DP lying - exhausted from checking up on him, don't know what to do

[suaveanddecimated]

I am constantly finding out little (mostly harmless) lies that DP tells, and we are getting into a terrible vicious circle with it. The ones I notice are mostly small things about his past - how long he was with exes, what he did with them etc. Eg, a small one is that he had an ex he was with for 2.5 years who he said had never met his parents or been to his family home (I didn't care either way. ) I was clearing out a wardrobe in his family home one day with their housekeeper, to put my clothes in it, and the housekeeper pulled out a skirt and said "oh that belonged to (his ex), we all hated it when she came here. His mother couldn't stand her."

Other things include telling me he's been with 20 women in his life, and the longer we are together, the more and more people we meet who talk about his exes, or he tells me about, or exes of his that we actually bump into - vastly outnumber the 20 mark. He also told me he'd never had sex with anyone in our bed before me when we first got together, then during a mundane argument he pulled out that he had slept with lots of women in our bed before he met me, then denied it later and said he was doing it to "lash out" and that it actually wasn't true.

Other times there have been bigger lies - he wasn't where he said he would be and I have found out either by seeing a receipt for somewhere other than where he said he was at the time he said or via chatting to his friends who inadvertently reveal where he actually was (all harmless places.)

Whenever I bring him up on these lies he gets upset and says he first of all denies they are lies - he says he "can't remember" what the facts were, or that he told me a particular version of events about the past because he thought it would make me happier and that the past if "none of my business" anyway. I tell him it makes me feel like there are bigger lies that I do not know about, but he just does not understand this. He says if I have found out tiny minute details about small things he said two years ago and compared them to "data" I had in the present day, then surely great big whopping lies would be obvious to me.

Now whenever any small lie is revealed to me, I instantly bring him up on it and we argue (he says "what does it matter whether in 2006 I spent 6 months in Australia or 3 months? How does that affect our relationship? You're crazy.") I have become like an angry mother tracking his every move and bringing him up on tiny things I find out. I have become totally compulsive and on a mission to find out whether everything he says is true or not. He calls me the "memory robot" and "inspector gadget."

I do NOT want to be like this. I have become an over-vigilant, nagging cow about stuff that happened 10 years ago, because I am now fixated on whether it's the truth or not. I just want to know I am being told the truth! I have become so obsessed with it and caused him so much grief that my MIL has had a (kind) word with me and said "stop fixating on the past, concentrate on the now and the future." She's right, of course, everybody should do that - carpe diem and all that.

But the bigger issue for me is whether I am with an untrustworthy person, and that's why I am fixated. There is no other suggestion of him being untrustworthy except these small lies. My friends in RL tell me I have two choices: Let go of tracking everything he tells you and just be happy (we are happy when I am not bringing him up on these white lies), or leave him.

I am now considering getting flexispy and putting it on his phone to see if I can trust him, but I realise that is just one further step down the obsessive/compulsive route.

Please someone talk some sense into me.

Lying about lots of little things is very worrying. Especially since you have shown him how it makes you feel.
If he really does make up hurtful things during an argument to 'lash out' that's a very bad sign. Not a very good way of dealing with conflict. FWIW it doesn't sound likely given his history.
He doesn't really sound mature enough to be in a relationship.
The logical consequences living with so one who regularly lies is to be on alert and try to find out if he's lying about really crucial stuff - I don't blame you for wanting to look at his phone history. But I'd suggest that if you have that level of distrust the relationship can't be good for you anyway.

If his mother's reaction to her son constantly lying is to tackle the girlfriend and sweetly suggest she just accepts it, his thinking he is entitled to do it becomes more comprehensible.

You do sound paranoid, to be honest, and I do think therapy over your mother's behaviour might help. And he may be someone who just exaggerates, rather than lies maliciously or knowingly. That's irritating and morally dubious but not really appalling, I don't think. But the fact is, he's not truthful, and your issues and his issues are totally incompatible.

You know the spying would be very toxic for both of you, and morally speaking worse than white lies. But the white lies would be a dealbreaker for a lot of people and you are totally reasonable in not being able to tolerate that.

I don't really see any way this can end well, I'm sorry.

Your DP can barely tell the truth about the most innocent of things, he lies about sex and past relationships as well as the 'small stuff', lying comes as naturally as breathing to him, but YOU are the problem because, incredibly you don't trust him as far as you can throw him and that's you being strange and controlling?

Riiiight!!

OP- the problem is that this guy is a dyed in the wool LIAR and a FANTASIST. That is categorically a bad thing, you know? The answer is to dump him, and his enabling family, and go off and find a normal person to have a non-exhausting relationship with. Oh, and yes there will be bigger lies, there always are, because a dishonest person does dishonest things.

my Dh is a compulsive liar always small things and although I know I don't trust half of what he says I just accept that's him and don't put too much in what he says but I trust him not to stray and thats more important than the white lies that mean nothing. we have been together for nearly twenty years and I haven't found any evidence of cheering. so I Trish him where it matters he is always their when I need him that's what counts. I don't bring him up on his lies I just let then be.

I don't see how anyone can possibly expect to stay sane in a relationship with a liar.

You cannot trust a single word he says, and all of this rooting around trying to figure out true from false is simply because you need to know who he is.

You cannot tell whether he only lies about small things because you haven't knowingly experienced him lying about something major yet (ie cheating or financial problems). However habitual, repeated lying is a major problem in itself.

He & his mother clearly do not have the maturity or intelligence to appreciate the effect of dishonesty on a relationship.

Your past experience with your mother is irrelevant in the circumstances as the current problem is lies told by your partner.

If you stay with him, then the road to his always being truthful will be a long and hard one. It sounds as if this habit is so ingrained that it is beyond a simple solution of telling the truth in future. After years of, for example, avoiding conflict by telling a white lie like "yes, I brought the washing in when I should have" it will require a immense effort and perhaps even counselling to change it.

Whether you can be arsed with that is another matter.

I have a good memory and can pretty much tell you what I would have been doing in any month, for as far back as I can remember.

However, I know that other people are not the same and are often a bit vague about what they were doing and when.

But this is not just about lying, this seems to be about bullshit and fantasy.

Firstly Suave I just wanted to thank you, because reading your OP was a little lightbulb moment for me with regards to my last relationship. I thought I had massive problems with my ex's past (relationships) and to some extent I did, but I've just realised how he used to do this exact thing; tiny, stupid lies that were somehow found out (one of his was that he wasn't with an ex on his birthday one year, he was in Australia- then I idly leafed through his passport one day and saw he wasn't! Why lie?!) What started as me just wanting to know the truth spiraled into obsessions about other things.

He often (always) used to say he had to change the truth so I 'didn't get upset'- but it was his capacity to lie to me that I hated! He's also bullshitted and embellished things about his past (Mostly about going 'travelling'- one example- I later found out that was staying in one house for a year- hardly 'travelling Aus' )

I think it's like little needles in your heart every time you find a new little lie. Like others said it's like you don't know who the man you love even is.

Please please be aware of him calling you 'crazy' because I totally believed my ex when he would call me that, and he was gaslighting me too, and I ended up totally out of my mind, self esteem in the gutter and even tried to end my own life- that was how insane all the niggles from all angles made me feel.

We've all told the odd white lie here and there but he sounds pretty compulsive, like he can't control it cos he's been doing it for so long now....no wonder you doubt what he says, you can't trust a liar. It's strange an adult like him thinks it's ok to lie about everything - it's not, I think he needs help.

no one should be expected to put up with this crap.

have my very first ever LTB