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The original was posted on /r/relationships by /u/TwistedBird2 on 2023-12-22 22:54:29+00:00.

My ex and I (27) broke up because he lied to me about getting a job. We were living together and he wasn’t working. We agreed that if he didn’t get a job (ANY job) in the next 30 days, he would move out. On the 30th day, he told me he managed it - he had applied as an Uber Eats driver, gotten accepted, and would start soon. He just needed to receive an ID in the mail. One week passed, no mail. 2 weeks, no mail. He said he inquired about it. Week 3, no mail. It felt off, so I asked him if he even got accepted to the job, and he confessed that he had never even applied. He said he lied from a deep shame of letting his depression prevent him from doing simple things like applying for work. As a gf, I can work with depression and shame; I stayed with him through 2 years of it, but once lying starts, I’m done.

I ended our relationship of 3 years, and a few months later began dating my bf (who knew why I broke up with my ex). Also, fun fact, they had the same name.

He was very different from my ex. My ex and I never fought, but my bf and I had crazy spiraling fights bc a trauma from his ex made him very fearful I would lie or cheat. I ended it after 5 mo. He sent me a letter saying that it was his fault and he would do x,y,z to make it work if we tried again. One reason he gave was that his life was changing for the better, one thing being “I’m going to start working at a hospital as a part-time job”. I agreed to try again, and I asked him on our first day back together how it was going at his hospital job. He said that he still had to hear back from them if he got the job.

I got very upset because it seemed so similar to my ex. I made big relationship decisions like living together or getting back together, partly based on info they gave me about their work. My bf said I had interpreted his phrase "“I’m going to start working at a hospital” incorrectly - he meant he applied and would probably get accepted, but I took it as him already having a start date. I let him convince me that I had read into his words incorrectly and that my intense feeling that “something was off” was coming from my ex trauma. The coming weeks, I asked if he heard a decision from the hospital, he said no, that that was weird, and that he would follow up with them.

1.5 mo later, things started going bad with us again and he confessed that it was his fault bc he was stressed from living a lie - he had never even applied to the hospital. He said that he intended to do it right after sending me the letter, but was too stressed to do so. Then hearing I wanted to get back together, he was distracted. Then, he was ashamed.

Two boys of the same name, lying to me for weeks about waiting to hear back from a job when neither ever even applied, and their reasoning being shame. Am I partly to blame in this dynamic? Could there be something about me that makes my boyfriends fear my judgment, with the only option being to lie? If I am partly to blame, does it make their lies forgivable?

tl;dr Both my exes lied to me about the same thing in the same way. Do I have some role to play in this?