To give you a little bit of back story, ever since my parents divorced when I was 11, I have had issues with trust, control, and intimate relationships. All throughout high school, I avoided them. I would go on dates, but I only had one boyfriend for about a month, and I never kissed him or any of the others. 

Fast forward to April of 2015. I was at a turning point in my life, and I decided that I wanted to start putting myself out there. At 21, I felt ready to at least test the waters, and I felt like I had emotionally healed enough from my parents' divorce that I could at least think about trying to date. Having no prior experience actually looking for somebody to date, I did what any romantically inept millenial would do; I googled, "how did you meet your SO?" 

I came up with thousands of results, but one reddit thread in particular stuck out to me. At least a dozen people on that thread had met their SO on a site called OKCupid. I had never been a fan of the idea of online dating, but admittedly, I didn't really know how it worked. I was bored, I wasn't tired, and it was 2 in the morning, so I decided to do a 24 hour investigation of the concept of online dating. I made an account on OKCupid, fully intending to ignore all advances from anyone on there, as I was only trying to understand how the system worked. 

For the most part, I got what I expected. By 17 hours in, I was very done with the dozen men who messaged me asking for no strings attached hookups. They had obviously not bothered to read my profile, otherwise they would have known that this 21 year old LDS girl was not looking for a hook up, Or even a relationship really. 

I kid you not, as I was gutting my account, I get one more message. "Would you consider dating someone who is not LDS?" It caused me to pause. He had obviously read my profile, and he was being polite with good grammar. A 26 year old boy, not too bad for a 21 year old girl.

"Do you smoke, do drugs, or expect premarital sex?" I am not one to mince words. 

"Gross, no, and maybe if the time is right? ;)" 

I considered and in a moment of boldness, decided to give him my number on the condition that there would be no premarital sex. 

Fast forward again, and he is hilariously funny, he meets my every grammatical dream, and is wildly intelligent. A month later, our first date happens. We go to his house for dinner and watching movies. I'll admit, I was dumb and naive not to know that he wanted to do more than watch Daredevil. We didn't have sex or even kiss, but he was very handsy. I informed him the next day that we wouldn't be seeing each other again and that I was uncomfortable with how forward he was. 

He seemed legitimately heart broken, and apologized profusely, begging me to give him a second chance, if only because we clicked so well when we talked. I made another bold decision, and gave him a second date. And then a third. And a fourth. He was a perfect gentleman after that, and made me feel like a queen. In a story that involves him getting a very large henna butterfly tattoo on his arm, he was my first kiss. And my second. And my third... and eventually became my first REAL boyfriend. 

Fast forward to 8 months down the road, February of 2016. We had had our spats, but we worked through them. He gave me flowers regularly, he got me a queen sized bed for my birthday to replace my twin, he respected that I didn't want to have sex (though things were definitely progressing), and we decided we wanted to elope. He does the adorable thing and talks to both of my parents separately (as they are divorced) and asks their permission. I get an IUD, and a week later, we sleep together. I bawl my eyes out. He promises we'll never do it again. Until we do, two weeks later, and I bawl again. I'm torn between my religion, and the feelings for him that have developed.  

A week before we were planning on eloping, I get into a car crash, and we decide to postpone due to money reasons. Then the first bomb hits. 

It is late on a saturday night, and he has been acting weird all day. Asking me weird questions, and making weird statements. I ask him what is going on, and he asks me if I will love him no matter what. Being the pragmatist I am, I say "I cannot promise no matter what, but barring something like you cheating, committing murder, or being abusive in some way, I can't see why not." 

(He hates how much of a romantic I am not.) 

He proceeds to tell me that he has been telling only a partial truth the past 9 months. He's not 27, he's 37. I am in total shock. It's not the age gap that is the problem, it's the fact that he so easily lied to me for 9 months and that I would have been marrying him 2 days later had it not been for the car crash. I ask him why he thought he could just lie to me like that, and he says that he tells everyone he's 27 because that's how old he feels. He said he lost 10 years when his dad died of cancer, and he feels like he's living them over. 

I think to myself that that is the shittiest excuse I have ever heard (and doubt its legitimacy), but say nothing. I beat myself up mentally again for sleeping with him, because I lost my virginity to a liar when all my life I had wanted to wait for marriage. 

I didn't know why I didn't break up with him then. I think that I felt like I had put so much into it that I shouldn't break up with him over one lie. 

He asked me not to tell my parents or anybody because he didn't want them to judge him. I mentally fight with myself on that because I don't want to be lying to my family when they have done nothing but love and support me. 2 weeks later though, the choice is taken from me because my mom finds out through other sources his age. My mom is sad, my dad is livid. Trust is huge in our family and he broke it. But that's not the end of that. 

When my boyfriend finds out that she found out, he is hysterical. He says that people aren't to be trusted and that if it weren't for me, he'd move out of state and just start over. 

I feel like I can't break up with him now because I legit feel he might hurt himself somehow. 

Time passes. Relationships heal, but slowly. Painfully slowly. We are still sleeping together. I start noticing things that I didn't before, like how even though he lives extremely close to his mother and sisters, he doesn't seem to feel like it's necessary to ever see them. He almost seems to have a distain for his mother, even though he will claim he doesn't. If I ask about it, he gets closed off, and he says that nothing is wrong and he doesn't want to talk. 

Fast forward to now. There was a time where I didn't even wear my engagement ring because it made me remember that I was engaged to a liar. I wear it again, and I still feel like I'm deeply in love with him, but I am having a hard time completely trusting him. Everytime I think about marrying him now, I think to myself, "what else is he hiding?" 

I guess I mostly wanted to vent. I don't know if this is me having trust issues or if this is me having an intuition about the rest of our lives. If you got this far, I thank you and applaud you even! If you have any advice though, I'd love to hear it.