...told me he wanted to grow old with me, that I am “the One,” he met my children, met my mother and brother, he stayed at my house frequently, all the while telling me I was the only one. He denied, repeatedly, that there was any other woman in his life on the occasions I asked. But he never answers his phone when I call, he rarely answers text messages, he has never once answered an email from me. He says he is almost always unavailable because of “work” and his “mother’s demands” for his time for help on her "farm." He almost always no-shows on me, leaving me up all night waiting for him. At times, I housed him, fed him, and cared for him. I always loved him unconditionally. I'm GGG, kinky, and very, very sexually experienced. He has little interest in sex and even less skill. Red flag, I know. But holy shit Dan, I don't want to be alone.

I found out he is homeless and, when not with his other girlfriend I would soon learn about, lives in his garbage car on the side of the road.

He claims to be a full time student, but says he cannot work a legitimate job because of income restrictions placed upon him by the worker retraining program. He also claims to have jobs out of town and out of state that last days, weeks or months at a time. He tells me that during these times, his instructors permit him to do his classwork online. He also tells me his mother is elderly and trying to sell her farm, so every single weekend and most of every week must be devoted to her... out of state. He will not answer my calls or texts when he is away, which is almost always. Yes, I know... all red flags.

Because of his unavailability and persistent refusal to spend adequate time with me and adequate focus on our "monogamous committed relationship," I told him I wanted to continue to see him, but I needed us to open up the relationship. He immediately agreed. I started dating/sleeping with others, but he told me he was not.

So things weren't really adding up across the board. Then, last week, my world caved in. On October 18, 2018, I was contacted by his live-in “partner” through Facebook Messenger after I had enough one night and posted a single word on his Facebook page: "Goodbye." She wondered why this woman she had never heard of would post such a thing on "her" man's FB page. She called him her “partner,” said he’s “like a father” to her children, and has been living with her for the past seven months. She and I talked for hours, her providing the sordid details of nearly a year of lies and exploitation. She has met his family and friends, which he always refused to permit me to do.

Turns out ALL the time he was telling me he was out of town for “work” and “doing homework” at school, blowing me off for days, weeks, months at a time, standing me up and lying every time he opened his mouth... he was with her. They go to school together, work together, and live together.

When I confronted him this man told me his other girlfriend is an “alcoholic,” that she “just uses” him, and that she lives in a “shit hole.” He continued to tell me he doesn’t love her, only loves me, and wants to be with me forever. But guess where he is right now? Back to her in her filthy bed. That happened after he spent five hours on the phone with me 10/19/18, begging me to still be his.

I asked him in that five hour conversation if he loved her. He said, “No”. I asked him if he was going back to her house that very night. He said “No.” I received a Messenger notification from the woman at 6 AM on 10/19/18, telling me he did go back to her that night, slept with her, and spent the night telling her how much he loves her! I then found out that he had unprotected sex with each of us on consecutive nights, though we had a strict agreement about no unprotected sex with others.

He tried to shift the blame to me, saying I opened up the relationship. However, open relationships require honesty. He lied POINT BLANK, twice, when I asked him in the course of our "open relationship" if there was another woman. He emphatically denied it, twice. But he was living a seriously duplicitous life. He was going to school with her, working with her, caring for her children, and living with her the whole time!

Then I found out he’s also MARRIED to a THIRD woman. He also lied about that. I’m now also in contact with that woman.

The lies are the problem, Dan, obviously. It turns out that EVERYTHING he ever told me was a lie. He lies even when it carries no apparent benefit or secondary gain. He is a pathological liar. And I feel like a complete fucking idiot.

I became so clinically depressed due to his absence and neglect at some points before I found out the truth, that I was unable to get out of bed or eat for days at a time. He permitted me to believe we were still in a relationship, and that no other woman existed. He allowed me to spend my days and nights not focusing on my job or my family but on where he was and why he wasn't with me. The magnitude of the cruelty leaves me dumbfounded.

If he had told me that he had met someone, Dan, and decided to move in with her—cool! Great! Congrats! But he allowed me to yearn for him and call persistently and try to connect with him any way possible for nine months every single day while he was with her, lying to me. It's the dishonesty that is a brutal kick in the gut—not the other woman herself necessarily. It would have been so easy to say, "I've met someone. I love them and we are living together." That would have ended our relationship on an honest, respectful note. Now, I'm traumatized.

So the problem now is I can't block him because I'm hooked, like a junkie. He gives me just enough supply to stay hooked. I love him, but the man I love really is nothing more than an illusion. That's what pathological liars are.

Dan, please, say the words that will help me leave this lying shitbag. Help me let go. Say more than DTMFA, because that’s obvious. I don't know how to muster the strength to do it. I can't focus at work, I can't focus at home, I'm shaking and replaying the loop in my head every waking minute.

Abused & Enraged

So you watched fifty thousand red flags march past your window, A&E, but were still shocked to discover it was May Day in Moscow circa 1963.

Look, A&E, you need to dump this guy—you need to dump him and block him and get the fuck over him. And if you can't bring yourself to do that for your own sake, for the sake of your career, and for the sake of your kids, well, you need way more help than I can give you in this space. You're gonna need to get your ass into a therapist's office and, with some professional help, work on figuring out why you couldn't and still can't stop pressing your face against this scalding hot stove.

You now know him to be a liar and a cheat and a manipulative shit—but even before you found out about the live-in girlfriend/mark and the wife, A&E, this guy had already revealed himself to be a deeply shitty boyfriend. He didn't communicate with you, he stood you up, he was lousy in bed—you were in DTMFA territory long before you posted that insincere "Goodbye" on his Facebook page and learned about the other woman from the other woman.

The obvious issue here—your vulnerability, the weakness your deeply shitty boyfriend has exploited—appears to be your terror of being alone. But as Joan Price once said on the Savage Lovecast, it's better to be unhappy because you're alone than to be unhappy because you're with the wrong person—to say nothing of being unhappy because you're still with someone you know to be a pathological liar and an emotionally abusive parasite.

DTMFA.

And commenters? Please go easy on A&E. She knows she's being irrational and that she needs to leave this guy. Offer her constructive advice, share your own stories of relationships that were hard to end, but please don't mock her.