He told me he’d lost his child in an accident

[myredcardiganbob]

I posted a thread the other week asking for advice about how to ‘get over’ the embarrassment of making a mistake. The jist of it was that I sent a message to a fairly new date after not hearing from him since the day before which was unusual (more than 24 hours), he sent an angry response saying his parents had been involved in a car accident and he’d been busy with that (sorry, I don’t know how to link the thread). We spoke on the phone the following night, all seemed to be okay, he apologised for snapping in his message reply and I apologised for thinking he had perhaps changed his mind about me. We then messaged normally for the next few days and made an arrangement to meet the following weekend. On the day, I didn’t hear from him with his train time and have heard nothing since (and don’t expect to!).

On our very first date, he told me that his elder daughter had been killed by running out in front of a car at the age of 4. He and his wife went on to have another daughter, who is now coming up for 2, but that their marriage just couldn’t survive their grief and that was the reason for their separation. His first daughter was mentioned very naturally through all of our dates, how different she was in temperament to their other daughter; what the months felt like following her death and so on; how his parents felt etc.

Last weekend, knowing that I wasn’t going to hear from him, I had a social media nosy (I hadn’t done anything like that while we were seeing each other). He has no fb profile which he’d already told me, but his wife does. They are definitely not together... but there is no sign of there ever being an older daughter. None at all. Not that I expected a death announcement or anything like that but there was simply nothing and the dates of all of their photos didn’t give an opportunity for there to have been a child, if that makes sense (holiday pics, family parties, weddings etc). In Scotland, records of all births, marriages, divorces and deaths have to be in the public domain, you can search for them via the national records website. So I looked there. There was no birth or death record of this wee girl.

I cannot fathom why someone would tell such a despicable lie, I’ve made peace with the fact I’m no longer seeing this person but as the days go on, I feel more and more upset about being so conned, in fact I feel really funny about it. What kind of person makes up a story like that and what does it say about me that he ‘needed’ to make something like this up? I know people can tell untruths and exaggerate in dating but this story was bloody awful.

That would make me wonder about his parents' accident, tbh. He may well be the sort of man who makes up a huge lie either for attention or to get himself out of trouble.

Unfortunately these days, you have to assume everything a man tells you when dating is a lie until they show/prove otherwise.

What Thinkingabout1t wrote and it really is never their fault. Such Walter Mitty type figures are to my mind more common that people realise.

Do not let him back into your life under any circumstances.

@Numbness2020 not on people you are not going to be seeing again though.

Surely if child had been killed by a driver there would have been some sort of police investigation, legal trail, court records, local paper reports.

It says nothing about you.

You feel so awful because it is so outside of your experience and imagination that someone would make up such a vile lie.

It'll be a good learning experience for you: there are some fucked up people out there, watch out, and be glad you're not one of them.

Gosh, how awful to be lied to like this. I suppose you can be glad you weren’t heavily involved with him before you found out.

Wow what a disgusting thing to do. I’m shocked by this and other stories shared by pp.

Why would someone lie about something like that?

I'd be tempted to contact the mother of his child and tell her what awful lies he's told.

@myredcardiganbob, some people are not going to read all the posts especially the one where you explain that in Scotland, deaths are recorded and and available in the public domain. So ignore when they berate you because there was nothing on Facebook etc. You were right to check. Apparently during police training they are told not to ignore any niggling gut feeling, because it is telling you something. We pick up information, sometimes subliminally, from interactions with others and often “ know” when something isn’t adding up, without being able to say exactly why. His use of the heaviest of all emotional let out clauses is beyond manipulative. He reminds me of a builder who conned my mum out of a couple of £thousands, not turning up and using the excuse that his wife had cancer ( she didn’t).

This is actually a very common thing to lie about. A lot of support sites for bereaved parents require proof, if you will of the loss because many people troll about this. No idea why, but it's more common than you'd think (this and having cancer).

Don't give this guy another thought. Don't tie yourself in knots doubting yourself or trying to prove yourself wrong. Just don't. Good on you for doing due diligence.

Don't let him back into your life, just cut and run, and yy, these days you do have to take everything you're told by a new dating friend with a huge lump of salt.

Also I agree with PPs that such compulsive liars are not as rare as people think. Maybe it comes from a place of utter inadequacy and feeling one cannot assert ones wishes legitimately. Whatever, you are so much better off not being involved. I imagine his ex wife probably has a few stories to tell about him.

@timeisnotaline - no, I think having a baby in England is a bit less fanciful than your mocking scenario - but crack on

does it say about me that he ‘needed’ to make something like this up?

It says nothing about you, this is all on him.

Agree with the others, you had a lucky escape.

I can well believe that people can be so sick in the head to lie like that. SIL dated a freak like that years ago. FIL had died from cancer and this freak told SIL and MIL that his wife had died from cancer. It went on for ages before SIL found out he'd lied. MIL was sickened to think that anyone could have done that. Needless to say the relationship ended. @myredcardiganbob you're well rid.

Some people live in a fantasy world. Their own existence is too mundane for their egos and imaginations. Well, that is the kindest way of looking at it. His lies really have nothing to do with you.

As PPs have said, you have dodged a bullet.

Through a support group, I became close to a fantasist a couple of years ago. He was not satisfied with creating his own reality for himself, before I knew it he had created one for me! He tried to gaslight me. I cut contact immediately.

We had to see each other in the support group from time to time.
I later found out that everyone knew he was full of shit and that they just humoured him.

Well I just checked records on line and neither of my kids are showing up

One born 2014 and one 2016 , born in Scotland

I wouldn't rely on those records

I met a guy who told me about the death of his ex.
It turned out he admitted to a friend it was a way of 'softening up women', so he could sleep with them. He tried it on a few of our friends, it was quite cold and calculated.

The bereavement boards on here have regularly been trolled by posters making up children who have died.

Trolls come here regularly to talk about their made up traumas, miscarriage, baby loss, cancer and childhood illness (Oliver’s army anyone?) so why is it so beyond people’s comprehension that someone would lie about that to someone in person?

Whenever someone reads about someone’s loss on here they are reading about it in person, so there’s no difference really and yet most traumatic posts on here are flagged as being trolls. I’m talking about the ones where things are happening in the here and now.

The truth is that people don’t question it because nobody wants to be the one to accuse someone of lying about a child bereavement so the perpetrator gets away with doing so and gets sympathy as a result.

but it’s really common for people to do this.

The man is a despicable fantasist and I’d be wondering if he’d ever actually told me anything that was true, even his name.

If you met him through a dating app i would see if there’s a way to flag him to the moderators etc of that app as he is potentially dangerous.

I would totally rely on gut instinct. If something is telling you there's something amiss, there is! Buy a copy of 'The Gift of Fear' right now. It is eye-opening.

Thanks all, and I had steeled myself up for comments about me being wrong, should be a private investigator etc - I think they are fair and I’m not offended. No, he’d never lived anywhere but here.

I have no intention of ever being in touch with this man (or his wife), I posted to try to make sense of things in my head. I didn’t look online from a social media perspective to look for proof of a child, I had no thoughts in the slightest that what he had told me was untrue... I only looked because I realised that in all of our dates (there were many!), I hadn’t once looked him up online and curiosity just got the better of me as I sat at home wondering if he was going to message.

Thanks for all of your perspectives :)

@differentnameforthis
“So it's not at all possible that this happened outside of Scotland?”

So you think the car accident took place on a holiday and the parents were allowed to bury their child in a foreign country? Or he lived in another country and lied about it?

So you’re questioning what he lied about?

Who cares?

They are definitely not together... but there is no sign of there ever being an older daughter. None at all.

If you looked at my FB you'd not be able to tell anything at all about my family, my job or even where I live. YABU, not everybody plasters everything on FB and not everybody has their profile wide open so anybody can see it - all a stranger can see on mine is my name and even that's not my 'proper' name.

My DD's record shows up, she was born in 2019. Same with my nieces and nephews, born variously over the last 10 years.

Your OP and subsequent posts are clear regarding what searches you've conducted. Why posters are still blathering on about Facebook just shows they can't be bothered to read the OP, or maybe they're dim ?
You've had a lucky escape but it leaves a bitter taste. Some very strange people out there unfortunately.