Has he been lying to me?

[MaryMungoAndMidgies]

Since I've known him, my partner has gone on at length about his awful childhood at the hands of his foster parents, he received many beatings, including a fractured sternum and skull whilst in their care. He hasn't seen them for years, he doesn't call or send cards. He mentioned he couldn't understand why people like that got paid to foster etc etc and that the council should have to pay compensation for placing him there. I asked him once why he didn't get moved if it was so bad but he said that his foster parents always put on a good front to the authorities.

We went to visit relatives of his last night and the conversation turned to other relatives. While listening to his uncle I learned that the foster parents were his actual parents. His foster siblings were his brother and sister. There was no mention of those awful injuries, or the repeated beatings, just that his mum was difficult to get on with.

He must have noticed that I looked puzzled, as when we left he said he had felt like a foster child. After asking me never to mention anything about the subject to his relatives, he then revealed his dad used to interfere with the other (foster?) children and I would cause problems if "I raked up the past by asking questions".

I tried to bring it up again when we got back to his but he refused to discuss it. I'm now questioning everything, when we've had problems in the past he has blamed it on being a foster child and his experiences and insecurity about that. I have always given people the benefit of the doubt but right now I feel like he's let me down. There is something nagging my gut now, am I right to feel like this or am I reading too much into things?

He has never been married, and he has no children as far as I am aware. Before he met me he had only had three very short term relationships. Months, as opposed to years.

He said he was physically and mentally abused only, and his father allegedly sexually abused the other siblings. They seem to still be in contact with their parents as far as I could gather from the uncle's conversation.

I don't know what is true and what isn't any more. I just know my gut is screaming something isn't right.

Your guts say something isn't right.
The evidence says he's told you a pack of lies.
Run, and don't look back.

Run for the hills.

Don't worry about which bits he's told you are lies and which are the truth; there may be some truth in there, but who cares?

Successful liars always use bits of the truth to make the lies more believable.

You will end up going round the bend if you stay with this gaslighting, lying shit.

Honestly, get out. Whatever happened to him in the past, he is not worth getting involved in. He's a fucking car-crash.

It's not just the lies, it's the shutting down of the conversation whenever you want to discuss it. That is classic - my XP did that to me all the time. He simply withdrew and did not engage and I would end up screaming at him, looking and feeling like a loon, because there he was being calm and collected and distant while I felt more and more hysterical about his refusal to enter into any meaningful communication with me. Anyone walking in on us would have concluded that I was an unhinged nutter while he was a patient, put upon bloke who for some mysterious reason was putting up with a crazy bitch who just couldn't let something go. But the reason I couldn't let things go, was because a massive mountain of lies which I couldn't get to the bottom of, was there and I knew it and couldn't prove it and it drove me mad.

Seriously, you don't want that. It is horrific. Don't put yourself through it. This guy is displaying the classic behaviour of a serious emotional abuser.

Cog, there is a little bit of me that wants to speak to the uncle. I would be gutted if he were telling the truth, but I have a bad feeling this is not the case.

I have spoken to him in the past about him seeking counselling of some sort but he has flat out refused to consider it.

i will bring it up, but I think the subject will be a closed book now, BlueLights.

Do you have dc? Were you planning to move in with him or move him in with you?

I'm sure BlueLights will agree it's red warning lights and howling klaxons sirens for you, honey.

I'm not an alarmist but I've got a bad feeling about him. Of course I don't get it right every time, but I don't often get it wrong.

Please stay safe.

There's a lot of me that wants you to speak to the uncle because I'm a nosey parker and hate half a story :) I'd really go with your 'bad feeling' if I were you. I have an aversion to people who use their big personal issues as an excuse for bad behaviour the first place. Can't stand the type that thinks everything going wrong in their life is because others are persecuting them either.

God, Festivia. You've just described me, he makes me feel like I'm an over emotional bitch when I try to discuss things. I have cried on occasion with the sheer frustration of it and he would say "I'm not the one losing control here" and walk away.

Which is probably why I always felt the need to apologise.

You'll probably never know the answers you feel you need about what is or isn't true, but please end this relationship.

He has lied to you throughout your year together, and sulking/with-holding behaviour is sheer manipulation.

Nothing good can come of pursuing this one.

I am a foster child. An actual real one. I would not use it to excuse behaviour. I have issues due to it, but I do my best to control them.

When I'd been with DP for 2 years, I told him everything. 9 months later he met people... My real parents, my foster parents, my social worker, my sisters, people I was in care with. He's been to therapy sessions, hospital appointments, seen letters. He is as involved as he wants to be, and it helps me immensely for him to be.

I have issues. Christmas is one of them. But I'd never treat my DP the way you've been treated and I don't know anyone who would.

I'd be very cautious about moving on with someone who not only creates elaborate lies but also lives in his own dark tormented reality.

I hope this has helped you a bit.

You might find this article called 'are you dating an abuser?' interesting, especially the part about resentment.

In which case simply tell him you won't be the one losing control again and dump the fucker say goodbye.

But he doesn't live in a 'dark tormented reality' Caja - he merely wants the OP to think he does so that she will make allowances for him that she wouldn't make for other men.

Cominthrough - it only gets worse. You've only been with him a year and already you've established the narrative as a couple, that you're an over-emotional loon and he's the one in control and YOU are in the wrong for wanting answers.

Honestly, it doesn't get better. It gets worse. You end up feeling like you're going mad - if he tells you the sky is blue, you'll have to go outside to check that you haven't imagined you're living on Planet Earth, not in a parallel universe where the sky is in fact green. And then you feel guilty for doubting him, because of course the sky is blue, how could you be so silly as to have needed to check that basic fact? Means you're a loon, right?

And when you try to explain to people that the reason you split with him was because of lies, they simply don't understand how those lies chipped away at your sense of reality and made you feel desperate with anger, confusion and fear because you knew deep down, you were living with someone who was mentally torturing you and winding you up but you couldn't prove it and just looking for evidence was proof that you were in fact a lunatic, as he regularly implied you were.

Just don't go there. Don't move in with him. If you're already feeling as though you're being unreasonable for wanting what most people take for granted - the security of knowing that your life and relationship is based on truth and reality - then the lies and gaslighting are only going to get much much worse.

The best christmas present you could give yourself, is clarity and certainty and the safety of knowing that you can trust your perceptions.

FestiviaBlueberry says it perfectly.

This man is a bloody nutcase. Not only that, he has abused your goodwill and generosity of spirit to make out he's had a poor, sad, hard life when in fact I'd bet anything he didn't. He's learned that this sob story of his works, hasn't he?

I'd want to find out the truth. I'm not sure how wise that is, though. I think you should dump him anyway, but perhaps do a little searching around to find out exactly what crap you've been fed.

In the words of the Pogues, you should say to him, "Happy Christmas you arse and thank God it's your last [with me.]"

Surely you're not advising the OP to spend this Christmas with him, IB?

The last thing she needs is to wake up find him going through her stockings on Christmas morning.

Oh Christ, no, NO!

I meant she should wish him a happy Christmas before putting her boot up his bum and kicking him as hard as she can.

Izzy, I don't have children, I was going to move into his home. And I promise you Izzy, I will not be moving in.

Caja, that did help, thank you so much. It reminded me of my lovely dad. He was fostered and eventually adopted. When he found his birth mum a few years ago it was important for him to include us too. He never apportioned blame, he just accepted things and tried to deal with them the best he could. I never once saw him speak to my mum harshly and he certainly never froze her out.

Cog, I not only found the article interesting, it ticked so many boxes it scared me. I may well have had my rose tinted blinkers on for some time I think. I saved it for future reference. I had to read it twice as it was. Jeeze. Amazing article. Thank you.

Festivia, I am ashamed I've enabled him to act in this way by constantly appeasing him. I know I'm going to be badly painted by him for ending this, he didn't exactly have glowing praise for his previous girlfriends. One was a cold hearted bitch who dumped him by email apparently (I did think that was harsh when he told me but now I wonder if she needed to keep a distance between them) and the other (according to him) had mental health issues which had gone undiagnosed. He does like to play amateur psychologist. I was always tempted to say the line from Silence Of The Lambs when he tried it on me. Something about turning his high powered perception at himself. I used to laugh it off instead.

My friends and family will keep me right. My sister will be glad, she hasn't taken to him from the get go, she just couldn't put her finger on it.

No no no! Lose him at the earliest opportunity!

While I am really sorry if he has been abused. But I am also quite unsympathetic to people who use it as an excuse to abuse other people.

And that is what he is doing to you Op. He is training you to not question his behaviour or complain about the way you are treated. Your feelings don't matter and you are getting good now at not expressing them.

So he has his excuse and he is sticking to it. You don't mean enough to him for him to have councelling. If he cared that he was hurting you, he would do something about it. But he doesn't.

Don't move in with him. And really think about if this is a man you want to go to and rely on in a time of crisis.

I'm immensely relieved to read that those rose tinted specs are cracking and that you ain't going anywhere.

You've got 24 hours to send him to Tulsa dump the fucker and set yourself up for a truly peaceful Christmas, honey.

Do you have family/friends you can join? If not, you can have 24 glorious hours eating, drinking, and doing, exactly what you want and there'll be a party here you can drop in on.

So many many red flags here. He has reinvented his entire childhood and past, to what end? To use it for martyrdom and as a ticket to abuse you.

Just to add another angle to this; my mother was abusive towards me when I was growing up but not my sister. I moved out as soon as was legally possible and I haven't spoken to her in years. When I refer to her I say 'my sisters mum' as I don't want to even acknowledge that I'm related to her iyswim, and my family think she's wonderful and I'm horrible for not wanting anything to do with her. I'm certainly not making anything up.

If only he knew what you've been up to tonight, he could chalk you up as the silly cah who had her head turned by a load of bitches wimmin on t'internet

As it is, he'll add you to the ranks of his former conquests who in his mind need certifying saw the light before it was too late.

Cogito munchaussen is now known as fabricated or induced illness (FII).