re worried they’re keeping something more important from you. Wives tend to keep secrets from their husbands and lie to protect their secrets.

Husbands lie because they see no benefit to telling their wives the truth. Neither gender is more habitually a liar than the other; both men and women lie equally, even if for different reasons. The first step to repairing your relationship is to be open and honest. Here are four ways to tell if your partner is lying to you:

1. Odd or sudden changes in speech or behavior

You know your partner best–how he speaks, the way they normally reacts to things. So when they’re suddenly stammering or speaking with a lot of long pauses when they’re usually a pretty eloquent speaker, something might be up.

If your wife is usually pretty even-keel and has sudden flare-ups of emotion or random outbursts of defensiveness around certain questions or topics, she may be hiding something from you.

2. Evasiveness, Deflection or Redirecting questions back to you

This happens when you ask what may be a simple question (“So, who did you go out with tonight?”). Your spouse ignores your question or gives a vague response such as “Oh, just a few friends” Then they quickly turns the question on to you, as in “What did you do tonight?”

If you ask your spouse a question and thye change  the subject by turning your question around on you,  they might be doing so becausey they don’t want you to know who they were really with. They might also be afraid to answer directly because it will invite further questions they don’t want to divulge the answers to.

3. Offering way too many unnecessary qualifiers and details

Verbal overcompensation is a red flag. If your partner denies an allegation with an overabundance of qualifiers such as “seriously,” “really,” or “honestly,” you should probably ask yourself who they’re trying to convince.

Likewise, if they go into finely tuned detail about where they were, what they were doing, and who they were with, they may be avoiding telling you the true story. Nobody wants to lie outright. A vague or partial truth is easier to remember. It is also easier to defend. Therefore, your partner may talk around the answer in order to avoid having to lie.

4. Finally, A Lie Has No Legs

Because a lie has nothing to support it, it will be unsustainable and can be easily recognized if you are willing to recognize that you are being lied to by someone you love and trust. 

Admitting that is sometimes the most challenging and important part of getting past the lie or moving on from the liar.

What to do if you suspect your partner is lying to you?

If you’re noticing signs that your partner or spouse may be lying to you, you’ll want to confront him.

However, try to avoid calling him out on the lie. Chances are, your partner is lying because he’s afraid you’re going to be mad at the true story. Try giving your spouse the option to come clean in a non-confrontational way. You might say, “I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. Are you worried about how I’ll react to something? Let’s get it out into the open so that we can figure out a solution together.”