My (22F) fiancé (22M) has been lying to me for 5 months about his uni essays, AIBU to feel hurt?

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My (22F) fiancé (22M) has been lying to me for 5 months about his uni essays, AIBU to feel hurt?

My fiancé’s dissertation is due next week, along side 2 other large essays. We have been together since a young age before GCSEs and I have supported him through GCSEs, Alevels and now his degree. He struggles with being under academic pressure and never seems to start essays until they need doing, in 2nd year he handed in multiple essays that did not reflect his full effort just because he was overwhelmed with them. I don’t mind what grade he gets tbh I don’t think he will use his degree. But at the start of January I wanted to be supportive with his dissertation and so have asked him every week what can I do to support you, how is it going have you gotten a good amount of words down this week? Especially as the dissertation is such a large amount of words I knew he couldn’t pull it out of the bag last minute. He has gone to the local library every single day since January sitting there for 9 hours at a time. He usually takes on the cooking/washing up/laundry etc because my degree is more demanding (I have placements alongside my studies) so I’ve really made an effort to take some of the weight off of him, even though it’s left me struggling myself as I am also in my final year of university on my final placement(working 40 hrs a week with a 1 hr commute twice a day) whilst studying at the same time. Basically I am exhausted and ready to finish my degree but i wanted him to have no pressure on him during the last couple of months. I asked him this week if I could read through his essays and dissertation and he would not let me look at them. I thought it was weird but I had been on nights so I was too tired to investigate further. Yesterday I decided to question further as he still would not send me them so I asked what was going on. I reassured him that I just wanted to help like he does with mine but he kind of broke down went for a walk and sent me a huge message about how sorry he is and that he has been lying for months about the progress of his essays, I knew I didn’t have time to be mad I needed to be supportive so that he can try and get something written by next week otherwise he really would not cooperate, I applied for an extension for him and he now has to write 16,000 words in a week because he wrote literally zero words the whole 5 months.
I drove him home from university so that me and his parents can support him for the next week . He was also supposed to start a new job next week so I drafted an email for his boss.
It was only last night that I was thinking before bed how hurt I actually am, the constant lies about how much progress he’d made each week, asking me to wash up because he’s been at the library all day even though I’m exhausted from placement. He even copied and pasted 5000 random words off the internet into a doc that said dissertation because he knew I would ask to see a word count .
I honestly feel distraught that he felt he had to lie when I’ve been nothing but supportive of his academics.
We are supposed to be getting married next year but I fear that if he can relentlessly lie like this for 5 months what else can he lie about.
Do I have a right to feel upset? Am I going to be able to get over the complete lack of trust? AIBU to feel so hurt by this ?

Have you considered the possibility he may be frightened of you? He seems very immature from what you've said, and hiding things, lying and making up elaborate cover stories with faked elements suggests panic.

This ^
You've had some negative comments about micromanaging him etc... but I think you've been trying to save him from himself.
You've been aware that 16 k words piece of work needs to be worked at steadily and tried to help him schedule it.
He didnt' accept this advice and went to spectacular lengths to cover it up.

You did so much to support him and he lied and lied and lied. Too tired to cook because he's been working so hard on his dissertation all day. Perleeese.

Another thing that struck me was why is he treated as the most important person in this relationship. What about your needs and ambitions? How is he helping you? You work all week on placement, and you've also got to pick up all the pieces for someone who is skiving and lying about it.

It is a very unequal relationship - with you putting in all the effort.

There is no way he will be able to complete 16,000 words in a week - so the cards will have to fall where they may, it might mean a retake or whatever but its now time for him to face up to that reality. It's not like he wasn't aware of what he needed to do.

This might be an opportunity to finish your own degree, maybe travel independently and have some time apart whilst you both think about what you really want from life.

sounds like he might have ADHD

There is no way he will be able to complete 16,000 words in a week

Pfffft. I could turn out that number in 24 hours, if I put my mind to it. I routinely wrote 3,000 word tutorial essays in the 3 hours before they were due as a student. Some people are slow-and-steady chippers and some people function best under pressure and get it all done last minute. That's up to the person doing it and nobody else.

DreadPirateRobots · Today 10:41

There is no way he will be able to complete 16,000 words in a week

It's far from impossible. One of my uni exam essays was set at no less than 24k and up to 36k words (not in the UK), and we had to write it in seven days after a few weeks of research. The professor set the specific research questions based on the wider research done, so I didn't know them before the start of the writing week. It was intense, but not all-nighter territory.

@takealettermsjones

Nailed it

Take a step back
Let him deal with it
If he doesn't pass the world will not end
He's overwhelmed and you're suffocating him and treating him like a child

Do you wanna just do the essays for him? And his entire degree? You’re doing everything else, you might as well!

Based on his current performance, I think it will be astonishing if he's able to do it. He manages to spend 9 hours in the library at a time without doing any of it.

3000 words for a tutorial essay, is just not the same as a 16k dissertation. They don't have the same mark value for one thing.

Nor is an exam question with a 24-hour deadline ( which people prepare for, on topics they presumably spent some time revising)

It may be possible to write a large amount of words on a subject in a week, if you have done the "wider research" and then tackle the "specific research questions," but this person has lifted 5000 words off the internet to pretend he had done some work, its not expressly stated, but it sounds as if he's done hardly any research at all.

We don't know what the subject is. English Literature, or specific science or engineering based topic.
In any case, how would that work compare with that of other students in his class who have used the whole time available to them to really research and understand the topic and make intelligent conclusions, then carefully check, edit and proof read their work, which also takes time.

I’m 22, living with a long term boyfriend and just finishing a degree. He’s genuinely been so supportive throughout, but he has never felt the need to check my word count, push for how much I’ve done or try and make me do more work to keep on track. All of that is my responsibility and has been left to me, as it should be, and I’d find it smothering if he did push those things. When I’ve set goals he’ll check in, see how I’m doing and give me advice on how to manage if I’m better. He’s got me endless drinks and snacks whilst I’ve been doing essays, taken over a large amount of housework whilst I’ve had dissertation stress and been there to listen when I panic that things aren’t going the way I planned. To me, that’s how an adult relationship should work, we support but we don’t micromanage. He’s much less productive than I am, so yes there have been times I’ve helped him with his CV, look for jobs etc, but this has all been at his request and on his time, id never insert myself into those situations. You’re totally justified to be hurt by his actions (I would be too) lying is the worst foundation a relationship can have. As much as I may think you’ve been a tad overbearing, it doesn’t account for his lying to you, he should be grown up enough to be honest about how he feels and is doing. I certainly wouldn’t want to marry someone who could lie in that way, and it’s something you really need to think about when considering your relationship. From what you’ve said, I doubt he will ever improve

You sound like an adult and he sounds like a big baby. You are pandering to him, taking hik to his parents, sacrificing your own studies for him. He either wants to do the essay or not. Let him decide. This sounds like the foundation for a lifetime of cleaning up his messes if you carry on like this with him.

Wow. Butt out!! The vast majority of parents wouldn't demand to see their offsprings word count. You are very overbearing- no wonder he had to lie. Like children lie to overbearing parents. It's his degree - you focus on yours and let him deal with his. Your interfering hasn't stopped him from failing, has it? So stop.

I haven't read the whole of your long post but the bits I read were enough. He did what he had to do to survive living with you. Maybe if you stop being like this you can have a happy future together, I don't know. I can see how easy it would be to slip into telling you he's started the essay just to be left alone from nagging, and then add a bit more to what he's supposedly written every time you ask. It started off as a tiny white lie which inevitably had to grow. You need to take some of the blame here for what happened.

Very few people end up with their childhood sweethearts. You change and I think for this one, it's a case of you've grown up quicker. Even with a few issues that may or may not be his fault, he's not at your level.

My advice would be to not settle for anything less than what you truly want and deserve. Even if it means letting go of what you were once so sure of, which is blooming hard. But you could be holding yourself back from someone so much better for you.

With hindsight, I could not be happier that I didn't marry my first boyfriend. I certian that we would not have made each other happy and would probably have had a bitter divorce.

A little boy who at 22 needs mollycoddling and cajoling like a toddler, and who still bareface lies about his studies, has no business being engaged to be married. You’re marrying a literal child. Run for the hills. And wait until you’re a bit more fully baked to get engaged again.

What a warped view. Presumably, this couple, as they are planning get married, are jointly responsible for the phenomenal debts their degrees are likely to create. She has every right to want to ensure he isn’t wasting 50 grand on a degree he’s going to fail. The point here is that he’s deceitful and utterly incapable of managing his responsibilities like a proper adult, and thank god she realised this before marrying him.

Now that is a warped view.

So he should be reporting back to his girlfriend on his current dissertation word count? What gf/bf does this at uni? If it were a male demanding reports from a female people might start piping up about controlling behaviour.

He might have been able to approach her earlier and be honest if she wasn't so overbearing and he hadn't gradually dug a hole for himself to maintain an easier home life.

Exactly. It is controlling behaviour and if it were a woman posting to say her boyfriend had been controlling her like this people would rightly be telling her to LTB and run for the hills.

Actually, none of them should be marrying each other. It's a toxic dynamic.

The lies are bad enough. But also do you really want to be with someone that has so little drive?

I presume she didn’t go from zero to monitoring his word count. He’s clearly demonstrated issues before and when she’s picking up the slack it shouldn’t be a big issue. She shouldn’t have to do it - but to get fair he’s kind of proven the point of why she felt she had to ….

This is so messed up. Why are you making excuses for controlling behaviour?

Nah. No one has to treat their boyfriend like a child. There's some kind of payoff for controlling people like this. It's completely unhealthy behaviour. They're not good for each other.

How do you know he has little drive? I had a controlling partner like she is, I had lots of ambition and drive but it slowly got destroyed by my partners constant need to be knowing how much progress I'd made etc.
Eventually I would literally sit in the uni library all day and not be able to type a single word because what if what I wrote wasn't deemed good enough, or that I'd written to much or little for the day.
If he's got to university then he's clearly got drive.
But she seems to think she can control his life to the point of calling his boss!

. If she feels she has to do these things for him then she clearly thinks he has little drive. Whether he actually does or not is almost irrelevant since the advice is the same as it’s her opinion of him. Why would she want to be with someone who in her opinion has so little personal capability