Cognitive Dissonance: Loving Someone Who Lies

Hi everybody, this is something I see in my office almost every week. A client sits across from me and says, “I found out he’s been lying to me for years. About so many things. But I still love him. What’s wrong with me?”

Nothing is wrong with you. You’re experiencing what psychologists call cognitive dissonance, and when it comes to loving someone who has lied to you, it’s one of the most confusing and painful experiences you’ll go through.

Here’s the short version: Cognitive dissonance happens when you’re holding two conflicting truths at the same time. You loved someone deeply AND they’ve been lying to you. Both things are real. Your brain is trying to reconcile something that doesn’t reconcile easily, and that creates tremendous internal conflict.

But here’s what most people miss about this experience:

→ The confusion you feel isn’t weakness or gullibility. It’s actually evidence of your capacity to trust and form genuine connections.

→ This isn’t just an emotional struggle. Your nervous system and attachment patterns from childhood are involved, which is why you can’t just “logic your way out” of it.

→ The presence of cognitive dissonance doesn’t mean you should leave OR that you should stay. It means you need time and information before your heart and mind can align again.

The Three Core Conflicts I See When Lies Are Discovered

When someone discovers their partner has been lying to them—whether it’s lies about infidelity (sexual, emotional, or financial), addiction, money, online activities, or other deceptions—they typically face three overlapping conflicts. I’m going to walk you through each one because understanding them helps you be kinder to yourself during this confusing time.

Love vs. Reality

I’m thinking right now of a woman I’ve been working with. She was married for 25 years. Twenty-five years of what she experienced as a committed, loving partnership. She gave herself fully to this marriage and their family. She was loyal. She loved him deeply.

When she discovered the multiple infidelities and saw just how good he was at covering them up—the sophistication of his lies, how he did it, the systems he had in place—it devastated her. Why? Because the lies meant she hadn’t been living in reality at all.

Here’s what makes this so painful: He was living a completely different marriage than she was. She was experiencing a reality of mutual love, loyalty, family building, giving of herself. He was having a fantasy life with secret activities, all while love-bombing her and making her feel wonderful. That was part of how he manipulated her through lies. But he had a very different internal experience of their relationship.

Two people can be married and not be living in the same marriage. Nobody experiences marriage identically, but when one partner is lying and living a secret life, the gap becomes extreme.

And here’s the thing that creates cognitive dissonance: There were genuinely good moments. The lies don’t erase those moments. Even with people who are abusive, there are good moments, and that creates its own cognitive dissonance. But right now I’m talking about lies specifically.

Those good experiences you had? They were real for you. Your good feelings, your loving emotions, the oxytocin and dopamine responses in your brain, those were genuine. Some people tell me, “I never felt so loved and so loving with anyone else.” And then they find out this person has been lying to them, keeping massive secrets from them.

You’re facing your reality of love against the reality of lies you’re confronting right now. When people lie like this, it doesn’t always mean they don’t love you. But there were parts of them that were not capable of the kind of honest love you were giving. There were parts of them living in secrecy and deception. You had very different capacities to give and receive love, and you thought it was one thing when it was actually something else.

That reality is difficult to accept when you know you felt real love, real connection, real purpose. So if you’re hearing this and it relates to your situation, please understand: your confusion is normal. It’s completely understandable to feel this conflicted.

I’ve had people ask me, “What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I just move on?” It’s because there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to move on. A part that doesn’t want to give up the reality you were living all those years. That’s not so easy to just give up.

Attachment vs. Evidence

Related to this love-versus-reality conflict is the attachment-versus-evidence dynamic.

When you’re in an attachment relationship, especially if you’ve developed what psychologists call a “secure attachment,” you feel safe. You’re able to depend on your partner to some degree while also regulating your own emotions. The woman I mentioned earlier? She had formed a secure attachment. She felt genuinely secure in her marriage. Her partner was more avoidant and didn’t have the full investment she did, but she was deeply attached.

When that attachment gets threatened by discovering lies, it doesn’t just hurt in the present moment. It triggers early abandonment wounds from your past. Maybe you had parents who let you down or past relationships where people disappointed you. Your nervous system remembers all of that, and on some level, you’re protecting yourself from not only the pain of the current lies but the echo of past pain.

This is why it’s easy to stay in denial. Part of you wants to hold onto the belief that “this can’t be true” because accepting it means facing all that pain.

But then there’s the other side: the evidence. In my client’s case, the texts, the media she found, the phone calls she saw, the credit card records, whatever evidence she discovered. The neurobiological attachment saying “don’t let go” is in direct conflict with the factual evidence of lies.

It’s a difficult thing for your brain to negotiate. You’re attached at a deep, neurobiological level, but the evidence of deception is sitting right in front of you.

Hope vs. Self-Abandonment

The third major conflict I see is between hope and self-abandonment.

Part of you hopes this person will stop lying. Part of you hopes things can get better. And I want you to know: I’m a person who says things can get better. I’ve seen couples where there has been lying, where that person changes. The lying does get better. That happens.

But here’s the complexity: The person who was lied to has got to find that out over time. They need to see if this person is really taking a closer look at themselves and making some changes so that they won’t lie in the future.

In the meantime, you’re going through this internal battle between wanting hope and not wanting to abandon yourself. You don’t want to treat yourself like everything was okay when it wasn’t. You don’t want to act like the lies didn’t happen. You don’t want to treat yourself like you don’t matter.

This is incredibly difficult for many people, even in the face of their partner making some real good changes. They feel like, “I’m abandoning myself. I’m treating myself like everything was okay and it wasn’t. I’m treating myself like it didn’t happen. I’m treating myself like I don’t matter.”

When someone lies to us, even if they start to get better, it’s really hard to trust it because you feel like you’re abandoning yourself. You feel like you’re letting them get away with it. It makes you feel like if you treat things like it’s all okay, you’re abandoning yourself.

So you’ve got love versus reality, attachment versus evidence, and hope versus self-abandonment, all happening simultaneously. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance in loving someone who lies to you and trying to recover from all that.

What This Looks Like in Real Time

Let me give you a sense of what I hear in my office when someone is experiencing this cognitive dissonance after discovering lies:

“I know what he did was terrible. I saw the texts. But I still love him.”

“She says she’s done lying, and I see some differences, but how do I know this is real?”

“Some days I’m so angry about the lies I can barely look at him. Other days I remember why I fell in love with him.”

“I feel crazy. How can I still love someone who lied to me for so long?”

“My friends think I’m stupid for staying with someone who lied, but they don’t understand how good it was before.”

“I want to believe the lies are over, but every time I start to trust, I feel like I’m being naive again.”

Do any of these sound familiar? If so, you’re right in the middle of cognitive dissonance.

The Path Through Cognitive Dissonance

The good news, and there is good news here, is that there are ways to navigate this. First of all, be kind to yourself. There’s a practice here.

When you’re feeling that cognitive dissonance, you want to be kind to yourself. If you want to think about it as a silver lining, it’s your opportunity to treat yourself very well no matter what happens with your relationship. Your confusion doesn’t make you weak or gullible. It makes you human. It makes you someone who trusted deeply and is now trying to integrate a painful reality.

The second thing is to be patient with yourself. You have that cognitive dissonance. Be patient. Your brain needs time to process two conflicting truths. Some days you’ll feel clear. Other days you’ll feel confused again. That’s normal.

Third, do your research with your partner. See if they’re making real changes or just superficial changes. Are they just in crisis and trying to hold onto what they had before with you? Or are they really trying to shift and change from the inside out?

What were the underlying factors that led to his or her lying? Are those dissolving? That does happen. Like I said, I’m hopeful because I’ve seen this happen, but it doesn’t always happen.

When I work with couples dealing with this, I’m looking for evidence of real change: Are they showing evidence of healing? Is there transparency now where there were secrets before? Is there consistency over time? Are they willing to be uncomfortable and vulnerable? Are they really atoning for what they did?

Fourth, face reality while keeping hope alive when it’s appropriate. Whether it’s love versus reality, yeah, ultimately you need to face reality. But part of the reality is to check out: is this partner who lied to me getting better? Are they showing evidence of that?

So there’s the evidence of what the person did and how they lied, but is there also the evidence of them healing?

Hope versus self-abandonment. There’s nothing wrong with hope, as long as you’re not in denial and it’s not self-abandonment. When you see some real changes from the inside out, where behavior’s changing, the person’s really atoning for what they did, and you’re starting to see some real shifts—these are some of the things I look at when I’m working with people and their cognitive dissonance.

Self-abandonment is when you’re not conscious and you’re clinging to a partner who lied to you without seeing if anything has changed. But it isn’t self-abandonment when you’re really taking a step back, when you’re doing the work, but you’re seeing that your partner’s doing the work, and that you hope again and you let hope rule based on evidence.

It’s all important to take your time. See what’s really going on. But throughout the whole process, be kind to yourself.

The Role of Attachment Patterns

I mentioned earlier that attachment patterns play a role in cognitive dissonance. Let me expand on that because it’s important for understanding yourself.

If you formed a secure attachment in your relationship, you felt safe depending on your partner. You could regulate your emotions relatively well. When that gets shattered by discovering lies, it’s not just the deception you’re grieving. You’re grieving the sense of safety you had.

Your partner’s lies trigger early abandonment wounds. Who wants to have that? So it’s easy to stay in denial and hold onto the belief this can’t be true because on some level, you’re protecting yourself from not only the pain of the current lies but the pain of past disappointments with other people who let you down.

If you came into the relationship with anxious attachment patterns (maybe from childhood experiences), the lies confirm your worst fears about not being able to trust or not being enough. That makes the cognitive dissonance even more intense because you’re fighting against old wounds being ripped open again.

Understanding your attachment pattern doesn’t solve the problem, but it helps you understand why you’re responding the way you are. It helps you recognize: I’m attached. I don’t want to give up that attachment. It’s not just about not wanting to give up the idea—there’s also attachment at a neurobiological level.

What About When The Lying Continues?

I want to be realistic with you. Sometimes the person who lied doesn’t change. Sometimes they make superficial adjustments but continue lying in other ways. Sometimes they’re just scared of losing what they had, but they’re not actually doing the internal work required to become an honest person.

If that’s what you’re seeing after giving it time, then your cognitive dissonance is trying to tell you something: The love you felt was real, but this relationship can’t continue if the lies continue.

That doesn’t make your love invalid. It doesn’t mean the good moments weren’t real. It means you’re facing an incredibly painful truth: Sometimes love isn’t enough if the other person isn’t capable of or willing to stop lying.

Your job isn’t to force yourself to stop loving someone. Your job is to take care of yourself, even if that means leaving a relationship where you still have loving feelings but where lies continue.

Moving Forward With Yourself

Whether you stay in your relationship or leave, whether your partner stops lying or doesn’t, you’re going to need to work through this cognitive dissonance.

That means:

Allowing yourself to hold both truths. You loved them deeply. They lied to you. Both are true.

Recognizing that your confusion makes sense given the circumstances. You experienced one reality while they were living another.

Taking all the time you need to process this. There’s no timeline for reconciling conflicting realities.

Finding support, whether that’s through therapy, support groups, or trusted friends who won’t pressure you to make decisions before you’re ready.

Practicing self-compassion when you feel stupid or naive. You’re none of those things. You trusted someone you loved. That’s what we’re supposed to do in relationships.

Remember what I said at the beginning: The confusion you feel isn’t weakness. It’s evidence of your capacity to trust and love. The fact that you’re struggling to reconcile these conflicting truths means you’re someone who formed a real attachment, who gave yourself authentically to a relationship.

That’s not something to be ashamed of. That’s something that speaks to your humanity and your heart.

Understanding Why You Have Cognitive Dissonance

Let me bring this together. Understand why you have cognitive dissonance for the reasons I’ve been talking about here today.

You have cognitive dissonance because:

You experienced real love while being lied to. Both happened simultaneously, even though they seem incompatible.

You formed a real attachment while the other person was keeping secrets. Your nervous system bonded with someone who wasn’t showing you their full reality.

You have hope for a relationship without lies while also not wanting to abandon yourself by pretending the lies didn’t matter.

These are completely normal, human responses to discovering that someone you love has been lying to you. The cognitive dissonance shows you’re grappling with a genuinely complex situation, not that there’s something wrong with you.

A Note on Time and Healing

I’ve been working with couples dealing with lies and infidelity for many years now. One thing I’ve learned: Cognitive dissonance doesn’t resolve quickly. It takes months, sometimes longer, for your heart and mind to align again after discovering significant lies.

During that time, you’ll have moments of clarity followed by moments of confusion. You’ll have days where you feel strong and days where you doubt everything. You’ll go back and forth between anger and love, between wanting to fix things and wanting to leave.

That’s all part of the process. Be patient with yourself as you move through it.

And know this: On the other side of cognitive dissonance, whether you stay or go, is a clearer sense of reality. You’ll eventually integrate these conflicting truths into a more complete picture. It won’t be the picture you had before, but it will be one you can stand on solidly because it’s based on truth rather than lies.

About Working Through This:

I’ve been helping couples and individuals work through the aftermath of lies and deception for over three decades. What I’ve seen repeatedly is that people are stronger and more resilient than they think.

The cognitive dissonance you’re experiencing is painful, but it’s also a sign that you’re not willing to ignore reality or abandon yourself.

If you’re going through this right now, please be gentle with yourself. Take your time. Do the research on whether your partner has genuinely stopped lying. Face reality while maintaining hope based on evidence, not denial.

And remember: Whatever you’re feeling makes sense. You’re not crazy. You’re not weak. You’re someone who loved deeply and trusted fully and is now trying to navigate one of the most painful experiences a person can have—discovering that the person you loved has been lying to you.

That takes courage.