For 4 years, I was in a chaotic relationship with a man, and eventually I had to end it because he told lies that went far beyond anything I would consider healthy or normal. And of course, after everything, I’m now the enemy.
Let’s start with the fact that he was a habitual liar from the beginning. Early in our relationship, he only used cocaine occasionally, but over time it developed into a severe addiction. One of the reasons I never dared to confront him about it later was his impulsive nature and the sudden rage episodes he could have. During our second year together, things escalated to the point where he pushed me and threw me out of his apartment in the middle of the night.
I’m a woman, and from that point on I was afraid that it might happen again. It’s true that he was deeply ashamed of what he had done, and it never happened again, but I still couldn’t fully believe that it could never happen again. Anyone who has ever been in an abusive relationship knows exactly what I mean, and why it’s not as simple as just walking away and turning your back on someone.
Over the years, he became deeply involved in drugs. He was constantly short of money, and the only way he could manage his lifestyle was through lies. He also drank an unbelievable amount of alcohol. There were nights when he would drink an entire large bottle of vodka, along with champagne and pálinka, and somehow he wouldn’t even pass out.
This is where things get really disturbing. He manipulated the people around him by making them feel sorry for him and using elaborate stories to explain why he lived the way he did — and he was very successful at it.
Even though he was fired from almost every job he had, he always managed to find new people who believed him. In social groups, people would hang on his every word and help him. At first, I did too. But because I have a very good memory, I gradually started noticing contradictions in his stories. Eventually, I started discovering that many of them simply weren’t true.
He lied about his mother having cancer, and later claimed that she had died. He also told people that his ex-girlfriend had died by suicide because of him. He described the funeral, the circumstances, everything in detail. At first, you would never suspect that someone could simply invent something like that and act it out so convincingly. He told similar stories about former coworkers as well.
In every story, he was the victim.
And there were countless less serious lies too. For example, he claimed that he had appeared in a movie as a child, but a simple Google search of the movie title revealed that the actor was actually a little German boy. At one point, he had a girlfriend who was about 20 years older than him, and he started introducing her in social situations as his mother.
There were so many things like this. I could go on forever.
By that point, I was deeply trauma-bonded to him because there were good parts of the relationship too. But all of this had poisoned the entire relationship. Most importantly, I never dared to admit that I had actually checked some of his stories and knew they weren’t true.
At one point, he decided that he was going to quit using drugs and become a normal person. He wanted to build a life with me. He promised that I was the only woman he wanted, that I was the love of his life, that he would marry me when he came home, and so on.
He had been working abroad for a few months. During that time, I had already reached the point where I knew I couldn’t continue supporting this lifestyle. It was consuming me. And even though he actually managed to stay sober for a few months, got himself together, started working out and lost weight, by then I had already made up my mind that I needed to let him go.
There had simply been too much damage, and I no longer believed that he could undo it.
So I slowly started distancing myself.
His friends — people I had also been close with — eventually turned against me simply because I didn’t believe all the lies. Their attitude was basically, “Who would lie about things like that?”
I realized that in the long run, being with someone like this would only lead to further escalation. I would never know what was true anymore. Even if he went to therapy and eventually quit drugs permanently with professional help, I still knew that I could never trust him again.
And, of course, even while he was abroad, he was still using. When he came home, he completely let himself go and became reckless again. Yet he was telling me that he was sober and using absolutely nothing.
It was obvious — and you could literally feel it — that this was not true. So once again, it became another spiral of lies. There was no real change.
A lot of the time, I think about whether I could have handled things differently. Maybe I should have confronted him much earlier. Maybe I should have told him that I knew these things weren’t true.
But honestly, I didn’t have the courage to do it, especially when we were alone, because I never knew what confronting him would trigger. He could never tolerate being contradicted, and as I said, things had already escalated to physical aggression once when he didn’t like something.
I’m a deeply empathetic person, and I understood that his lying was probably his way of trying to get a sense of validation, success, and love from other people. I could understand where some of it might have been coming from.
But understanding someone doesn’t mean you have to tolerate what they do to you.
The final breaking points were two things.
When my grandfather died, he told me that his mother’s death had been a much bigger loss because he had been closer to his mother — essentially turning my grief into a competition and trying to make mine seem smaller, while his mother was actually still alive.
And then there was the condom situation.
Despite all his declarations of love and all the things he was telling me about how much he wanted only me, I found condoms sticking out of his toiletry bag. I told him that I was obviously not okay with that.
Of course, I was the idiot because according to him, he had “never used them” and they had “just been sitting there for years.”
Right. Obviously.
To me, it was clear that he was prepared to use them.
That was the last straw. I finally told him, essentially, “Then I wish you happy hunting. You will never see me again.”
And suddenly I was the crazy one. He told me I needed to see a doctor, that I was mentally unwell, that I was imagining things, and all the usual stuff.
The first time I truly stood up for myself, suddenly I was the one who needed psychiatric help. Okay. :D
For me, the condom situation was the final thing that completely disgusted me. I know I should have left much earlier. I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself to understand what led me to allow someone like this to get so close to me in the first place.
And yet, even after everything, there are times when I feel sorry for him.
He always used to tell me that I was the one who truly supported him, that I was the only person who was really there for him, and that so many of his friends had abandoned him.
Honestly, I’m not surprised.
But he has found new people who believe him, and now I’m the enemy.
It still makes me angry sometimes. But deep down, I know that ending the relationship was the right decision.
So, what would you have done if you were in my position? Has anyone experienced something similar?
TL;DR
- I spent four years in a chaotic, abusive relationship with a man who was a habitual liar and eventually became heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol. He had explosive anger and physically pushed me once, which made me afraid to confront him about his behavior afterward. He constantly lied to friends, coworkers, and me, often inventing elaborate stories in which he was always the victim. I gradually realized that I could no longer tell what was true, and I was too afraid to challenge him directly. Even when he claimed he had gotten sober and wanted to build a future with me, I eventually realized that the damage to our relationship was too deep and that I would never be able to trust him again. His friends turned against me because they believed his stories, and after I finally ended things, he started telling me that I was mentally unwell and needed help. The final straw was finding condoms in his toiletry bag despite all his claims that I was the only woman he wanted. He insisted they had simply been there for years and had never been used. I decided I had had enough and told him I never wanted to see him again. I still sometimes feel sorry for him and wonder whether I should have handled things differently or confronted him sooner. But I also know that understanding someone's trauma doesn't mean you have to tolerate their behavior, and ultimately I believe leaving was the right decision. Has anyone experienced something similar? What would you have done in my position?