(Posting on a throwaway account)
I’m now trying to process how much of the relationship was real, while dealing with the emotional impact, workplace fallout, and feeling invalidated after seeking help. I don’t even know where to start with this,
but I need to get it out because I feel like I’m questioning everything.
I (31M) was in an 18-month relationship with someone I genuinely believed was my person. I loved him deeply. I thought I was supporting someone through trauma, mental health struggles, and a really difficult past.
Now I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that almost everything I believed may not have been real.
I met him (26M) a couple of months after ending a long-term relationship. At first, he seemed nice but a bit inconsistent. Sometimes really engaged, sometimes distant. I didn’t think much of it.
One night he asked if I could pick him up just to cuddle. He was clear it didn’t mean sex. We ended up staying up for hours talking. I remember looking at him and thinking he was the most gorgeous guy I’d ever seen. He was exactly my type, and the chemistry was amazing.
We started seeing each other properly, but he remained inconsistent - cancelling plans, disappearing, then coming back like nothing had happened. I kept giving him opportunities to walk away, but he always reassured me he wanted to be with me.
Early on, he told me his previous relationship had been abusive. He said there had been domestic violence, that there was a DVO in place. He told me that was why he was inconsistent. That became the framework I understood him through. I was patient. Careful. Understanding.
There were red flags I noticed but didn’t act on.
At one point, he added my ex on Instagram and they exchanged disappearing photos. My ex told me he was flirting. When I confronted him, he denied it and sent screenshots, but his screenshots were missing messages that were visible in my ex’s.
I saw it. I just didn’t want to believe it.
A couple of months in, I ended things because I kept catching him in small lies.
That night, everything escalated.
I received a message from someone claiming to be his mother saying they couldn’t find him and were worried. At the same time, he started leaving me voicemails implying he was going to harm himself.
I panicked. I called him repeatedly until he answered and shared his location. I left the friend I was with and drove to find him.
I found him intoxicated in his car. I got him into mine and spent hours driving around trying to keep him safe.
The entire time, I was messaging his “mum,” asking her to come help. She refused, saying it would make things worse and asking me to take him home instead.
Eventually, exhausted, I let him stay at mine.
The next day, I was still messaging this “mum,” asking when they were coming.
At the same time, he had completely switched. He was affectionate, grateful, thanking me for saving his life.
No one ever came.
After he left, something didn’t feel right. I looked up his mum’s real number and called it.
She answered and had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
She had never messaged me. She didn’t know any of this had happened.
I sent her screenshots and blocked him.
That same night, his actual mum contacted me saying they couldn’t find him.
Then I started receiving voicemails from him on a private number saying he was going to take his life.
He was still sharing his location from the night before.
I didn’t go myself this time. I sent one of his friends.
When that friend arrived instead of me, he immediately became aggressive, stopped sharing his location, drove off, and then called himself an ambulance after taking medication.
Looking back, it feels like he was trying to get me there, and when he realised I wouldn’t come again, he escalated.
During all of this, he was also messaging my friends, my family, my coworkers, and even my employer.
It was chaotic and overwhelming.
After this, I was contacted by someone who introduced herself as his psychologist.
She seemed completely legitimate. She even had a website. His Mum (who I was still speaking with at the time) was also contacted by "her."
She confirmed everything he had told me: the trauma, the abusive ex, the DVO. She claimed he suffered from Complex PTSD, and that the situation was because his ex was harassing him. She encouraged me to reach out to him to support his recovery, even just as a friend.
She even sent me an “action plan,” and even gave updates on his “progress” in sessions.
Eventually, I went back.
I believed I was helping someone who had been through something real.
Over time, we ended up back together. Not long after that, I was contacted by one of his “friends” on Instagram. She apologised and said she had been the one messaging me pretending to be his mum, saying she “didn’t mean to cause harm.” He told me he had no idea she had done that and said he had cut her off.
Even at the time, parts of that didn’t add up, but I was so overwhelmed and traumatised that it felt easier not to question it too deeply.
He moved in quickly. We spent most of our time together. When things were good, they were really good. But there were always inconsistencies.
Early on, he had mentioned having a heart condition. Later, he used his fear of dying from the surgery he would need to get to excuse his volatility.
Then, in July, things escalated in a way I can’t ignore.
He was heavily intoxicated one night and tried to drive. I tried to stop him. He ended up driving toward me, clipping me with his car before taking off. I found my way home and he was there, belligerent.
I blocked the driveway with my car to stop him from driving intoxicated again. He rammed his car into mine multiple times trying to push it out of the way.
When I wouldn’t let him back into the house, because my dogs were inside and I was concerned, he became physically violent. He hit me, bit me, and pulled my glasses off my face and snapped them. I restrained him and called emergency services.
Police attended, but I didn’t press charges.
At the time, I believed it was the alcohol, his trauma - everything I had been told. I made excuses for him.
A while later, while he was away on holiday with his family, he was messaging me in a strange, intense way again, and I had a gut feeling something wasn’t right.
I noticed that a camera I owned for my dogs; something I had never even set up or plugged in since moving into my house two years earlier, was on and blinking at me.
I unplugged it immediately.
At the same time, he started blowing up my phone asking for access to my security cameras, saying he was worried about his car. I refused.
Over the following week, I tested it. Every time I came home, I unplugged the camera. Every time I left, it would somehow be plugged back in again. I factory reset it. After that, whenever I plugged it in, it would be unplugged again when I got home.
Later, I confronted him and got him to admit he had accessed it, but he downplayed it, saying it was “only once” and that it was because he was insecure. Even then, I tried to rationalise it.
Not long after this, things started to unravel.
The details about his psychologist didn’t add up. I started looking into it properly.
The website was gone. There was no registration on AHPRA. The clinic he claimed to see her at had never heard of her.
When I confronted him, he insisted she was real and said he had proof. I asked him to show me a booking confirmation, a receipt, anything but he couldn't. He casually said "just come to my appointment tomorrow." I felt so uneasy that I asked him to leave as I didn't feel comfortable with him in my house (I listen to too much true crime for that).
Over the following weeks, he drip-fed me “evidence” -screenshots, emails, explanations - just enough to keep me unsure.
I think in hindsight, I wanted to believe him. I wanted to be wrong as that was easier to accept than the truth. Even if I knew deep down.
We ended up in this cycle where I would pull away and question things, and he would draw me back in again.
This went on for months.
Until a few weeks ago, when he blew up at me over something minor via text. I quickly realised he was lying and told him to leave me alone. I blocked him properly, for good.
What I didn’t realise was that during that time, he had been inserting himself into my life in other ways. He had been messaging people around me; friends, coworkers, building connections behind my back.
One night, a friend of mine who had recently been hired as my manager, called me and asked me to come let her into the office after hours because she had locked herself out.
When I got arrived, they were both there together. Heavily intoxicated.
I said I was uncomfortable and was going to leave, but she asked him to leave instead and insisted we needed to speak. He left, but returned a short while later and started banging on the door. She opened it and barged through and started going through my things in my office. I told him to leave and he started screaming threats at me. Out the front I was yelling at him to leave and he got in my face and was screaming at me. We got in a physical altercation, and he left.
That moment broke something in me.
Not just with him, but with her.
She knew what I had been through, and still chose to build a relationship with him behind my back and bring him into my workplace.
Since then, I haven’t felt safe or comfortable at work. I don’t trust her, and I’ve started looking for another job.
After that, I went to the police and ran through everything with them. While I was there, they contacted him warning him to stop harassing me. They came back and told me “he seems reasonable” and that he told them he had no intention of contacting me and hadn’t since the workplace incident.
I told them I had messages (texts and emails) from him since then that proved that was a lie. I even received a threatening phone call a couple of days earlier from a stranger telling me to “leave him alone.”
The response I got was that he’s “young” and probably just has a “broken heart” and some insecurities.
It felt completely invalidating.
And now I don’t even know what to do.
I later confirmed that there are no domestic violence reports against his ex, and no DVO in place.
Even the trauma wasn’t real.
That’s when everything finally clicked.
The fake mum.
The fake psychologist.
The situations.
The lies.
The manipulation.
It wasn’t chaos.
It was control.
And I don’t know how to process that.
I feel like my judgment is broken. My intuition is broken. My sense of self is shaken.
I gave everything to someone I believed in, and I don’t even know who he really is.
I'm not just grieving a relationship, I'm grieving the reality I thought I was living in.
Is this as crazy as it feels?
How do you even begin to accept that the person you loved wasn’t real?
And how do you move forward from something like this without it completely destroying your ability to trust again?
It all seems so clear in hindsight and I feel so frustrated with myself for not seeing things clearly sooner. I feel devastated.
tl;dr: I was in an 18-month relationship with someone who claimed to have a traumatic past, a psychologist, and a history of abuse. Over time, I discovered the psychologist didn’t exist, key parts of his story were fabricated, and he had been manipulating situations (including fake messages, suicidal threats, and contacting people in my life) to control and maintain contact with me. There was also physical violence and invasive behaviour, including accessing a camera in my home.
Even after going to police, I felt dismissed.
I’m now trying to process how much of the relationship was real, while dealing with the emotional impact, workplace fallout, and questioning my own judgment.