Hey. I (m30) have worked in retail for over a decade and over the years I have formed countless relationships with regular customers and coworkers. I’m a very talkative person and love having long conversations while I help people bag groceries, pay their bills, and transfer money to loved ones at the service desk of a retailer we’ll call Lam-wart. I’m an openly gay man and talk at length about my relationships when asked about them, and I have a regular who comes to my counter often that we’ll call Paul. This regular is a man in his early 60’s who has an autistic adult son around my age that he worries about constantly. It’s clear from context clues and how he talks that his proud of his son but also worried immensely that his struggles are too difficult to get over without help from family. His son is gay as well and he often laments how his son has had a tumultuous love life and struggles to form lasting relationships. He especially worries that his son’s autism is the correlating factor in all of this. I try to make my customers feel at home and relaxed and dating gay autistic men was actually something I’d had plenty of experience with as my husband (at the time of me and Paul first meeting anyway) was autistic as well and shared many of his struggles. Paul even met my (now ex) husband on many occasions as my partner would often walk to my workplace to buy groceries and talk with me when work was slow. Paul went from a worried man to one reassured that his son could both find lasting love and be more independent and often comes into work with a big grin celebrating each of his sons victories and milestones in life. He’d ask me about my husband joyously and share his pride for his son with me eagerly as I’d bag his groceries or help him pay his bills. Even almost a decade later he and I still share these tender and happy conversations often as he lives close to my store and stops by frequently.
The problem is I and my partner had a messy divorce almost 5 years ago now, I won’t get too into our relationship and how it fell apart as that isn’t the point of this post but I haven’t been married in a long long time.
And yet I just don’t have the heart to tell him, I still act as though my partner and I are together, making up stories about vacations together and family drama, even going so far as to share photos of my annual vacations abroad acting as though my ex husband is the one taking the photos or just out of frame. It always makes him smile so big and he tells me often how before he’d met me he’d been so unsure if his son would ever be fully independent and without my showing him that other people have done what his son wants to do he probably would have lost hope years ago.
My question is: am I wrong to maintain the lie? I don’t know how he’d react, especially if I told him the divorce wasn’t even remotely recent. It would tear my heart out to tell him the truth. I’m not obligated to, we’re casual friends I only see at work so he’d never see me outside of the workplace. It’s easy to maintain it but I also just feel so guilty giving this guy hope over something that hasn’t been true in a long long time.
To make things worse I’m now with a partner I’m moving in with and planning to hopefully propose soon making this lie harder to maintain. So please reddit be honest with me, am I wrong?
Comments
OK so is it that you don’t want this nice older man to think that gay marriages with one autistic partner are doomed to fail? Tell him your husband left you for somebody else, he’s thriving and you are too devastated to talk about it.
I think you’re not wrong
The biggest part that stands out to me from everything you’ve said is the possibility that you need to explore how you’re feeling about this charade, not him or to be worried about his feelings. It is essentially harmless and encouraging to keep up the story for someone you have such a casual workplace relationship with. Does it get under your skin that you’ve kept this up, or does it not really bother you to keep up appearances for briefness sake? I don’t think YTA either way. It’s just a matter of how this is impacting you internally
Tell him there’s trouble in paradise and eventually lead it to divorce that is happening now, so you can then introduce your “new” partner. One day you will forget or make a slip of the tongue and it’ll come out and he’ll be pissed that you lied for so long. He doesn’t need to know the real timespan, just that you split for reasons other than his autism. YNW but don’t push your luck any further.
You’re a very talkative person? Never would have guessed.
I don’t know why you would even embellish your stories like that to a casual friend. I think you are doing that more for yourself than to protect this guys feelings.
Oh dear
You didn’t want to be paired up with his son, huh? Or you had problems processing your divorce?
Either way, this isn’t about the dad.
YTA for this weird assed lie that’s gone on for half a decade.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
At this point, I think I’d make up a reason why you guys decided to separate amicably so you can later introduce your next partner.
Lying is wrong, not helpful. You’ve FAFO.
I’m the mother of an autistic child so I understand Paul’s fears, and it was very kind of you to try to comfort him. I also understand how people come to have special and favorite customers, especially when encountering them repeatedly over the years. It’s not the same as a personal friendship, but it’s also more than how you would feel about a stranger that you assist at the customer service desk.
This is all very complicated now though. How will Paul feel if he discovers you’ve lied to him? What happens if he runs into your ex and mentions your recent vacation? What will your ex think if he finds out you’ve been telling all these stories about this imaginary happy life with him? You weren’t wrong to try to help Paul, but this white lie has inadvertently avalanched into something that could have a number of consequences.
What do you think would happen if you told Paul the following? “I was afraid to tell you this, but I also want to be honest with you. Paul and I split up, and while it’s sad, it also was the right thing for us to do at that point in our relationship.I’m sorry I lied to you, but I can tell how much you love your son and I didn’t want to add to the fears you had.” It’s true that this might be hard for him to hear, but this might be easier for everyone compared to some other possible scenarios.
I totally understand your reasoning, and I am in a similar situation. I’m a caregiver and I’ve been lying to the elderly lady I care for, because if she finds out I’m all alone now (bf dumped me before Christmas we were together 9 years she knows this) I know she’ll worry for me endlessly. I already have to tell her it’s my job to care for her. I feel like because it’s work in a sense we are doing our job to keep our clients/customers happy. That’s how I’ve been viewing it. At the end of the day, it actually isn’t their business, and if the lie is more comfortable since he will continue to ask and engage to heck with it why not.
You’re not wrong but at the same time you should come clean to some degree. You don’t have to give a fully accurate timeline but sooner or later you’re gonna slip up and he’ll be really hurt that you lied for so long and you’ll be hurt and wracked with guilt by the sounds of it. Also what makes you assume he’ll definitely never see you outside of your workplace, especially if you both probably live in that area. Just explain to him that things have gone south between you both but his autism and the traits that come along with it had nothing to do with it. Maybe tell him it was an amicable divorce and the 2 of you just grew apart over time. He’s just an old guy worried about his kid, there’s no need to add to that worry if you can avoid it, so come clean but sugar coat it for him.
No he is not in your core family and if/when you get married you can come clean then. Tell him you have some wonderful news to share and some not-so-great news about some sad information you’d been afraid to saddle him with.
Give him the good news first. Then tell him about the lie. Hugs!!
*ETA “about” in the last sentence
Tell the dad that your husband is leaving you to run off with someone else…. And your really upset over it, but dont want to give his son the wrong idea that it wont work for him because it would have if he didnt cheat and keave me
Go from there and if you and his dad decide to tell him make sure to stress how upset and blindsided you are…. Because son will understand that you really did love your partner and there woukd have been a happy marriage if your ex wanted it!
NW I wouldn’t tell him. It would shatter his happy little bubble and devastate him. I’m normally all for being truthful, but when the truth would hurt more than help … don’t do it. Let him keep believing the fantasy because your happy love life has given him hope for his own son, who he sees in you.
You’re not wrong, your personal life isn’t really his business. But definitely don’t ever tell him
You’re single because then he might try to set you up with his son
Are you worried telling him would give him false hope? Like he would then look at you as an option? I do get that- I would tell him if he’s high functioning but I can understand you not offering the truth to make it easier. <3
YNW — but mention some minor difficulties next time, and then eventually “divorce amicably” with your ex to Paul, and then mention your new partner a while later. Make sure Paul knows you just grew apart, that your split had nothing to do with your ex’s Autism.
I have worked customer service too, and I have had all kinds of ex partners and dead pets and so on that never existed, just because the person in front of me needed to feel heard, seen, and less alone. My coworkers used to joke that I must be an immortal, I’ve lived so many lives (am I secretly a Cullen was a common joke). But they ribbed me kindly, and our customers went away satisfied with the interaction.
Your charade with Paul is kind, and even healthy to a degree, as you shouldn’t really be sharing all the details of your life with every customer that walks by. Customer service is all about putting your best face on, every person, every time — it’s all acting, and it’s okay and healthy to separate reality from your relationships at work. But since you do want to share parts of your real life with Paul, then it’s just time to move the script to Act 2 of this particular drama. You know?
If you’re being hurt in any way by keeping up the facade, drop it. It’s really that simple. You get to be the most important part of the equation – it may seem like a small social kindness, but it’s causing you to live in the past and have a split narrative. That can be tough.
The only right thing is to do what’s best for you.
Yes, you are wrong, because maintaining your lie serves you and not the guy you keep lying to. You also lie to yourself as to why you are keeping this lie going. I think it has more to do with you not wanting the father of the autistic son to get any ideas of setting you up with him, where in fact, you really aren’t interested in the man’s son on any level. You certainly don’t want to feel obligated in meeting him in any way.
That doesn’t have to be bad. It just means you aren’t interested in bringing this man’s autistic son into your life. You want to meet and embrace people on your terms and not feel obligated to accept them at the behest of someone else. This is about you controlling your social environment as much as possible. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing.
Tell him you’ve become a throuple with the new guy and then kill off the old partner in a skiing mishap. Suddenly its just the two of you again. It’s just a soap opera at this point. It doesn’t really matter what you say.
You’re not wrong — your lie came from kindness. You gave a worried father hope, and that’s something good. But as your life moves on, it may be time to gently shift the story. You can still inspire him without holding onto something that no longer reflects your truth.