Have changed my name for this post. I don't really know where to start with this, and I fear it could turn out to be far too long, so will try to keep it as concise as possible (which isn't very). Apologies in advance if I leave out too many details.
Me and DP have been together since 2005. We have DD and DS, aged 4 and nearly 3. I fell head over heels for DP very shortly after meeting him: it really seemed we were soul mates, and I was sincerely convinced for many years that it was very, very rare for a couple to love each other as much as we loved each other.
Shortly after meeting DP, I received an email from someone I didn't know, warning me that DP was a liar and that I should check everything. It was a strange email in that there was info in there that could only have come from someone who had been spying on our instant messenger conversations and emails. To cut a long story short, it turned out to be from DP's ex-girlfriend, who somehow had gained access to his emails etc. She had used a fake name to send me the email. All in all, she hadn't given me any reason to believe she was a reliable source of information, and I dismissed her (after an angsty conversation with DP).
Over the next 6.5 years, I could never shake the sense that DP was lying to me - about everything. This seemed so implausible to me at the time - after all, who (outside of a soap opera) would lie about everything? - that I dismissed it, and attributed this feeling to the fact that DP's ex had written me that strange email near the start of our relationship. We went on to live together, to get engaged, and to have DD and DS.
To cut a very long story short(ish), it turned out that he was indeed lying to me about literally everything. The most shocking lie was pretending to be terminally ill for several years starting from around the time DD was conceived in early 2009 - even going as far to get a scar tattooed on. Aside from that, he would lie about our finances (I no longer had a bank account (because he saw to it, I later realised) and he pretended he was wealthy when in fact we were on benefits), his intentions to marry me (he 'made' literally hundreds of appointments for us to have a no-frills reg office wedding, all of which were cancelled due to unforeseen aspects of his 'treatment' - it later emerged that he was still married to his ex wife), and he borrowed £1000s from my family despite having no way of repaying them.
Throughout all this, I suspected him constantly, but dismissed my suspicions for various reasons. Partly it was because the lies simply didn't make sense: I was working on the assumption that if someone lies to you, it's because they stand to gain something by doing so, and as far as I could see, he stood to gain nothing (quite the reverse in many cases). Partly it was because, as mentioned above, I was afraid that I was being unduly influenced by his ex's email. And partly because, when you think the love of your life is dying, you are afraid that your mind is playing tricks on you: of course you would prefer to believe that they have made up their illness, because that would be preferable to them dying, so that is a reason to dismiss your suspicion that they aren't really ill.
So, fast forward to mid-2012. DD is 2.5 and DS is nearly a year old. For nearly 2 years, we have been living rent-free (or, rather, on DP's constant promise of paying rent) in a totally unsuitable and frankly dangerous-for-kids annex of the home of some lovely relatives of mine. I had not gone back to work after DD was born, and spent my days at home, in the middle of nowhere, with no car, no bank account, 2 small kids to look after, while DP goes out every single day for hospital treatment. All I would do with my life, every day, is feed the kids and take them out for walks. Almost every day I am expecting that we are going to have our no-frills wedding, and every time I hope that this time it will go ahead, but DP calls with some reason why it has had to be cancelled. And almost every day I am expecting that today, finally, after a zillion hiccups, our joint bank account will finally be sorted out and we can get access to DP's massive savings and repay my relatives the money we owe them - but this never happens (N.B. I am not mercenary, I didn't care about living the high life, I just wanted a normal life and not to be in debt to my relatives). Writing all this is making my chest constrict, and maybe you can imagine the enormous stress I was under. It was really difficult to cope with all this, but 'knowing' that DP had a far more difficult battle to fight (i.e. his illness) made me feel guilty for worrying about my own troubles.
Anyway, in mid-2012, DP's excuses and stories started to build up to the extent that they become really quite implausible, and DP himself was starting to behave more erratically, presumably with the stress of keeping all the lies going. Even so, it was only after a long conversation with one of my relatives that I started to confront the possibility that DP was lying about his illness. (An aside: by this point, everyone else in my family had worked out he was lying, but they never said anything about it to me. Either they felt awkward about it or they thought I had access to more information to support my belief in him. But the fact that they all seemed to believe him itself made me think he must be telling the truth, and made me feel guilty for doubting him.) I spoke to DP on the phone - he'd gone to the hospital (or rather pretended to) as usual - and I gently asked him if he was really ill, and that maybe the problem was psychological rather than physical. Immediately he admitted it, if 'admitted' is the right term (given that, as I'll explain, he had trouble distinguishing lies from reality) - he said something like, 'yes, maybe you're right'.
From here, it's quite difficult to explain. It has turned out not to be a case of him consciously and maliciously deciding to lie. He genuinely seemed to have come to believe his own lies. I went to the GP with him and he was referred for a mental health assessment, and diagnosed with dissociative disorder, depression, and anxiety. He had large gaps in his memory and seemed not very capable of distinguishing reality from the fantasy he had invented. Over the months and years since (yes, we are still together), it has turned out that some very awful things have happened to him, and that he has been lying about things since childhood as a way to make himself feel better about himself and more important than he believes he is (he basically believes he is worthless). I think that he has been lying so long that lying comes as naturally to him as telling the truth does to the rest of us, and so it is very difficult for him to stop: much of the time, the decision to lie isn't a conscious choice.
He genuinely struggles wiith this and tries his best to get better. He has taken all the help he has been offered in terms of counselling - which isn't very much, and in my non-professional opinion he hasn't been offered the right sort of thing (basically he sees a counsellor and talks about his past, whereas I think he should be having something like CBT that would focus on getting him to stop lying, which is the root of all our problems). When I realised that we were penniless and on benefits, I saw that I would need to go back to work. I am very highly qualified but work in an extremely competitive industry where jobs are hard to come by. We lived in a shitty council flat, on benefits, for a year while I worked every spare waking minute at trying to get back to work, and eventually I did get a job. Last autumn we moved out of the shitty council estate and into a privately rented house in a nicer area.
My family, understandably, want little to do with DP after all this came out. However, whereas people tended to assume that he'd just leave after he'd been rumbled, he has not. While I've been working, he has tirelessly been a full-time dad. He is a wonderful father: far more patient than me, he adores our children and fills their days with fun things: they have planted flowers in the garden together, learned to ride bikes, etc, and he is involved with their pre-school as a committee member. At the same time he keeps our home in order, does all our grocery shopping, cleans and does the washing, etc. His only 'me time' without the kids are a night in the pub once a week with some friends who know nothing about his strange history (he doesn't get drunk, and doesn't drink much in general), and playing sport once a week during the summer. I am not trying to paint a romantic picture of him here - what I am trying to do is make the point that, whilst the lying etc might make it easy to view him as a villain, he has done his utmost to do the right thing since the problem has been identified.
The problem, though, is that he does still lie sometimes. I can't trust him not to. Sometimes he will admit it out of the blue, without me having pressured him to tell the truth, and he will be full of remorse. But sometimes when he lies, I know he is lying, but he won't admit it - and maybe can't admit it. He is not getting the right sort of mental health help to stop this, and we can't afford private treatment at the moment. And I'm left feeling that I'm dealing with it alone ... I don't really discuss it with people, and about a year ago he admitted it to his mum (which was a big deal because his mum has been through hell for various reasons recently, so he'd put off telling her). I was so pleased when he told his mum because I thought I'd have someone to talk to about it, but it hasn't worked out like that. His mum said she just needed time to digest it, then she and I would have a proper talk. But it's never happened. In the year since she found out, she's visited various family members who needed her help with various things, but she still hasn't tried to get to grips with what DP has been doing. And whilst I konw it must be upsetting for her, it also makes me see that maybe this is why DP is the way he is - he certainly doesn't seem high up her list of priorities. I feel like I've just been left holding the baby, so to speak: I'm dealing with it alone.
I never tell anyone about this. When the lies came to light, I had various friends who believed that DP was seriously ill, so I did tell them the truth in order to put them right. I rarely see them and they don't ask me about DP, perhaps understandably (what would they say?!). Everyone else - e.g. people I work with - just thinks we are a normal couple. I feel a bit like I lead a double life.
And now, I don't know whether I want this any more. I'm so tired of it all. I will always love DP, and I think he is a wonderful father, but the head-over-heels aspect of my feelings for him have gone, and I don't know if they'll come back. It's like the person I loved never existed, and whilst in the early days I was desperate to get that person back, I've sort of given up now. I know he still lies, and I really don't want it to be my problem any more - I don't want to live like this, with the stress of not being able to trust him. But, at the same time, I sort of can't imagine life without him. The children adore him. I care deeply for him and want to help him get better - I think he deserves to get better, he certainly struggles so hard with everything. I don't know what I want.
Complicating my feelings is the thought that, even if I did want out, I don't know how to get out. We live in a very expensive part of the country, and if we broke up we would have to pay for 2 households on my salary. I'm nearly 40, and hoping to buy a house in a year, otherwise I'll be too old to get a mortgage. DP could work, but we'd have to pay for childcare in that case, so wouldn't necessarily be better off. DP has occasionally said that we're not a normal couple and that if I want he will move out and find somewhere alone (presumably a crappy council bedsit), but still come over every day and look after the children. This itself breaks my heart ... his self-esteem is so low that it wouldn't even enter his head to fight for the children to live with him. He believes he deserves so little.
I have sort of lost track of what I was even wanting to ask with this post. I guess I just want to tell someone my story so that maybe, in the discussion that follows (if anyone has read this far!) I might get some clarity to my feelings.