I (28F) truly adore my partner (30M). We’ve been together for a little over 3 years now, and I’d really like to make it work and be with him for the rest of our lives. Our issue, though, is that he either doesn’t tell me important things that he should tell me, or he straight up lies about things that he does that he knows would upset me.
These things range from small (not telling me about a purchase he made when I explicitly asked him about it) to quite big (having lunch with a colleague that he knows I’m uncomfortable with [we’ve both spoken about her clearly having feelings for him]).
There’s a clear pattern here, and when we talk about it I can understand why he lies — his past relationship was quite toxic and she would spend hours yelling at him and insulting him for the smallest transgression, and so I can see that he worries our relationship could become that. But he knows me by now, I’m the last person to raise my voice or get unnecessarily upset, I just prefer to know these things before they happen so we can talk them through. And yet it keeps happening.
I’ve suggested relationship therapy which he seems kind of opposed to but is willing to do it. I just don’t know what else to do at this point. We’re taking a pretty big step in our relationship soon (keeping it vague to not identify me) and I want us to build a strong partnership before that.
Tl;DR — my partner breaks my trust fairly often and I’d like solid ways of working together to rebuild this trust and create a stronger partnership.