Dear Nica

Almost a year ago, my boyfriend broke up with me to be with this other girl. She is nothing like me or him–he is a law student, I am in an MBA program, we are both very motivated, go-getter types. She is, like, this blonde dancer, hippie, crystal freak (stones, not meth). Anyway, seven months later he sought me out, told me that he wanted to get back together, that this girl was just an infatuation, that he was going through a phase, but she was not right for him, and now he had left her because he realized I was the one he wanted to be with. Because I was still in love with him, I took him back. Things were fine for the next couple of months, until I found out, through a friend of his friends (it’s complicated) that he did not leave her; she had broken up with him, and then he told me all those things about wanting to be with me. I have know for a few weeks now, and I don’t know what I should do. Should I confront him? Should I leave him? Things are fine now, he seems happy, but I just feel confused and horrible. And I don’t want to ask my friends, because they all told me not to get back together with him.

Miserable All Over Again

Dear Miserable,

If I had an ounce of cheerleader spirit towards your relationship with your boyfriend, I would blah-blah about how maybe the lifestyle of law school is not fulfilliing him, and he was looking for some sort of escape in an “other” whose lifestyle is exotic, and thus liberating to him, and how you both together could try to broaden/diversify your interests and activities, that is, if you were interested in doing so, but then a) I would sound like Cosmo, and, more importantly, b) I would be giving advice that might prolong your relationship with this person.

Your boyfriend is a creep. And you should dump him. First I am going to tell you all the reasons why he could have lied about getting dumped that you could theoretically use to justify his behavior, but then I will insist, time and again, that he is still a creep. And that you should dump him. So that’s my thesis statement, my 10th grade English teacher would be proud, and here it is point-by-point.

1) It’s possible that he lied about getting dumped because he thought that unless he made it sound like he *chose* to leave that girl to go back to you, then you would not take him back. There is a reason for that; I suspect that that is the case, otherwise you would not be so perturbed at discovering the truth. Now, you may justify his behavior and say that it is sweet that he would lie to win you back, but the fact of the matter is, he probably knew you would not have him under existing circumstances, so he misrepresented them, which, in my opinion, nullifies your decision to take him back as having been made under false pretenses. Dump him.

2) It’s possible that he lied about getting dumped because he has an ego problem that does not allow him to admit something verbally, even when it is a fact, if it threatens his manhood/ego/self-esteem/whatever metonymy you want to engage in here. It’s like when Dubya was trying to get out that quote “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,” but he just physically could not pronounce that second part, he was incapable of actually sounding out the words “shame on me” even in the context of a quote. It sounds like your boyfriend has a hangup similar to our Dubya. There is really nothing positive about that. Also, you would be wise to remember that quote in its original phrasing, before it got mangled by Dubya’s jaws. Dump him.

3) It is possible that he lied to you about getting dumped because he is a pathological liar, and has an undifferentiated vision of reality, in which truth, facts, lies and interpretations are all fused together into this lumpen mass from which the arbitrary narrative is spun. Or perhaps he engages in a Baudrillardian simulacra of truth, whereby the signifier (what he tells you) claims to represent the signified (what actually transpired), but in reality only represents itself (i.e. him, in the given moment, telling you what you want to hear). Dump him.

At the end of the day, it does not matter why he lied, not really. The gamut of reasons runs from being weak and cowardly in the best case scenario to being a cold, calculating, manipulative asshole in the worst case scenario. There is no way of you to find out whether what he tells you now is the truth, even if you confront him, because the lie is at the core of any discourse you can have; whether he admits to it, or explains it, or denies it, *it*–the lie–is already there, and it’s not going anywhere. Right now he has you where he wants you, and he is smugly reaping the benefits of his morally and ethically challenged behavior. By letting him get away with it, you are acting into his image of you, in which you are obviously not particularly respected. Dump him.

-Nica