My (16F) bf (17M) won't stop vaping / lying to me
My boyfriend and I have been together for a little over a year. Before we started dating, he told me he didn’t vape, but there were little things that made me suspicious, and later I found out he actually did and had lied about it. Vaping/smoking has always kind of been a dealbreaker for me, but I really liked him and thought I could get past it.
A few months into our relationship he started talking about maybe wanting to quit. Then over the summer he went on a two week vacation where he couldn’t bring his vape, and when we called he told me not vaping actually wasn’t as hard as he expected. I suggested maybe using it as an opportunity to quit, and he agreed.
At first things seemed good, but then I started catching him hiding it and lying about it. One time I literally found his vape after he had promised me he wasn’t smoking. We had a long conversation after that where I told him the vaping itself honestly hurt me less than the lying and hiding. He told me he understood and would try to be more honest with me.
For a while things actually improved a lot. If he slipped up, he’d usually tell me instead of hiding it. But we’ve also had another ongoing issue in our relationship since September involving dishonesty and broken promises, and it’s been really emotionally exhausting for me. He tells me again and again that he will change, but he never seems to. Sometimes things get better for a while, then he starts lying to me again. This most recent time though I was fed up and told him if he didn't start being honest with me, I'd have to leave. I'm really seeing some actual improvement now though so I think things might actually get better.
Recently he’s clearly started vaping regularly again. He tells me he’s “sharing” a vape with his friends, but every time I see him he has it. He’ll vape openly in front of me but still try to hide it in little ways, like waiting until I look away or putting it behind his phone. If I notice and give him a weird look, he goes "what?" and just keeps doing whatever he was doing before.
I don’t even know how to bring this up anymore because I feel like we’re already trying to work through so much. I'm worried we can't handle 2 big issues at once, so I haven't mentioned it yet to him at all. He’s told me before that he feels like I expect too much from him or that I’m trying to change him or make him perfect, but honestly at this point I feel like what hurts me most is just constantly feeling like things are hidden from me.