Sister disclosed that her DP 'hid' in his ex's home for 6 months

[Coffeestout]

Hi all my sister, to whom I'm very close, has started seeing a guy and it's getting serious but she confided something to me that has shocked me about him.
He is in his early fifties and seems to be OK. Good job and own house but she recently told me something about him that made me go hmm...
In his late twenties, he was living at home with his parents and continually out of work.
He had pressure put on him to do something by his mother so - and I cannot get my head around this but it's true-he pretended to be working away but instead hid in a female friend's flat for 6 months.
Apparently he hoped to go home after his 'contract' ended which he did but obviously having been out in the big wide world his folks wanted him to continue in the same vein - which he didn't.
He ended up moving in with his female friend, who at the time was a recently divorced single mum of a two-year - old child, and they become a couple.
She gets pregnant and after about ten years of him doing nothing chucks him out.
Since then, he's turned his life around and is successful but my view has changed of him now, frankly the fact he hid in his ex's flat for months when she had a small kid makes me think he's an user.

I mean the poor woman must not have been able to have anybody round her place and to be frank as regards as benefits were concerned the whole thing was dodgy to say the least-though after all this time no longer provable.

Oh I'm not saying his ex is blameless but yes a bit vulnerable after a divorce.
Anyway this is about him not his ex who incidentally appears to despise him.

But my sister really likes him and he has seemed to have turned things around but I'm still mistrustful of him since she told me this.

AIBU people CAN change or am I right in thinking that this is such a terrible thing this guy is screwed in the head in a fundamentally awful way.

I get why you are over protective, I bloody hate these sorts of guys - I know of a case of someone going out with one now and it baffles me - but you sound incredibly over involved. If you have concerns, look up his address on the land registry. If you don't want to do that, then keep out of it until you really know this guys character. You run the risk of your sister keeping things from you as she will get a strong opinion from you rather than useful advice in return (you remind me of my sister!).

When I was younger I was a bit if a twit too and I'm nothing like my younger self now. People mature and grow out of a lot of twattery, which could be the case now. Some people don't have a conscience and carry on being a twat. This guy could be lying about his job and house, or opening up about how much he has changed here. Its for your sister to judge what's right as she's the one who has the relationship with him.

You seem to think that his ex had no control over this which is a bit of an insult to her really. Also the 2yo is her son, she was responsible for safeguarding him nobody else. I'm not absolving him but the 2yo really wasn't his responsibility.

Being locked up for 6 months to hide from your parents screams abuse from them and/or him having mental illness at the time.

You sound weirdly obsessed with your sisters boyfriend it's all very strange.

But maybe I should ignore all that and tell my sister who is really distressed by his 'confession' to ignore all the red flags and crack on.

So tell her to make up her mind on what to do. Rather than you coming over all Ms Marple, cooking up some backstory and digging into his past, as you claim you're going to do.

"Being locked up for 6 months to hide from your parents screams abuse from them and/or him having mental illness at the time"

I agree. Who'd actively choose this? It's like the worse kind of lockdown. Afraid to go out in case you're seen?

Also, he has been honest about it with your sister it seems. He didn't have to tell her.

Why are you so fixated that this woman and her 2yo were some poor victims and this man took advantage of them?
Did someone run off and leave you or something? You are projection quite disturbingly here and it is NOT normal this level of obsession over this man.

What a load of drama of something that is a) nothing to do with you and b) not even a problem.

You’re exaggerating the situation to make it sound worse than it was and just blatantly making shit up.

You have no idea if the little girl’s life was “curtailed”. You have no idea how she reacted.

Stop revelling in the drama, trying to claim the moral high ground and move on.

There are some facts that he has told your DSis……and then there are some escalations / inventions that you have added.

A 2 year old might well have benefited from her mother having another adult in the house / more money / another pair of hands for domestic chores?

The woman was in her 30s and decided to have another child with him and live with him for 10 more years so this relationship and family could have been happy and stable until it broke down.

It seems he didn’t work until his 40s which is alarming but maybe he had MH or addiction issues that he has since worked through to build a career and buy a home in the following 10 years.

Child and ex not on speaking terms is not good. Red flags for sure - but so much of this seems your intense speculation.

Are you capable of considering other perspectives - do you have flexible or rigid thinking? You seem to be going down a rabbit hole here.

Step back - take a deep breath and shift the focus to on stuff in your own life - you can keep a gentle eye out for your sister at the same time - but what’s going on for you in your life?

The ex and child not speaking to him is a massive red flag, don't you think?

And reason enough to call it off without the other stuff.

But that may not be the reason she chucked him out.
Who cares, though. He's still a cocklodger.
I didn't start this thread to argue about his past cocklodgery-that's obvious. It's about his current personality.

So his parents were so controlling he moved in with a friend to hide from them and pretended he was away.
He then had a 10 year relationship with the mother of his child
You have no idea what happened in that relationship, whether he contributed or not, but she chose to stay with him for 10 years

You are over invested - are you the ex?? You have to be, no one else would have this level of detail, and be so interested

The way you worded it was as though he lived in someones house whilst they were unaware
What he really did was just lie to his mum and dad
Hes also told your sister everything about his past etc
You kind have made a drama out of nothing

You are making a lot of assumptions about the situation for someone who wasn't there
You don't know that his parents were reasonable, you don't know it wasn't his friends idea to move in
Infact you don't know very much at all
If your sister is horrified as you claim then she needs to end it now then surely as you both don't seem to be able to get past it

in your op you say

He is in his early fifties and seems to be OK. Good job and own house but she recently told me something about him that made me go hmm...
In his late twenties, he was living at home with his parents and continually out of work.

Late 20s, lets say he started the relationship with the ex when he was 30, so they would have split up when he was 40 - he's now early 50s - who is moving on quick???

oh, do you mean your sister needs to move on quick, afterall, she wont want to be with a man who had a 10 year relationship that ended 10 years ago

How do you know she did his laundry why he just slapped dole money on the table , they also lasted 10 years so must of been ok for at least some of it
You really are adding a lot to a story for something your wasn't present for

Don’t set the bar too high will you.

I think it's completely reasonable for his parents to get sick of him mooching about the house when he's near 30.

I don't see how a man who doesn't work is contributing much. Sorry.

They were both out of work. Now it can be argued that one of them being out of work was OK as looking after small children is being a sahp but both of them?
So he wasn't a stay at home father.
OK she could have worked but I'm not concerned with her. Only him.
And no I am not the ex. I just don't want this guy being part of my family what with his multitude of red flags.

I strongly suspect he was exaggerating this part of the story for comic effect.

@IrisVersicolor what bar ? I haven't set anything at all
I just asked how she knows what there relationship was like
They were also together 10 years so maybe it was good at one point for both of them

Why was it ok for her not to of worked but he had to
Both could of worked plenty with small children do every day , there are also lots of couples who live on benefits for years for many many reasons,
Sounds like he turned it around and got a job
Personally you sound a little too invested in your sisters life, what will you do if she is happy with him and continues her relationship

And Op the only reason to call it off is because your sister is not happy with his past or his present self , not because you have jumped to a lot of assumptions about what happened 20 odd years ago
Fair enough maybe explain to your sister some things concern you and maybe she needs to find out a little more
But otherwise you have no say on what your sister chooses to do

@IrisVersicolor do you want to explain why you have said don't set the bar too high ? When i simply asked how does she know he just slapped the dole money down and ex did his laundry?
OP has no idea in this and for all she knows he could if been one who was doing household chores etc, i set no bar just asked a question
Also mentioned the relationship lasted 10 years , so maybe they were happy for at least some of it or it suited both parties ? We have zero idea of how the relationship was

Op I think you are massively blowing this out of proportion.

if he has gone into such large detail with you sister, then it’s likely he has changed. People don’t admit to poor behaviour they are continuing. Sounds like a story of ‘can’t believe how shit I was’.

Why on earth would he tell your sister ‘oh I just want a woman to be my mummy while I just hand over a bit of money every week’. He wouldn’t be giving her the heads up.

or he didn’t give that detail and you have added assumptions in. Especially about her doing his laundry and him handing over his dole.

as a divorced single month we, I get really fed up of the trope of ‘divorced and single parents must mean vulnerable and any bad decisions they make in relationships must be because of the terrible man involved’. Stop infantilising a whole group of women so the story fits your narrative.

maybe he wasn’t a wise choice for a partner. Maybe they just simply didn’t work out. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t a willing participant. Oddly some people are quite happy to not work and have a partner who also doesn’t work. Plenty of people live like that.

If your sister is put off by this, I don’t know why you are so wound up by it. If your sister chooses to continue to see him that’s her choice. She has lost bodily autonomy because she divorced. Nor has she become incapable of making her own decisions. Good or bad.

It's the two-year-old whose mum recently split from her father being put through further confusion by him being there that really bugs me, too.

Oh FFS, you have absolutely no idea that this was the case. Stop being such a drama queen! ‘Woman has lodger’ is not a tale of childhood trauma.

You also seem to ‘know’ a huge amount of detail about this considering you didn’t even hear the story first-hand.

You say your sister is as horrified by all this as you are, in any case, so what’s the issue? If she wants to dump him, she’ll dump him. It’s not your decision. Maybe he’s a complete dickhead, we don’t know.

I also know his ex has accused him of controlling her and his daughter doesn't want to know him.

Funny how you never even thought to mention this at the start 🙄

These are the facts as he told my sister:
He was living at home nearing 30 having never worked.

His parents had enough of this and wanted him to move out and get a job.
He then pretended that he'd got himself a job away for a few months - all the while living at his female friend's flat-hoping when he returned they'd pat him on the back and let him go back to his old ways.

He moves out of female friend's flat but at this point they are still just friends (perhaps, no most probably, fwb).

But the pressure continues for him to continue working and his parents make it clear he can't hang around their house all day doing nothing.

Awful of them I know (sarcasm obviously).

All of a sudden, despite just being mates with this woman for a couple of years, he decides he really loves her and he moves in.

Yes, I am assuming given these facts, that he didn't do his own laundry. Or anything else for that matter. Perhaps play computer games with the kid.

It's kind of a reasonable assumption, don't you think?

And on top of that, he's been accused of controlling behaviour by his ex and no longer has any contact with his stepchild (OK he and his ex didn't marry but I'm not going to split hairs over whether not he was technically her stepdad-that would be massively missing the point) nor his own child.
Nice guy I'm sure you'll all agree.

As for his ex, who knows? But she's not the issue here-he is.

The only thing I agree on that it's up to my sister whether she continues to see him or not.
But yeah I wish she'd dump him that's for sure.