I lied to my wife for years about finishing college. I always intended to finish at some point but life kept getting in the way (no money, no job, other more important bills.) And to be honest, I was afraid of school. I was afraid of so much in my life that even those things that were supposed to help me be strong and grow terrified me. Then I grew up and applied to a career program that didn’t need a degree. After applying my wife cheated on me and then filed for divorce because she thought I was never going to move forward in life. While sorting through our files she noticed that there were no documents from the school I had been attending before dropping out. She began to suspect that I had lied about a lot of things. Then we started to reconcile our marriage but her father would not let the school thing go. He had always hated me and saw this divorcce as an opportunity to attack me in her eyes as much as possible. So he went out of his way and fraudulently ran a background check on me to find out whether or not I’d graduated. When he found out I hadn’t he “accidentally” let her know. That effectively ended my lie, any chance of reconciling with my wife, and may just have ruined his relationship with her. I feel so guilty for lying for so long and for never having the courage to own up to my mistakes years ago when I might have been able to get her to forgive me. I think that chance for forgiveness is gone now and my marriage and her heart feel lost to me forever.
