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 ?

The two things aren't mutually exclusive though. You can still say 'please stop going on at me' while lying about your progress, for the sake of not getting chastised by your micromanaging partner. I'd love to see the responses if the sexes were reversed.

A voice of reason! Thank you. The shame is awful, and is made so much worse by somebody trying to micromanage you, demanding updates on your non-existent progress. He needs professional support.

Not sure where to start with this one. Stop mothering him, stop excusing him, stop carrying him. Let him succeed or fail on his own terms, concentrate on yourself and he'll join you if he's ready or able to keep up.

Anyone else thinking of The Shining…?

No way would any of mine ask for help with their Uni work
How bizarre

Drop this man child off at his parents and go back to where you live to focus on your own studies. You have been working hard and are rightly exhausted. Take the time for you to rest and focus in on finishing your degree. Your dp not doing his essays and dissertation is not your problem at all. He hasn’t been supporting you and has been lying. Time for you to get your degree and think about your own future.

You cannot micromanage someone else’s life, without it ending badly for both of you. I think the lack of openness about his essays and dissertation are a direct result of this. Whatever you feel is going to happen unless you step in (he won’t graduate/won’t be able to support himself/your relationship will break down?), will likely end up happening anyway, down the line.

Unless you can reconcile yourself to your fiancé’s personality traits and stop trying to mould him into someone else, this relationship is going to be a disaster. If you are going to be a partnership, you need to accept each other for who you both are. If you can’t do that, then step away.

You must let him sort himself out. Step back and say that you’ll be there if he needs to discuss options or ideas, but you can’t fix his life for him. He needs to find out how to do that for himself, and he never will, with you hovering around, ready to intervene. I can’t believe you organised an extension for him! You are the equivalent of a helicopter parent. Do you really want to do this for the rest of your life together? It’s going to break you.

I'm a lecturer. He's fucked up royally and there can be good reasons for that and less good reasons. But he's never going to learn about fixing things unless he does it for himself Yes, you can make suggestions and be supportive ("Have you thought about emailing your personal tutor?"). Applying for extensions for him and writing to his boss is inappropriate. Unless he's having a literal nervous breakdown and can't get a train, driving him home to be molly-coddled won't help either (if he is having a MH crisis, of course, help him get help).

Of course you're hurt that he lied. But I don't think this relationship has been healthy or happy for a while now. I would also add that communicating anger and frustration that someone has lied (in reasonable, non-violent ways) is fine! You don't have to put aside being mad for his sake. Though I can also see why your intense involvement encouraged him to lie.

Please don't marry this man. Please break up with him. You sound hard working and determined. I'm sure, in time, your partner will be the same, but right now you both need to learn who you are apart from each other. Your life will be exponentially easier when you can commit your time to your own success rather than stopping his failures.

There is something very unhealthy about this dynamic you have created and I think it would help you to think why

Why do women do this? 🫣🤯
The fuck would a man infantilise a woman like this.

Whatever legitimate reasons he might for being like this, and legitimate reasons for lying about his progress, the minute you found out that he was still letting you carry the housework load, you should have dumped him.

You were a kid when you got together with him, don’t be over invested in some story you’ve told yourself about meeting your soulmate young. He’s a loser.

Don’t think OP is coming back.

Your issue isn’t that he’s lied to you, it’s that he treats you like his mummy and you treat him like a child. Even without the lying this relationship never would have worked out. Throw him in the bin and find yourself someone that doesn’t require you to live his life for him.

I had a boyfriend before GCSEs and we went I to A levels together. We split up at college because we'd both changed and no longer had the same idea of a future.

This is common. The age you were when you got together and the age you are now, people change massively.

You probably still see him as that boy you fell for at school. That's not who he is anymore, he's an adult man. If you carry on in this relationship, you'll continue growing up but you'll always have that teenage boy to look after as well as yourself. Decide if that's what you want.

I look back now (20 ish years on from that first breakup) and, because I still know him, am so pleased we had the courage to acknowledge we weren't going to work long term. Because we are so so different. He's still a nice guy, and I think I'm still a nice girl, but our values are different, our aspirations are different, priorities massively different. If we'd stuck together just because we'd been together so young, life wouldn't be nearly as good as it is now. For either of us.

We are supposed to be getting married next year

Do not marry someone who you have to mother

I would agree that sounds exactly like me, despite sitting and trying to do assignments well in advance I couldn’t. I would always write them the night before, my dissertation took three days the week of the due date. I am under assessment for ADHD.

As so many others have already said.... why are you acting as though you're his mum?

You're 22! So young, and you should be enjoying life, yet you're closing to spend your time mothering a man incapable of managing his own time. I mean, seriously, read your post back to yourself and ask yourself if this is normal for young relationships.

I can guarantee that this will only get worse. Leave him, and he'll either buck his ideas up or fail. None of his issues are your responsibility.

Sorry, but you’re fucking up your life for this cretin. Do yourself a favour and dump him. He’s treating you like your mother and a tutor.

This warrants repeating

DO NOT MARRY SOMEONE WHO YOU HAVE TO MOTHER!

Marriage works when it is a partnership of equals, not when it's a woman desperately trying to look after and prop up an inadequate man.

Stop! 🛑! And vet help for yourself. You are immensely co-y controlling. Stop treating like a feeble pet or a sick child. He needs to be free to learn what is important to him. And you need to spend some time alone learning how not to be so controlling and in savior mode.

Also the reduction of his essays to a number of words shows astonishing disrespect for the entire idea of the degree.

OP - you sound like such a determined and supportive person. But it is also clear that you and this BF have outgrown each other.
I am sure he was a nice boy to date at 15. But by 22 - he is not a good partner to you. And this will only get worse.
You should not be dragging him along and mothering him at this age. He has not grown up and is not ready to be an adult. You are.

You seem to be on a way to a good and demanding career. You can't drag along a man who is not taking responsibility for his life, and by extension your relationship. And he LIES to cover it up.
Relationships are about being able to support each other, and rely on each other. You can't rely on him, and that is unlikely to change.

You are only 22. Hard as it is - you really need to pull yourself out of this situation and start your grown up life without this ballast.

He has gone to the local library every single day since January sitting there for 9 hours at a time

I really don’t think this is true op.

Did you pressure him into going to uni?

Christ.

I'd have told you to fuck off long ago if you were demanding to see progress, word counts, read my essays and telling me my work didn't reflect my best ability or whatever. Like who do you actually think you are?

He shouldn't have asked you to pick up more chores. But that said, I'm unclear whether he did ask or whether you just decided to do it as you seem a bit of a control freak.

Everybody isn't the same, and we don't all think in the same way. I'm a massive procrastinator. Always have been and always will be. I've never missed a deadline. It's fucking hard sitting staring at your screen unable to get going. It's demoralising, soul destroying and incredibly worrying at times. It can also be really hard to speak out and say you're struggling with something, and I imagine this is amplified when you live with someone who thinks they can take charge of you.

You aren't compatible.

You sound like a wonderful young woman. But you’ve done your best now. It’s time to move on from this relationship and accept it’s over. Don’t let him manipulate you into staying together.

believe me when I say you will regret any more years with him. You need to concentrate on yourself now. You are still very young and you will meet another lovely person to make a life with.

cancel the wedding asap.

The man you want to marry at 22 is rarely the man you want to marry at 30 and with good reason. Your 20s really is a time for truely learning who you are.

Your relationship dynamic is really unhealthy - for both of you. You appear to have crossed the line from supportive, cheerleader to micro manager and mum.

Imagine if you had a partner on your wavelength. One you didn't need to push to be the best he can be. One who just was. Imagine if you have one that was an equal support to you as you are to them.

This man may even be the one for you. But not like this. Step back, not necessarily from the relationship but from doing everything for him. If you are going to spent the rest of your life with him, you need him to become independent, to be able to solve his own problems.

If you don't,you will end up divorced by 30 raising kids because he's ran off with someone who doesn't nag him (I.e. someone who doesn't make him be accountable & responsible).

Are you his partner or his mum? I understand you’re trying to be supportive and that left to his own devices your partner likely would mess up his degree, but I think you’ve probably got rescuing tendencies which have created a really unhealthy dynamic between you where you’re doing everything and he’s sitting back milking that and not taking responsibility for himself. What are you gaining from this relationship? In the longer term are you happy to parent a grown man for the rest of his life?