Lies and Life

Would you mind if we revisited lying?   I know I talked a bit ago about lying to your lawyer, but what if the reason is that you're lying to yourself?  Then the "fib" you told to your lawyer, although untrue, isn't really a lie.  I know I was talking about substance abusers, because they are among the most blatant, both in lying to themselves and lying to others.  They tell themselves they really don't have a problem, they really don't drink or snort that much, they haven't had a "real" drink in months (they kind of forget about those little not real drinks because they didn't have more than one at a time, or it wasn't their usual alcohol of choice), they weren't too drunk or high to drive (the police officer just imagined that they ran the red light and almost took out a mailbox)....It really goes on and on.  The trouble is that they really believe the lies, and so getting help for the addiction is that much more difficult because they really don't think they have a problem.  It is not until they stop lying to themselves can they begin to recover.
In some ways, we all lie to ourselves.   Maybe our lies aren't as big or as potentially harmful to ourselves and others as the addict's, but we lie nevertheless.  We are the perfect spouse; our spouse is the one with the problem; so what do we say when our second and third marriages fail?  We saw all the warning signs that our marriage was in trouble, but when our spouse leaves us, it was "out of the blue" because we had a perfect marriage.  We tell ourselves we'll be happy if only we can lose 10 pounds, hire a maid, buy a sports car; then when any or all of those occur, we're puzzled because we feel no different than before. Again, it's not until we stop lying to ourselves, and admit that we have a part to play when things don't go right that our lives can change and we can stop repeating the same mistakes and change our future (and stop coming back to the Trenches for our second or third divorce).  What lies do you tell yourself?  Do you even know?  Isn't it time to figure it out?