A few years ago, my friend Jay and I were having a conversation with another friend, who wanted some advice on how to handle a lie her children had told. It was one of those cute, funny kid stories; well, ok, the kind that is cute and funny when it's done by someone else's kid, but makes your head crack open in frustration when it's your own. Her older daughter had given her younger daughter "a haircut": that is, the elder sister took a pair of safety scissors to the younger's head and started hacking. Needless to say, Mom was aghast at the sight of her baby's newly, and unevenly, shorn locks and asked what happened. Both girls replied: The cat cut her hair. The blind, decrepit 13-year-old cat? Yes, absolutely, the cat. Both girls stuck unwaveringly to that story. And their mom didn't know what to do. How, she mused, should she punish them for lying?

Like I would know! I've lived with liar after crazy, reality bending liar, but I had no idea how to deal with lying. My method was to sit around feeling impotent and pissed off, and I didn't really see that as being an effective way to shape a child's behavior.

But that's when Jay stepped in and changed my life. Forget about the lying, she said. Kids are going to lie to you someday, and if you focus on the lying and punish them for it, you're teaching them to become better liars to avoid being punished. So, forget about it. What if you assume they're telling the truth? What happens if the cat really did give the haircut? I'll tell you what: the scissors are locked up by Mom, and there is no more scissor use unless Mom is around to supervise, because the cat obviously can't be trusted with scissors and the kids obviously can't be trusted to supervise the cat.

Forget about the lying! This was the most insanely brilliant thing I had ever heard. This I had to try, and since addicts lie, and I am married to an addict, I only had to wait about .357 seconds for an opportunity.

Mark had been in recovery for a year or so at this point, and I was still occasionally doing that crazy codependent stalking thing where I would check his cell phone records or e-mail. It didn't really help much, because for all I knew, he could have had another phone, another e-mail account, another home, another wife, another family or a whole set of cannibalized bodies buried in the back yard. I didn't know what was real anymore and couldn't have ruled out anything. Yet, even though I was never sure, even though I often found something that upset me, the act of checking helped soothe me somehow, if only a little, if only for a moment.

This time, while checking cell phone records, I found that he had begun calling women in his 12 Step group, which was deeply disturbing, scary and hurtful. At the beginning of his recovery, he had defined "making and maintaining private female friends" to be a breach of his sobriety, and this included women in his group. Yet the records showed, not just calls to women, but increasingly frequent calls to two women. I found he was calling them every day, multiple times a day, talking for up to an hour at a time. While he frequently talked to me about his friendships with men in his group, he never mentioned these women to me once, although he spoke to them every day. It all freaked me the hell out.

I was convinced that he was lying to me, lying to himself. I believed that even if there were nothing sexual going on with these women yet, he wanted there to be. He was interested in pursuing them, only this time he was doing so under the cloak of sobriety. He maintained it was good for his recovery; he was seeing the women as human beings rather than objects, getting their perspective. It was helping him.

I felt trapped, anxious and panting, like an animal in a cage. I knew his recovery was his recovery, and I couldn't control him or his addiction, and I wasn't supposed to "take his inventory," and all that 12 Step bullshit. But if I trusted myself and my gut feelings, as I was learning to do through my own recovery work, then I had to admit I felt he was lying. I was angry at feeling deceived, and I was frustrated that all I could do was either sit there and be duped, which hurt me, or jump in and be controlling, which hurt me too. I was reeling in confusion. I wanted him to admit that he was lying, that he was "in the bubble," that his reality wasn't reality. And of course, he couldn't.

Then I remembered that conversation with Jay about the cat, and said to myself, "What if I forget about the lying? What if I take him at his word, that being in contact with women in his group actually is good for his recovery? Then what?" I'll tell you what then: whether he was lying or not, his behavior still hurt me. It was still too fresh, too wounding, too painful to me to have other women in his life, in my life, in our life, even in his recovery. And as I realized this, I felt a great sense of peace and clarity and serenity.

I was able to tell Mark, calmly and honestly, that if he needed these women in his recovery, I couldn't be a partner in that recovery. I didn't threaten, I didn't try to change him, I felt completely at peace with either option. I knew, with the serenity one must feel at accepting death after a long and painful illness, that I was ready to let go. I knew I couldn't live with these women in my life. I knew Mark had to do what he felt was best for his recovery, and I supported that. I felt confident that whether we ended up together or not, we would truly be doing what was best for each of us and that everything would be ok.

Mark needed time to think, and for the first time in my life, I was able to give that to him, without anger or frustration. For several months, he slept on the sofa, and I slept in the bed, while he thought about what was best for him in his recovery. I knew he was struggling to find the answer within himself, and I waited.

In the end, he believed that his recovery would continue to progress without the women in the program, even if it did happen at a different pace. He decided that his recovery would be best served by taking the long path with me, rather than the path without. And I knew I wanted to walk that path with him as well. He stopped speaking to the women, and I know I can trust that that is true, because he is committed to his recovery.

We're still walking that long path together. Each new day we have to decide what's best, and each day the best thing has been to keep on walking together. And it's thanks, in large part, to Jay, a cat, and a haircut.