Lies, Lies, and More Lies

QUESTION: First, I love your blog, and thanks for the honesty.

Now, here is my situation. I am 19 years old and I have been in a relationship with a 27 year old for two years. We met on a phone chat line. After six months of dating, I find out that Mr. X is really Mr. Y. The excuse he gave was that I was a minor when we got together, but I was an adult the next month.

Whats with the fake name?

If that is the truth, why did he wait so long to tell me?

I didnt leave because I had fallen head over heels. Two months later, I meet his girlfriend of one year. They both tell me that their relationship is long over and neither of them knew how to end it. I also learn that he has an eleven year old child, with someone else. And to make things worse, I learn that my 27 year old boyfriend is 32years old!?! I am in love, and I stay.

Since then, our relationship has blossomed. He has done everything possible to regain my trust. He expresses his love for me time and time again through romance, chivalry, and other kind gestures. I have now been 3 hours away at school for the past year. After spending spring break with him, I returned to school, and we argued everyday for two weeks. He said it was because he didnt want me to go, but I find that hard to believe. We may have sex once every other month, if that due to our separation, oh yeah, he's a truck driver. So, he is not with me because of hot sex with a young girl.

He is begging me to come home because he misses me. He now speaks of marriage and kids. Can a man of his age love me? Want to marry me? Are there alternative motives?

GARLAND: To answer your last three questions, Yes, yes and yes. But do I think this is the case with your situation? Read the rest of my answer and you decide.

I think by him starting your relationship by lying to you, chances are good that he will always lie to you. It seems to be his "go to" technique when he wants things to go his way.

For a 30 year old man to be trolling phone chat lines and luring in 17 year old girls - he sounds like a sick, sick, socially twisted perv. A NORMAL 30 year old man would be ashamed to be trying to woo a girl that age. And then for him to lie and say, "Oh, I'm 27 baby." It leads me to think that he has SIGNIFICANT problems with women in his own age group. He probably can't maintain a reasonable relationship with a woman a few years older or younger than himself. That is a major red flag!

I know you probably won't like the tone of this answer, because I am using your age as a negative when it comes to your 32 year old beau. But, I think you need a splash of honesty from an older man - for once.

I'm really bothered by the fact that a 32 year old man with a kid that's only a few years younger than you is claiming to be lonely and missing you and is "begging you to come home to be with him!" That sounds like some childish/selfish non-sense! A decent man that really cared about you... well, first of all he wouldn't have been lying to you... secondly, he would encourage you to be with someone closer to your own age... and well, thirdly - he would not ask you to leave a golden opportunity like COLLEGE, to come sit at home to keep him company [when he's not on the road lying to and seducing other young women!]

Basically, this guy started with lies... lies about his name and his age and his paternal status, and then the ex-girlfriend that didn't know how to end things. This whole deal sounds like some made-for-tv drama!

In my humble little opinion - if you buy into this guy's predatorial hype and marry him, in say a year or two, you will drop out of college and become the STEP-MOM to a teenager; you will be at home alone with his kid six months out of the year because Ol'Perv is on the road FULLFILLING HIS DREAM by being a trucker; You won't go back to school because he'll probably get you pregnant as soon as humanly possible, that way you'll be even less likely to ever leave him and you'll be busy as h*ll juggling two children; and to make things worse, hubby-dearest will probably still be trying to satisfy his taste for younger women while on the road - so heaven only knows what he'll be bringing back home to you!

Just remember, your first loyalty is to YOURSELF. You are young, working towards an education and a lot of potential. Think carefully about the steps you take and the decisions you make today and look with a VERY critical eye at the impact they will make on your life years down the road.

CHUCK: This man has sought to play you for a fool from the very beginning. Maybe the reason that he's on the hunt for barely-legal young women may not just be a perv thing. It might also be that a woman his age might be a little more hip to the game that he's running.

I have had to adjust my opinion over the years. I thought the professions with the biggest cheaters were either police officers or military personnel. But to that list, today I'd also add truck driver. These guys can lead a semi-rootless existence that will bring out the worst in some men, in terms of cheating and deception. Your Mr. X/Y is holding true to that stereotype.

I won't belabor the obvious here. Should you have dumped him when you found out that he lied to you for two months? Yes. Can you trust him now? No. Will he lie to you again? Yes. Does he have ulterior motives for asking you to marry him? Absolutely. He doesn't want to marry you so much as he wants to nail you down. He wants you as his wife, and, as Garland says, the mother of his child. You graduating college and advancing yourself is unimportant to him. He just needs someone at home to wash his clothes while he's on the road, checking out other underaged women.

A good, mutually beneficial adult relationship is built on shared interest and attraction. The main thing that you and Mr. X/Y had in common was lying (his willingness to do so, yours to believe them). And I'm thinking that the acts of contrition (the chivalry, etc.) that he performed, were just acts. Maintain your long distance relationship with him if you like, but I think you know this guy ain't good for marriage or anything like it.