Apologies in advance for the long post! There are a lot of details to the lies he has told me, but the TLDR is that he has constructed multiple intricate lies for seemingly small issues that would otherwise be solved by.. not making up a lie to begin with.
Okay, so I met my current boyfriend about 1 year ago and we are now in a serious relationship (that I am seriously considering ENDING).
Some background info:
- He works for a professional tree service company run by his family. He is also going to school and on track to apply for medical school next year.
- He has met most of my friends and we all follow each other on instagram.
Here are a couple lies he has crafted so far:
This one happened at the beginning of our talking/dating stage. He lied about going on a snowboarding trip and instead told me that he was working at a site in a city about 3 hours from where we lived. What's crazy about this story was how I caught him in the lie.
So I work on the weekends and went to school Monday-Friday at the time. One Saturday afternoon while I was at work, he calls me to say hi and to tell me that he is currently sitting in his work truck in front of a hotel 3 hours away. He had been working all day at a site that wanted them to cut down 15+ trees, so they had no way of finishing the job. He said that his dad did not want to drive all the way back home to have to come back the next day, so they decided to stay at a hotel for the night (he was specific, with the hotel name, too)!
This was the beginning stages of our time together, so I was curious as to what his family looked like. I asked if he could take a selfie with his brothers and his dad all together so that I knew what everyone looked like. He said no prob, of course. He'll take a pic when they're eating dinner. I tell him to take a shower since he must be tired and stinky from working all day.
Dinner time comes and goes and I don't hear from him, so I send him a text asking how everyone's doing. He says everyone went to sleep and no one wanted to take a pic. At this point, only an hour and a half had passed, so this raised a red flag, but I had no reason NOT to believe him. I asked for a cute selfie, and he sent a bathroom mirror pic.
Some time passes and I start getting suspicious because
(1) if they weren't planning on staying the night in a city 3 hours away, how do they have clothes to sleep in and change into??
(2) sending a live pic of family is one of the easiest things to confirm a story..
I start thinking back to the phone conversation we had earlier and remembered he said something super odd. He mentioned one of my girl friends since we all follow each other on instagram (We'll call her Sally). He said that "If Sally mentions that I went snowboarding, I was just joking. Idk why I told her that, i guess I was just trying to sound cool." Again, at this point, I had NO reason not to believe him. I just thought that was super random.
After running all these thoughts through my head, I decide to just ask Sally to confirm what he had said to her. She had posted a story of her new board set-up last night. She confirmed and sent me a screenshot where he said "Sick, I'm going to the snow tomorrow." She liked the message and said we should all go shred together.
On Sunday when he was supposed to finish the job and head back into town, I hear crickets. I don't get any texts, no calls from him until I message him at around 4pm asking if everything is ok. He said yes, he made it home and that he's super tired and doesn't want to talk. I let it go.
At this point, I've already pieced together that he went snowboarding and lied about it, but the lie was so unnecessarily intricate that I was going crazy needing proof of whether it was true. I felt sick to my stomach.
Me and Sally had school the next day, and he was actually conveniently scheduled to be my patient. I am in school to become a dental hygienist and it is common practice to recruit friends and family to be our clinical patients during the program. Sally was given the task to check patients in that day, so this gave us the perfect set up to catch him in the lie. In the waiting room, Sally checked him in and asked him about the snow trip while I was waiting in the clinic. When she brought him into my operatory, I had seated him and stepped outside with Sally. Sally confirmed that he did go snowboarding and that he even showed her PICTURES on his phone of the snow. We are both appalled. My heart sinks, but I get through the appointment without saying anything.
I suggest we meet after the appointment to grab some food and catch up at my place. At my place, I confront him about the trip immediately. He denies everything. He says a whole myriad of things about how much I mean to him, how silly it would be for him to compromise my trust, to compromise this relationship over something as silly as telling me about going snowboarding. His favorite phrase: "Why would I lie?"
I'm going to be honest. He is so convincing that I almost believe him, but then I remember the pictures. I tell him that Sally told me about their chat in the waiting room. He continues to deny the story and says, "I told you that I told her I went to the snow. I had to keep up the lie so I didn't look stupid. Those pictures I showed her were old!"
He turns it around on me and aggressively asks if I want to see his phone. "Would that make you happy? You want to see my phone cause you don't trust me?" This makes me feel so crazy and so badly that I almost believe him again because he was so sweet when telling me about his feelings for me, but something in my gut felt like I was right. I ask to see his camera roll. I needed to see that those pictures weren't recent. He refused, and only then, when backed into an impossible corner, did he admit it was all a lie. He did go snowboarding, but didn't want me to feel left out because I had work.
This is such an odd thing to lie about, I am pretty independent and have never shown signs of jealousy when he goes and does his own thing. My schedule is crazy busy, so I'm used to friends and family doing things without me simply because I am working 7 days a week. Beside all this, he KNEW that me and Sally were very close. Tell each other everything type close – why would he think this wouldn't come up???
Well, we have a long talk about relationship expectations, how my trust has been tarnished, etc. He promises he will never lie about something so stupid again and shares his location with me.
Well, he did it again about 5 times throughout the next year. All of the lies being similar levels of intricacy. Sometimes over something as insignificant as missing a call, but making up a story about how his truck was towed. Sometimes about his dogs getting impounded as a reason to why he wasn't available for a couple hours.
I was going to detail the other lies, but realized that this would be a 10 page post.
My main concern is that he has a pattern of not admitting to the lie, even when confronted. He will lie through his teeth until I present concrete proof and he cannot lie anymore, and is VERY defensive in the process. He will turn it around on me and tell me I'm the one who can't let things go, leaving me feeling crazy for not believing him.
The positives are that we get along very well when he is not lying, and he has shown to be faithful. He is pretty introverted and I don't believe that he is cheating. We talk about our future together and he tells me that his intention is to marry me and for us to build a family together. But the last lie drove me NUTS and I am left feeling like there is no hope.
It also kind of scares me that he wants to become a healthcare professional. How can he expect to go into this field with such low emotional intelligence??
Has anyone ever experienced anything like this? Is the relationship salvageable?