Dear Prudence,
I am writing to get your opinion on whether or not you think my boyfriend is trash talking me/speaking negatively about me to his friends. My boyfriend and I have been dating for almost 4.5 years. When we first started dating, his friends were nice to me. They are not the warmest people in general, but they were respectful and made efforts to connect. The longer we have been dating the less they seem to like me. I try to be nice, accommodate them, and make efforts to connect, but it is no use. While I believe my boyfriend is a nice person, he has some traits that make communication difficult, one of them being that he lies very easily to avoid conflict and to make himself seem smarter (he is very smart). He also struggles to take accountability and often sees himself as a victim. I believe these are trauma related responses from his childhood, but even so, they have caused friction in our relationship and made me distrust him.
For example, his friends rented an AirBnB for an event they put on annually. We thought his friends hadn’t arrived yet so we took a couple of our friends to see the place and to have a drink. When we arrived, his friends were already there. I should’ve told our other friends not to mind, but I felt awkward doing so since they followed us there. I figured we’d have one drink then leave. The vibe was cold as soon as we walked in. One of my friends was drinking very slowly and before he finished his drink my boyfriend came up to ask us to leave because one of his friends was trying to go to sleep and it was too loud. He said she was sending him angry text messages. I KNEW the part about her going to sleep was BS because I’ve been around them enough to know their patterns. What I didn’t know is that my boyfriend made up that lie, playing on the fact that I already have negative feelings about the friend he blamed it on, to get us to leave. He kicked us out. He could’ve just told me that his antisocial friend was hiding in their room and wasn’t going to come out until we left, and I would’ve understood. Would it have annoyed me a little? Sure. But it wouldn’t have involved him lying to my face, embarrassing me, once again making me feel like he chose his friends over me, and it would not have led to a fight.
My boyfriend, unprompted, also shared some messages with me from his sessions with his therapist where I could see she didn’t have a good opinion of me. I expressed my concerns to my boyfriend that I think he is painting me in a negative light to those closest to him, which he denied. In response he asked me to have a joint session with his therapist. I was reluctant to do it but he said it would mean a lot to him if I did so I obliged. The session was the opposite of helpful and only reaffirmed my suspicions. His therapist was very protective of him and very dismissive towards me. She said multiple things that implied that I am controlling and that my boyfriend is scared to be honest with me, which is why he lies. I may be a control freak about small things like how to feed our dogs properly, but I am not a controlling partner. It was very clear from that conversation that he has portrayed me as controlling, among other things, to his therapist.
We are in couples therapy as well. I had to beg and plead to get him to go. He didn’t realize how bad things were even though I openly expressed the hopelessness I was feeling. His reluctance was only exacerbated by his personal therapist telling him we didn’t need couples therapy. Ummm, how can you say that if at that point in time you’ve only ever talked to one partner in the relationship? When we first started couples therapy, my boyfriend would take notes during the sessions. I assumed they were just regular notes and I asked him if he wouldn’t mind sharing them with me. He told me they were personal notes and that he would need to edit them, to which I replied something like, “never mind, you don’t need to share them, I didn’t realize they were personal notes.” To my surprise he ended up sharing them with me anyways. I started reading them and I was shocked to see him saying mean things about me throughout the notes and even lying in the notes. I confronted him because I was so hurt, and he said it was him venting, blah blah blah. I did my best to accept this explanation, but when I vent I don’t make up lies nor am I needlessly mean about a loved one, so it has been hard to empathize with. If this is how he talks about me to himself, why should I believe he isn’t painting me in a negative light to his closest circle?
I have confronted him about this and he denies he is doing it. It is to the point that I don’t want to be around his friends because their energy towards me is so negative. He doesn’t want to confront their behavior head on. I suspect that is because some of their treatment towards me is based on things he’s told them, but he also hates confrontation. I am trying to figure out if our situation is fixable or not, or if I need to start thinking about an exit plan. What are your thoughts in general? What are your thoughts specifically related to whether he is painting me in a negative light to his closest circle?
—Is My Boyfriend Trash Talking Me to His Closest Circle