To dump DP for this?

[Thousandthingstosay]

Been with DP a year. Been good and he's nice and kind and we have a lot in common.

But

If you ask him a question on anything he will give an answer as fact regardless of whether he knows the answer or not. He cannot seem to say "I don't know".

For example, I'll ask if you need a visa to go to a certain country and he'll say no when he doesn't know. Or has a friend accepted an invite for dinner or anything really. He says the answer he wants it to be.

We've had conversations about it and how I feel I can't trust anything he says anymore as I'm always thinking 'but is that true'.

He can't explain why he does it.

It happened again today over something trivial and I just think 'fuck this'. Cannot be arsed.

AIBU?

You can’t change him, but you can change your own behaviour - maybe don’t ask him so many questions expecting him to know the answers? Maybe he’s super fed up of you asking him stuff that he has no idea about, or is not the least bit interested in. It’s his way of getting you off his back? Maybe just Google it? 🤷‍♀️ I find I make stuff up when my kids ask questions, just to get them to leave me alone!

My partner is like this - he has has to give an answer in an all knowing way. He doesn't spout rubbish - he will say something about the thing in question but not actually answering my question at all. So I'll say "yes but I was asking....", to try and force him to admit he doesn't know. He hates it, and it drives me round the bend.

He's got a point with this comment, where I live it's all about showing off

Having put up with this for 32 years I'd say get out now. It comes from a need to feel superior - which means you have to be seen as inferior.

Another habit he has is if I tell him something, maybe that I have just read or whatever, he will say yes as though he already knew it, even though he didn't.

My ex would take this a step further and it would drive me nuts. I would tell him I'd read/heard something interesting and he would act completely disinterested or just ignore me. Then a week later would say, "oh my (male) best mate told me the most interesting thing the other day!" tell me and I'd just stare at him and say, "that was me. I told you that the other day..." then he'd flat out deny it was me and it was his mate.

It was like anything that came from my mouth and brain had no value.

Also went away for a weekend with a different ex to a b and b in the middle of nowhere, on a dark country lane arriving late at night. Ex got arsey at me when we got nearby and I suggested changing the satnav to the actual address rather than just the postcode. "I drive for work all the time, I know what I'm doing".

He ended up pulling into someone's very long residential drive, which took him down a steep drop where his car got stuck. He must have taken 20k miles off the life of the clutch trying to get out, the smoke really was something.

Some people just have to be right all the time, there's no shame in admitting you don't know. I have no patience for ego anymore.

Everyone saying to Google, how will Google know if his friend is coming to dinner? 🤔

My XH classic was when we were on a ferry in the Canaries. I said I felt like any minute a bunch of dolphins would be leaping out of the bow wave. 'Oh' he said 'you don't find dolphins this far south'.

Two minutes later about 30 dolphins started leaping in the wave. 'Porpoises on the other hand.....'

Sorry but this is absolutely hilarious!!

I like how he had a comeback.
I wonder if you have sharks instead and then saw a load of sharks what he would say then!

On the surface I’d say it was just harmless and he’s trying to hazard a guess so it sounds like he’s interested rather than just saying ‘I don’t know’ to everything - but actually like some of the examples on here it sounds like it would get boring very quickly.

Also FWIW boy racers do like the sound too.
When my brother was younger he saved up for a gorgeous car and put a pipe thing in the engine to make the rev sound really loud. Luckily he’s grown out of that phase now but I used to have to listen to ‘how loud it is’ all of the time like it was something to be proud of.
I absolutely hate it.

I would tell him I'd read/heard something interesting and he would act completely disinterested or just ignore me. Then a week later would say, "oh my (male) best mate told me the most interesting thing the other day!" tell me and I'd just stare at him and say, "that was me. I told you that the other day..." then he'd flat out deny it was me and it was his mate.

This would make me lose my shit! And I’m usually very patient!!

I can’t believe how common this is!

He's right.

I had no choice but to dump him, it was that or bury him under the patio

Yup.
The examples you give are mostly weird things to ask someone anyway - do you need a visa for x - answer = google it.
Do you perhaps have a similarly irritating habit of asking general knowledge questions to non-experts for no particular reason? If you stopped that, then his irritating habit of guessing the answer or giving an incorrect answer that he thinks is correct, might stop too.
Unless it's mostly 'is x coming to dinner' type questions and you only gave the other examples for context?

I was married to a compulsive liar for 30+ years - it is exhausting and infuriating. You constantly have to check everything and confirm everything, so you never feel in a partnership or as if the other person is taking their share of responsibility for things because they will make pronouncements based on nothing. As you say you can't trust them. I spent years trying to get him to say he didn't know if he didn't, but it never worked.

A lot of it was laziness - he couldn't be bothered to find things out so he'd just do stuff based on ignorance. Some of it was insecurity perhaps - in conversations he'd claim to have read books or seen films that he hadn't, - I have no idea why, but then I have no trouble admitting I don't know something and looking it up or asking someone who does. I think partly it was because his mother revered men and saw them as the fount of all knowledge so he grew up thinking he was infallible, like the Pope.

Whether you dump him or not is up to you, but I can tell you it will never get better, he will not stop doing it (expecially if he is in his fifties - I met mine in my 20s and he couldn't change)

definitely reason enough to end the relationship.

but stop treating the guy you are dating like a walking Google. Why would he know about the motorcycle engines. It doesn’t sound like you phrase these as the starting point for speculative discussion.

It's called conversation? You might have heard of it.

No advice apart from don't put up with it and seriously consider moving on - I don't think you'll change him. That would really annoy me too! Plus he could actually give you the wrong answer to something and you rely on it (e.g. visa question)!

Ooh I had one of these too. Couldn't say "I don't know", couldn't be in the wrong, would just make shit up on the spot rather than have to say he didn't know or that he made a mistake. It drove me nuts – because I could never tell when he was being honest, and also it's so disrespectful to just lie to someone's face and expect them to believe it, it made me feel like he must think I was an idiot.

Then if I got irate and said you're doing it again, don't lie to me, just say I don't know etc - he would play the victim and be all sad that I was so mean to him and that I accused him of lying when he wasn't. Even if I could outright prove there and then that he had been talking bollocks. So frustrating!

Over many years I tried to get through to him that it's OK to say "I don't know", and it's OK to be mistaken or wrong sometimes. And he did actually occasionally start saying I don't know, but he'd say it like "Do you know, I actually have no idea! How fascinating, it's a mystery" etc as in, how astonishing that someone of his amazing knowledge didn't know something, it must actually be unknowable. Which wasn't much better. And he would also say, "Wow, you were actually right about XYZ!" as if it was incomprehensible that I would be right about something

I left him for this and many other reasons but put up with it for far too long. I wish I'd thought "fuck this" sooner!

My DH is a bit like this too although has got much better with me over the years, although it’s hard for the DC - they tend not to believe him because I don’t!

He also used to exaggerate everything which really used to piss me off especially if it was an anecdote about me! I would correct him every time though - I hated it. He was worse with his dad. In his case, it is routed in insecurity (my guess) and wanting to sound more entertaining.

Looking back though, I don’t know how I put up with it because it would really bug me.

No more miserable than it is now 🙄

It doesn't matter if he's right, thats not the point.

It's nothing to do with the engine capacity, but it increases engine efficiency. For boy racers though it's all about what it looks and sounds like. So I agree with him

I have a colleague who does this and it drives me nuts.

More seriously, in our job, if you give an incorrect answer to a question and someone relies on it, it could cost the business huge sums of money.

Your DP could quite easily find himself fired or on the wrong side of the law for this sort of thing. Is that really something you want to contend with for as long as you are together?

Doesn’t sound like something you’re going to be compatible with long term. Just sounds like his personality, being a certain type of bloke who can’t admit not knowing something. But are you asking him questions you think he should automatically know the answer to being make ie about motorbike engines etc? It’s like you’re expecting him to deliver along those lines? That might be a bit of pressure to him. Like why should he know that? Why don’t you know that? I know it’s still frustrating that he can’t just say he’s not sure or maybe it’s bcos of x. But there is t only ever one answer to things however - I mean are you only ever wanting factual answers or his opinions on things? Because his answer was clearly his opinion on the question. Was he actually saying it’s incontrovertible proof that the engines are that way? Or just offering his opinion on it which is what I’d have probably said too. Does he allow for other opinions to coexist or is he dogmatic & have to be right and only his opinion matters? The eg you’ve described doesn’t sound that bad tbh but it wld drive me mad if he wasn’t able to just share facts, opinions & general oh prance about things.

All the men in my husband’s family do this. In their case, it’s total male arrogance. They don’t seem to care if it’s true or fact, just the fact that they think it is enough for them to speak it as fact. All the women in that family just accept it and accept it as fact. They wouldn’t dream of countering it with, you know, the truth. Even if they know it. They just go for the easy life.

Anyway, the reason my FIL doesn’t like me is because I consistently point out the bullshit. It took me a while to get there but it’s sport to me now. 😌

My DH does this occasionally, & either he sounds authoritative or i'm gullible, because I tend to believe him until I find out otherwise.

We now have a name for this: a beluga. I think he must've done it about whether baby beluga whales are black & turn white as they age, or white & turn black. After that every time I suspected him of doing it, I'd shout, "Beluga!" & put on jokey faux outrage.

I've told him it's OK to say, "I don't know," but it hasn't made much difference. We've been together for 40+ years & it's OK because it's a joke between us, he doesn't do it often & he never does it about everyday things.

Yours, though? LTB 😂

My ex used to do this. Completely incapable of admitting he didn't know the answer to anything. Also argued with me on points I knew to be true and would never back down, even when Google said it was wrong. It's not an attractive trait and IME suggests some underlying control issues.