I dated a guy for three years who told me he had cancer. I was with him through every treatment, every bad week. He shaved his head, even showing me hospital bracelets. One day, his sister messaged me out of nowhere and said he’d been lying the whole time. No cancer. No chemo. The bracelets? Stolen from a friend who actually had leukemia. He’d faked scans, forged letters from doctors, even staged “seizures” in front of me.
I confronted him. He cried, said he did it because he was scared I’d leave him—he thought a terminal illness would make me stay. I’d held his hand through fake radiation burns, skipped my own life to drive him to “appointments” that never happened. I mourned a future with him while he mourned nothing but his own cowardice.
His sister sent proof: medical records he’d Photoshopped, texts where he bragged about the scam. I blocked him, burned the get-well cards I’d written, and donated the wigs I’d bought to real patients. Three years of my empathy, weaponized. Never again will I love someone who needs a tragedy to feel worthy of it.
