Boyfriend used dying of cancer as a way to get out of the double life he was leading

[Jozii]

Hi all! I found this site and registered for the sole purpose of sharing this story. I guess I have a need to talk about it. I was deceived by my boyfriend for three years who lied about dying of cancer in order to get out of the double life he was living.

 

We met when I was backpacking in Australia three years ago. He was living in Sydney and when I moved there we met on a dating app and started seeing each other. He had a housemate and their agreement was to never bring people over when the other was at home. I was there once or twice a week for six months, but never getting to meet the housemate was the first warning signal. He met and knew all of my friends and colleagues, I only met one of his.

 

When I left Australia to move back to Europe he was begging me to reconsider and to move in with him. He said the housemate was moving out anyway. I left for a job I couldn't refuse and said that I would regret it if I didn't at least give it a shot, and we carried on with a long distance relationship. We travelled a lot, he flew to Europe many times, but after a year we realised that it wasn't working. So we decided to be together for real. I was going to move in with him in Sydney, and he came to Sweden to be properly introduced to my family. They loved him.

 

Bipolar

 

My now ex boyfriend was bipolar, something I learned early on because he was taking medication for it. Shortly before I was meant to move back to Sydney with him, he lost his job due to an elbow injury (he was a surgeon), saying "now is not a good time" as he needed to figure out where he would work instead. Because of being bipolar, losing the job that he had gone to medical school for for many years nearly destroyed him, he claimed, and he became depressed.

 

His family was from Los Angeles and his parents had always been pushing for him to move there, to be closer to them, and now that his depression kicked in they pushed even harder. Though he wasn't officially out to his parents (I'm a man too) they still knew about me and I had met them once as "a friend" early in our relationship. They also knew that the distance between us had been an issue and he claimed that they had asked him to break up with me. I asked him if that's what he wanted, to get some of the stress out of his life, but he claimed that he loved me and that for us to be together — living together — was all that he wanted. At this point, we had even briefly talked about marriage, adopting two kids and even named our future children.

 

I was so happy to have found a man I truly loved, who I considered my best friend, who wanted all the same things in life as I did and who I could imagine spending the rest of my life with.

 

Los Angeles

 

After a month or so as unemployed and slightly depressed (I argued multiple times that I should be there with him, that it could help to have me around rather than distance being an issue) he got a job offer as a professor at UCLA in Los Angeles. This would make his parents happy and he felt like he had to give it a go, he said. For the first months, he was living with his uncle who had a spare room.

 

I wanted to come visit, but he always had an excuse. "Now is not a good time because I don't have a place of my own yet" or "This month I'm teaching extra classes and on the weekends I'm in San Francisco working at a lab". He also used not being out to his family as an excuse, and being from an Asian culture being gay was frowned upon by the family. He claimed to want to tell them if and when we decided to get married, but not yet.

 

I Cheated

 

The distance was killing me though, and I argued that I *had* to come. I could stay at a hotel. We did go to LA once shortly after I had initially left Australia, and I did meet the uncle back then but only as "a friend". We even visited his grandparents graves. But now, we only ever met on "my turf" (in Europe) with my friends and family, never his. As months went by without an end in sight, me being stuck at a job I didn't really like while waiting for him, I was angry. I was angry at him for not letting me come yet still saying that he loved me on a daily basis and that us being together was the only thing that mattered to him. "I just need to get my life back on track and find my own place," he always said.

 

Then on a drunk night out shortly before Christmas of 2017 I did something I have always, always regretted and will never, ever do to anyone again in my life. I cheated on him. I woke up with a hangover and immediately realised that I had to tell him. My friends advised against it saying that I should wait until we lived together, but I knew that we were meant to be together and trust was the most important thing. I called him the same day.

 

The rant he gave me was shocking. He said I had ruined everything and that he didn't know if there was a way to save this. He was meant to come to Sweden to celebrate Christmas with me and my family, but now said those plans were impossible.

 

I begged and pleaded, asking him to come at any time whenever possible so that we could meet and talk, or let me come to him. Eventually he agreed, and we met up in the days between Christmas and New Year's Eve. By then, he had realised that he had put me in a horrible and frustrating position and pushed me over the edge. On one hand he was always saying that he wanted nothing else than our relationship, but on the other he repeatedly failed to show me with actions that this was true. I'm not trying to excuse the fact that I cheated — it was wrong — but I hated being stuck waiting for someone who repeatedly failed to prove that his loving words were real.

 

4 Hours in London

 

We agreed to meet again in London in January while he would be on a work trip. On the day of his flight, however, he called to say that it was cancelled and that he was now stuck in New York. The university had booked him and his colleagues a flight back to LA as they would miss the work thing anyway. This was annoying of course, but I didn't hold it against him.

 

Later in the day, however, he suddenly called me. He was in London right now, having booked a flight on his own as a surprise. Four hours later he had a flight back to the US, but we had the most magical and romantic walk and lunch in London during those four hours.

 

When he got back home, he sent me a super long e-mail. In it, he revealed that he had come to London only because he had been afraid that I would cheat again, and on his way back he had realised how messed up that was. Who books a flight across the Atlantic just to see someone for four hours anyway? That's not normal. At first I thought it was super romantic, but I soon realised that it was his bipolarism (is that a word?) spooking.

 

In the e-mail he also admitted that he was more depressed than he had let on, and that a psychologist that he was seeing had recommended upping his dosage.

 

Overdosing on Medication

 

Just a few days after this, he suddenly disappeared. We had spoken pretty much daily since we first met in Australia, even after I left the country. Him not getting back to me for three days straight had never happened before. At first I thought he was just busy, but on day three I started to worry. Had something happened?

 

On the fourth day, he finally did get back to me in a second lengthy e-mail. This time he said that he had gone out with friends who wanted to cheer him up. The combination of alcohol and the higher dosage of medication was a poor mix, and his uncle had found him unconscious on the floor. For a while as they rushed to the hospital, they didn't know if he would make it. His parents had then signed him in to a private facility in Malibu where he was now going to be treated for a few weeks, advised not to have any contact with the outside world. He didn't properly break up in this e-mail, and he ended it by saying that he loved me more than anything, but he did hint that maybe it would be best for both of us to just give it up.

 

I felt incredibly bad about all of this, especially because of how he had reacted to my cheating, and I knew that I had a choice: either this would be the end to our relationship and I would let him go, or I needed to do something big to show my support. So I booked a ticket to Los Angeles.

 

Shortly before going, with no updates from my boyfriend, I asked my dad if he would like to come with me (I was 27 at the time but my family is close and my dad is retired so I knew he had the time). I knew that if I went by myself I would just sit in a hotel room and feel sorry for myself. He gladly agreed.

 

The point of the trip was to prove that, even if I couldn't come and see him at the clinic he was in, I was in it 100% and wanted to support him. As a bonus, it turned in to the best father-son trip I've ever had. We stood on the beach north of the Santa Monica Pier and pointed towards Malibu up the coast, saying "he's somewhere over there right now, I hope he'll be alright". We went to UCLA and walked around the campus, talking about how my boyfriend had walked the same grounds while working.

 

Cancer

 

Once he was released, we made a deal. He still said he wanted us to be together, and the trip to LA had proven the point I wanted to make, but I was clear that the distance had to stop. His contract with the university was until the summer. He would come to Sweden for Easter, I would resign from my job shortly after that and he would let me come to be closer to him. Come summer he would need to make up his mind if he wanted to stay in LA, move back to Sydney with me or go somewhere else — anywhere — where we could both legally live and work and start our life together for real.

 

Easter was amazing. He already knew all of my relatives. We spent it together in Stockholm and he hung out a lot with my grandmother. But then a few days before his departure he got a phone call. He had lymph node cancer with three months left to live.

 

Before coming to Sweden he had been back to see his doctor in Sydney to check out a lump he had. Now, after the overdose thing I wouldn't have believed any of it and thought that he made up some kind of excuse to break up, but I had personally gotten to feel the lump on his back and I was watching his facial expression as he got the phone call with the test results. I had no reason to believe he had faked all that.

 

In a panic, he booked an earlier flight. I was meant to join a few weeks later. On our last night in Sweden, we had our biggest fight ever. He argued that I shouldn't come because he would die anyway and it would be better for me to grieve our breakup now than his death later. As a doctor he had seen what the death of a patient does to the loved ones — yes, he threw the doctor card at me.

 

I argued that we had been through this before, with the depression and the overdose, when I should have been there with him. I was prepared to go through this with him as well, and though he claimed to only have three months left I knew he was prone to exaggerate under stress and that he could probably be treated and would survive.

 

We eventually agreed after much yelling that I would come as planned. A few days later he messaged me from Sydney and literally forbade me to. I knew that this was the end of our relationship. We stopped talking.

 

Mourning and Backlash

 

It's not the end of the story yet though. I was devastated by all of this, left my job and moved in with my parents — something I never imagined I would do as a driven and adventurous person — unable to get my life back on track for months. I knew that he didn't want me there and that we had in fact broken up, but I didn't know if he would survive and moving on from that proved impossible. I tried to reach him several times over the next few months but with no response. Though I'd met his parents once I had no contact information for any of his family.

 

Once the three months were up and I still broken on a daily basis, and still couldn't reach him, I made another decision on a low level that I never thought I'd sink to. His Facebook account was very private, he never posted anything and he had made it so that his friends weren't showing (as we already know, there was a reason for that). But I could see who had liked his profile picture, so I selected 20 of those people including some with the same last name as him and messaged them. I revealed a bit too much by saying that I was his boyfriend, that he had been seriously ill and that I needed answers.

 

Most people never replied, but those that did were furious. How could I message his friends and family like that when he wasn't publicly out to his family? The "not being out" part took me by surprise. I had expected to get more of a reaction on the "seriously ill" part as many might not have known that he was sick. I immediately knew that I had overshared and regretted it.

 

It worked though. Within hours, he called me. He was alive, but he was furious that I had sent the message. He was now on "damage control", he said. I was furious too at the fact that he was fine but hadn't bothered to tell me. The cancer treatment had gone well and within the three months it had been removed. I explained what a nightmare I had been through over the past months and he soon turned around, realising how his actions had affected me.

 

Learning the Truth

 

Over the next few months we slowly started talking again. He claimed that he always loved me, that despite the breakup the emotions had always been real, but there was no way in hell that I would give him a third chance. I had already mourned him and was ready to move on. But perhaps we could still save our friendship? He was going to Paris before Christmas (of 2018) and wanted me to come with him. I was against it at first, knowing deep inside that I couldn't keep seeing a man who clearly didn't want the life that he kept telling me that he wanted, but I started to warm up to the idea.

 

Then I got another reply from one of the people I had messaged. Here it is:

 

"Hi,

 

I have only come to see your message today as it had been diverted to my filtered messages. This has come as a huge surprise to me and my friends for a number of reasons, and we are still processing this disturbing revelation.

 

The first thing to say is that X does not have cancer, is well and very much alive. I suspect he used this excuse as an exit strategy. I have known him since 2014 as the long-term partner of my good friend. They had been together well before this, and have been living together for a number of years now. Your social media posts and photos have obviously confirmed the veracity of your message. Photos from your trips to the US and Asia have been truly shocking as we were under the impression that X was travelling with his parents.

 

My friend has only come to know of this today but doesn't know the full story and is yet to confront X. He is obviously angry and hurt by the deceit but is mostly heartbroken. I don't know if you were aware X was in a long-term relationship this whole time, but I'm assuming you were not. I am sorry for the difficult few months you have also faced. I cannot imagine what you have been through. I hope this adds some clarity and help you heal and move on with life."

 

Obviously, I was shocked. I gave it a day to let the other partner — he was obviously in an equally terrible if not worse position then me with 10 years of his life on the line — before I called my ex with *a lot* of questions. He made no efforts to lie. He admitted everything:

 

- He never had elbow surgery nor lost his job as a surgeon.

- He never moved to LA to please his parents.

- He never worked at UCLA nor lived with his uncle.

- He was never depressed.

- He never overdosed.

- He was never dying of cancer, though he still claimed he had it but in a very mild and easily treated form.

- Yes, he used all of these things as exist strategies.

- Yes, the "housemate" was his long-term partner and they actually owned the apartment together. When he begged me to move in with him as I was leaving Australia it was because they were struggling and the partner had temporarily moved out.

 

He still claimed he loved me and that the feelings had always been real. I told him to **** off and no longer believe that for a second, because how could you do any of this to someone you love?

 

I believe he wanted to keep all doors open. He did so at the expense of me and the other guy. I have no idea if they are still together and I guess I will never find out. A part of me tells me to just let it go and move on, but a different part is hoping that he loses everything. Regardless, I think this experience will stick with me for the rest of my life.

 

I've been told I should write a book about this and maybe I will. I already have an idea for a fitting ending even if the real story ended with us simply never talking again.

 

If you've read this far, thank you so much for letting me share my story.

[FMW]

He's obviously got a lot of issues. Don't wish bad things for him, you're only hurting yourself by letting the hurt and anger grab hold of you.

 

It's something that SHOULD stick with you for life, you don't want to ever again ignore warning signs or behavior that leads you to want to act out (cheating).

 

I'm sorry for the trauma and drama of it all, I hope sharing your story helps speed the healing.

[preraph]

I read the whole thing. Yeah, that first red flag was a very important one. I'm sorry you fell for such a liar. He was a chronic liar. I can't understand why his parents "loved" you. Did they not know he already had a live-in boyfriend? Or did he just lie that you were "just a friend"?

 

Thank goodness one person saw fit to tell you what was going on. If he was able to fool his live-in this long, that person probably just didn't want to know the truth and will likely stay with him. I mean, all those trips....how do you explain that?

 

Sorry you went through all that. I hope you can get past it and find someone who isn't a big fat liar. I mean, bipolar can do many things and does, but my guess is that's only one of his diagnoses. He kept this up too long, so he's not that manic and disorganized to keep stuff going.

 

With any luck, you'll never run across another chronic liar like this, but if you do, you'll pay attention to the red flags this time, I bet. So don't be afraid to put yourself back out there at some point.

[Jozii]

That's is a lot of words...wow.

 

Honestly, I stopped reading after the part where you stated your boyfriend who you cheated on didn't do enough to show he loved you AFTER YOU cheated.

 

Not sure what you are looking for outside of just getting your story out.

 

It is a lot of words, sorry about that I guess I've just needed to type it all out for myself to make sense of it.

 

Perhaps I should have been clearer about my own cheating. I was an idiot at one of the most difficult times of my life. I never should have cheated and I will NEVER do that again, that's a promise I've made to myself. My cheating happened after he didn't do enough, not before. The cheating was what ultimately brought us back on track again and what made him claim to want to do more. Of course if you read the whole thing, you'll know that was never his intention.

 

In my defence as to how I - and the other guy - could fall for this for so long, he was extremely good at it. I agree with those that say that something is wrong with him. The level of lying and commitment to the lies is staggering, and it's beyond me how he could keep it up for so long.

 

I think sharing like this will be good for me and help me move on. You don't have to read it - or comment - if you don't want to

Edited April 3, 2019 by Jozii

[mark clemson]

Yes, quite a story. Sorry to hear you went through all this. This sounds to me like a charming sociopath type. Someone who always has an apparently logical plan (except that it usually fails eventually, like his did) and is capable of actually doing this sort of thing.

 

Hopefully you'll find someone sincere to be with now that you've been through all this.

[elaine567]

Stay away - a guy who can lie like this is dangerous.

He reminds me of Malcolm Webster, a guy who was eventually convicted of murdering one wife and attempting to murder another one, but he also pretended he had terminal cancer, once as a teenager and to fool a woman into marrying him so he could claim her estate in the event of her death... she found he had punctured her life jacket so no doubt he had planned she was going to die in a boating "accident", the intervention of the police, saved her. His capacity for lying was immense.

 

Be very careful.

[pepperbird]

wow. he sounds like a jerk. I half wonder if part of him really enjoyed the "game" of lying to you in such a way that you were running in circles.

 

I'm glad you got away from him. Sadly, I have a feeling he'll just repeat the pattern with someone else.

[Normm]

I have no sympathy for either one of you. He's a liar with a double life cheating on his partner, you cheated on him and when he told you he wanted out, you completely invaded his privacy by messaging 20 of his social media friends telling them he was gay even though he was closeted at the time.

 

 

Ironically even though you are not together you both deserve each other.

[Jozii]

I have no sympathy for either one of you. He's a liar with a double life cheating on his partner, you cheated on him and when he told you he wanted out, you completely invaded his privacy by messaging 20 of his social media friends telling them he was gay even though he was closeted at the time.

 

 

Ironically even though you are not together you both deserve each other.

 

Wow, I'm not even sure you can make that comparison. If your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife suddenly told you "I have cancer and and will be dead in three months, bye!" how would you feel and what would you do after those three months were up and you still didn't know if he/she made it or not? Would you just forget and move on?

 

Believe me, I tried. But you can't. You need to at least know what happened to him. I was the victim of loving someone who was extremely convincing at telling me he loved me back, that everything he did was "for me", with no real hints except small ones you see in hindsight that his entire life was fake.

 

He was a pathological liar and like someone else said he probably enjoyed "the game" he was playing. How on earth can you compare my one-night misstep that I have regretted beyond anything else I've done in my life with someone who has carried on with the same misstep for three years (possibly even longer with the other guy) and who seems to even enjoy it as long as he's not caught?

 

The two don't even compare. I made a mistake, yes, but there is only one true villain here.

[basil67]

I'm stumped at how you were planning on moving to Sydney to be with him. A permanent resident visa (if you qualify) can take anywhere from 1-3 years to process.

[Jozii]

I'm stumped at how you were planning on moving to Sydney to be with him. A permanent resident visa (if you qualify) can take anywhere from 1-3 years to process.

 

We were very serious, or so I thought. I had no obvious warning signals. I thought we were getting married and though I was totally against moving to a country where I wouldn't be able to work for 1-3 years (we did a lot of research together), I was in love and he claimed to be. I would probably have gone a few times on a regular tourist visa first. Glad it didn't go that far and I would have learned the truth later, maybe even after we were married

[basil67]

Jozii, for most of the time frame you're discussing, we didn't have marriage equality so you couldn't have married. And it's not about not being able to work here for 1-3 years, it's about not being able to move here for 1-3 years.

[ABernie]

Your story is so sad. I'm glad you found the truth and I am hopeful that you can move on. There are others out there who you can love and will love you back the way your deserve.

[minimariah2]

i don't think he used the cancer as his exit strategy - simply because the cancer usually brings people together rather than them pulling away. also, in the end, he still reached out to you & proposed travel to Paris... so if you didn't learn the truth, you would probably still be in contact and building a friendship.

 

if he truly wanted to exit, he could have simply dumped you and told you he found someone else. that would have been the end of it.

 

i don't think he is a socio/psycho or even a narcissist - i see this often, people are simply reckless with others feelings & they allow themselves to go in too deep. later - they don't know how to break the cycle of lies, very fast it turns into a big mess they can't get out of and before they know it: they're leading double lives. i believe the lying has taken a toll on him too because lying IS an exhausting process, so he probably was relieved when you found out the truth - hence, why he didn't deny anything. did he love you? that's hard to say. maybe he did, maybe he didn't. i have encountered one man who had lead double life because he loved both women and wanted both women - he was reckless and selfish, also polyamorous and extremely emotionally immature. his intentions were good - as in, he wanted to give both women good life - in the end, he hurt them both AND himself.

 

so that's the way i'd go about this: think of him as a reckless, selfish soul who played a game and got in way too deep. things just gotten out of control.

 

you will get over this. i've met many women who shared your story and they did find new love - many of us have been in your place or similar: we thought we were happy with the person we love until we found out we were lied to and cheated on. so in reality, we loved a person who didn't exist - or rather, we loved one part of that person, probably enhanced with "in love" factor and then we found out the other half of them.

 

i would encourage u to write a book. you don't have to publish it, just put it down on paper. talk this through with your close ones, family and friends and therapist. it is important that you grieve out in the open. don not isolate yourself from the world: you seem like a very clever person and you know there are good men out there, men worth of your trust. you know it wouldn' be a good idea to miss out on a possible new love due to old pains. so - open yourself up to new love, when you are healed and you WILL heal.

 

finally: let the fact that your ex probably suffers from this too, be a comfort to you. trust me, i have worked with these people in therapy - they do have a conscious and it burns them every single day, not allowing them a second of peace. they're going through their own personal hell, knowing they'll probably never get forgiveness or atonement - so... nature has taken care of that particular punishment

[minimariah2]

one more thing.

 

you say you didn't have any hints... but that's not entirely true. it's not true at all - i think u had some pretty huge hints that he was not as dedicated to the relationship as you are.

 

you cheated. why did you cheat? because you felt his words did not match his actions. you felt unfulfilled and unsatisfied, unhappy. THAT should have been the first sign that the relationship is not what you made it out to be. later - he continued to show you that he isn't as serious, constantly "dumping you" through various excuses and playing a push and pull game with you. i assume you didn't see those as signs that the relationship should be ended due to your inexperience with serious relationships BUT i would point that out as something to work on. it seems like you desperately tried to keep and cling on to a man who DID, in fact, showed you that he didn't as invested in this relationship as you were and who did show you that his words are just that: words.

[Nats0407]

I'm so sorry you went through this, it sounds awful. He kept stringing you along and that's the worst part. Don't let this ruin your trust in others... I can say I've had similar (though nowhere near as bad as what you went through) twisted things happen in relationships and I find it hard to not be resentful and suspicious of everyone, even if it's not a romantic relationship and just a friendship.