Shocked by the lies, even though I lived them

Editor’s note: Lovefraud received the following story from a reader whom we’ll call Laura24. She was shocked by the lies her boyfriend told her over their years together, even though she lived them.

I spent 12 years in a relationship with a sociopath. In the 10 years that we lived together, he had convinced me he owned his own business, had a bachelor’s degree, and that he was financially stable.

Stunning revelations

Some of the revelations that still shock me today even though I lived it:

• He told me that he had a relationship with a girl we had both known in high school and it had ended badly but they were still friends. We had more than a few conversations with her as she was planning her wedding, she had even asked about what it would cost for me to make her wedding cake or what she should expect to pay. He would use her past as a cautionary tale anytime he wanted to control my decisions. I got a small tattoo with my best friend for my birthday and he said “You know, when I was dating X, she started getting tattoos and drinking and just now look at her, it looks so trashy. It was the start of our breakup”. After I broke up with him, I asked her about their breakup and found out they had never dated.

• He would get super paranoid about me being alone for any amount of time with his parents or brothers, and would sometimes question me about what we talked about. I later found out that he was afraid they would tell me the truth about his “business.”

• He used the business as leverage to convince me to have an abortion, telling me that it was terrible timing and he would lose everything he had worked for because he would have to get a more stable job. When I gave in, he promised we would get married and try again the next year. Neither happened in the next 9 years we were together.

• He would drop subtle hints that he would commit suicide when he was caught in a lie or an argument that he didn’t think he could talk himself out of. On the day we broke up, he cried LOUDLY, almost too loudly, as if he wanted to be sure I could hear it from outside the house, as he sat on the edge of his bed with a handgun sitting on the floor between his feet. This was the 4th or 5th time this had happened, and I was so numb I just stood over the gun so he couldn’t grab it and called his brother to come over and intervene. He was so angry that I told anyone about what was going on that when his brother arrived, he started screaming and throwing things saying “why did you tell anyone?!?”

• He agreed to go to therapy to “work on communication” at about year 8, but spent every session blaming his “work-aholic” attitude and the stress “at work” even though he was just doing side jobs for parents for money, but I was unaware.

• He once had a meltdown when I told him I had made plans to see a play with a friend. I told him on like a Tuesday, the play was on Saturday, and he was furious that I didn’t tell him before or when the plans were made. I called my friend and cancelled by making up an excuse. He then wanted to know exactly how I cancelled and what I told her. He wasn’t even home on Saturday. He never told me why it bothered him.

• He had slowly over the years conditioned me to pay for everything: bills, groceries, events, vacations. In the last couple of years I had so much anxiety about paying for dinners out that I would insist on paying for everyone at the table, even when he wasn’t there, if it was friends or family. I spent months in therapy just learning to un-condition myself from paying for everyone and I still have to make a plan to pay for only myself and verbalize that with whoever I’m having dinner with before we order.

• In the end, he had started a relationship with an 18-year-old girl who lived about an hour from us. He had told her he was single, worked from home, and was always traveling out of town. I only discovered about the relationship when I overheard him on the phone with her at 3 AM. I bought a recording device and found out that they had been sleeping together and she was pregnant. I never found out if it was his child, but she either had an abortion or lost the baby. When I confronted him about her he swore he had never touched her even though I had recorded him on the phone talking to her about their sexual encounters.

As far as I’m aware, I’m the only person he had ever dated other than the 18-year-old girl he was sleeping with. I’m not sure how much she knows about him.

Learn more: Maybe you’re not codependent — you’re traumatized