DP's ex has told him she has cancer.

[LuminousLaces]

Been with DP for around a year now, he split with his ex about a year before we met. She's had issues letting go, and has made things quite difficult for us. That said, I wish her no ill, and have met her at events a few times, as we work in the same sort of business. She doesn't know we're a couple.

A few weeks ago she told him that she been to the doctor, told she had cancer and that she needed chemo. This week she has told him the three sessions of chemo haven't done anything, that its too far gone for surgery and that she is now terminal.

DP is understandably upset - they were together for a long time, and as much as he is happier not being with her, he still cares about her. He's going to see her tomorrow night to find out exactly what is going on.

I don't really know what to say to him. I don't know how to be there for him without appearing to be interfering, because I don't know her very well, and don't want to appear like I'm suspicious or anything when I ask how she is.

Has anyone got any advice or suggestions as to how to deal with this?

Thanks.

(Have namechanged, by the way, as am quite identifiable from my normal screen name, and want to preserve both of their privacy.)

Nigella, if she is telling the truth, TBH I would then be the one saying to him not to tell her. Because if she is dying, what time she has left should be as pain reduced as possible. And that doesn't mean him swearing eternal love to her, but continuing to lie would be better than adding to what she would already be facing.

I do think he is slightly suspicious of what she has said, and that that is why he is going to see her soon. He was supposed to be going tonight, but she has something on she had forgotten about. I guess once he's visited we will both be able to work out what we think is going on.

Is it possible for terminal breast cancer to be diagnosed as such without operations / only a few sessions of chemo?

i would think it HIGHLY unlikely unless she has been very poorly recently. WHY is he going to visit her?

She certainly has not had 3 rounds of chemo in 7 weeks.

Luminous, please go back and re-read my original post. That is how Breast Cancer (terminal or not) is diagnosed.

'Is it possible for terminal breast cancer to be diagnosed as such without operations / only a few sessions of chemo? '

From what I understand, no. My ex MIL died of lung cancer. She'd originally had breast cancer, though. Went through loads of treatment, operations. Then she got lung cancer in August about 3 years later. Started treatment. It didn't affect the primary tumour and there was metastisis. At this point, she was terminal. But that was a couple of months after she was diagnosed.

But that's by the by. What is pertinent is how he is behaving. It is very warped.

I doubt that anyone here will be able to tell you as a matter of fact whether it is possible to diagnose it or not. You will have to wait and see about that.

This your focus at the moment but I don't really think that's the issue.

The issue is the way your DP has handled this whole situation from the outset, treating both you and her with a complete lack of respect in my view.

She should have been told that he was in a relationship with you long before now. You should have told her when you had the chance - it's your relationship too, not just his! I'm not sure why you didn't. You are all adults.

He has denied her whatever chance she had of moving on from the final realisation that he won't be coming back.

Unless it suited him to keep his options open.

Either way, I think his behaviour is cavalier and self-serving at best.

I think he visits to pacify her more than anything else. Ever few weeks / months he gets a rant out of no where from her, declaring that he should delete her number as she hates him, that he never cared about her, and that she wants to move on. So then he doesn't contact her. And soon after that, he'll get another onslaught along the lines of "You never contact me / you are such a heartless bastard / you never visit me / I am entirely alone so there is no point me being alive". He then contacts her saying "No, I do care about you, but only as a friend". Then the cycle starts again shortly after.

so he should change his phone no. End of.

It sounds like your DP seeks out women who need him. You have mental health issues and this ex of his needs him so much he has to lie about you etc..
He loves the drama, he loves the attention. He's your problem, not her.

I had a boyfriend who was similarly in thrall to his ex, it was a nightmare. What a situation to be in OP. I don't think the ex knows about OP, if she did I think she'd be challenging the DP about it.

Nobody can guarantee it doesn't take 7 weeks however:

She makes apt at GP - 1 week
She gets appointment at breast clinic - 1 week
She goes to 1st treatment appointment - 1 week
Has first cycle of treatment - takes more than 1 week
2 more cycles of chemo and a scan to show it isn't working - we have run out of weeks

Unless chemo has been stopped because she is so ill - but she wouldn't be out then, would she?

She texts " "You never contact me / you are such a heartless bastard / you never visit me / I am entirely alone so there is no point me being alive"."

To which the correct response is "We split up two years ago, of course I don't contact you / We split up two years ago, go away you stalker / We split up two years ago, of course I don't visit you / We split up two years ago, you are not alone, you have a teenaged daughter who would be horrified to hear you say that".

I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as to why he behaves in this way. They were together some years were they not, OP? And he was on the receiving end of some pretty heavy-duty emotional abuse from her for probably most of it. She has conditioned him to respond to her rants (anything for a quiet life) and to fear what she might do. She has damaged him.

So all three of you have emotional problems that are, frankly, hurting each other. This mad situation has to stop if any of you are to have any chance of normality, and the best way to do that is for him to be honest and tell her he is with you, has been for a year, and is never coming back to her.

To give the bloke the benefit of the doubt, if this woman is as self-obsessed and manipulative as she sounds (which is perfectly plausible, some women are horrible) then he is reacting like any other victim of emotional abuse: struggling to detach, blaming himself, still searching for the magic button to make it all all right.

He's being a bit of a wuss in not telling her to go fuck herself with a shitty stick, but he was probably the type to try and please everyone before she did the business on him, and it's just intensified.

So really, the bottom line is it might actually be best for you, OP, to walk away and leave him to it. Because you need to consider your own well-being in all this, and until your P sorts himself out a bit and detaches from the mad cow, he is not really in a position to have a proper relationship with you. And if you have MH issues, being constantly embroiled in someone else's drama is not going to do you all that much good.

Poor you. I'm in the cynical camp too but that's based on personal experience from when DP's ex (who can't let go) said there was something seriously wrong with her, which materialised into nothing. She has also threatened suicide so I know how you feel on that score.

Like you my health is causing some concern, which only annoys me the more as she gets lots of attention (the night my diagnosis moved on a step I didn't hear from DP at all as she was threatening suicide and he spent the evening on the phone to her).

I can't really say what I think on the subject to him as they have kids and if he stands up to her she threatens to withdraw access. You are not in that position so I'd try saying what you think. It's not nice of him to give her false hope just as it's actually not nice of my DP to shrug off the suicide threats - these people need help from people who have the capacity to genuinely care about them and not half arsed help from men who can't bear being thought of as anything other than nice.

Is it possible for terminal breast cancer to be diagnosed as such without operations / only a few sessions of chemo?
I can't comment on the chemo part, but a friend had breast cancer diagnosed and was told it was incurable within days (it had spread to her liver and bones). She did not have the primary tumour removed or a mastectomy - no operations on her breast(s). I think she had palliative chemo, but can't remember the timeline of that.

Was she emotionally abusive to him while they were in the relationship?

If this was the other way around most of us would recognising the control and need to control his relationships as EA.

Your dp needs to take a step back from this manipulative whingebag, and he needs to recognise that this completely dysfunctional relationship between his ex and him is not normal. She is a bunny boiler, or at least well on the way to becoming one.

You now have 10 pages, all saying pretty much exactly the same thing.

And yet on we go, round and round in circles. I think you are all enabling each other and none of you really want to get out of this.

I hope I am wrong, but I don't think I am. Best of luck with everything. But remember that no decision is a decision in itself.

OP... What are the lies you know about already? Are they along similar lines, ie designed to get other people/ex to jump to her attention?

Jesus Christ, why do the pair of you seem completely oblivious to the fact that he is a dickhead?

OP - hell, I know someone IRL to whom the same thing happened - ie her new fiance was told by his ex that she was about to snuff it from cancer.

Thing is, the ex had made something of a one-woman cabaret of the divorce, and was so, er, excitable, that even her own children didn't know if it was a try-on. Pretty low, do admit.

Fiance man was in a quandary and wanted to postpone the wedding. He's a GP and even he couldn't tell whether it was true or not. But mate had arranged a surprise wedding, which he went through with, so that was that.

Anyway, it turned out the ex did have cancer, but was entirely cured six months later. Children rather keener than they might have been on their new stepmother, which is nice.

So the moral is a) cancer is a spectrum of illness not the chop, whatever anyone (inc the victim) might say or think b) can DP find out what the daughter thinks is going on.

kinky - You have put it so well - I am in awe

What Spero and kinky said.

With regards the lies about the diagnosis, it is perfectly possible for someone to present to their GP or A&E with a fractured bone, which can show up on X ray as a bony secondary. A simple CT scan can then confirm the presence of a primary tumour in the breasts for example with more secondary disease in the liver or lungs. Extensive secondary involvement would usually preclude a patient from any prolonged or aggressive treatment for the primary cancer. Lung cancers and bowel cancers are other examples of cancers which are sometimes only diagnosed after a patient becomes symptomatic with metastatic (spread) of the cancer.
It is very possible that her story is true.

I think that kinky has it!