Wow...lies, cheats, treats his parents like crap, threatens violence...sounds like great husband material to me. /sarcasm

Your advice is spot-on, Amy. She needs about forty more tons of self-esteem before she dates ANYONE, let alone this loser.

POWER item name, Amy, POWER. Execellent. I love that stuff. Not racks, blog item names. OK racks too.

I'm automatically suspicious of anyone who calls someone "Baby" when explaining something like this.

Unless his father is a child molester and his wife is covering for him, the way he talks to his parents should be sufficient to tell him this guy is an abusive dickhead, regardless of how he talks to her.

I give him props, though. How many letters do you get, Amy, from girls who tell you their boyfriends never say they love them? Sounds to me like he knows which buttons to push. She's high on mush. So high, she doesn't see what should be pretty clear. "He can be so romantic..." when he's not calling his parents every four-letter word in the book. Even barring his parents' testimony, she herself says he's a liar.

How many warning signs does she need?

I wonder if she truly needs a man...or just in constant need of reassurance. If it's the latter, get a fucking dog, nature's consummate ass-kisser, unsurpassed in making someone feel adored. In any case, Branden's book was a good suggestion.

Agree with Patrick. If he talks to his parents like that, it won't be long before he's treating the LW the exact same way.

Cats are a better education tool for dealing with a partner Patrick, very affectionate but always on their terms. Once you've learned to stand up to a cat, you might just about be ready for a relationship.

On the other hand, bossing a dog is very good training for dealing with children...

I've had both dogs and cats. Presently, I have a cat, Seraph, that I rescued. But note, I didn't suggest a dog as a learning tool to deal with a partner. I said a dog is the master at making someone feel adored. Which they are.

Ah, I see - yes if she wants to self-medicate a dog (for unconditional love I would recommend a labrador or weimaraner) would fill that need better.

If the LW is reading I apologise if this seems dismissive of your situation, it's not fun when you want to believe there is something there and they won't live up to their side of the bargain - I've been on both sides of that and I sympathise. But lame excuses and abusive behaviour don't cut it, it either changes or you walk.

Didn't see the link there for a second - cute kitty Patrick!

I've had cats for about 18 years and I don't think I've ever learned to stand up to them...

Comedy aside, the above is all correct. The guy is a liar, and furthermore, lying appears to come easy to him. Get far, far away and stay there.

"Once you've learned to stand up to a cat, you might just about be ready for a relationship."

That's funny. My cat is 20 pds and she's really dominant...like a bull dyke. I'd rather stand up to my boyfriend.

Cute kitty, Patrick.

You're cat is 20 pounds??? That's a mountain lion, LW. Does animal control know you have one?

I'm more of a dog person, but when the evil bastards who lived in the next apartment were evicted, they just left and locked the cat inside. It was two whole weeks before the landlords came to clean out the apartment. Once I discovered her wandering around the apartments, I had thought they simply lost her, so I kept her for them.

Of course, they never came back. This was in 2001. And I had since learned from a veterinarian that according to the laws of Florida, if you feed an animal for ten days, you're the owner. (I assume he meant "domesticated animals," not that I would have ownership of an alligator, for instance, just because I was throwing it dead chickens or something. I don't feed alligators, by the way. Just an example. Some people in this state do. And they're damned fools who put the rest of us in danger.) So, having cared for Seraph for ten days, I'm the rightful owner.

They took the trouble to have her fixed and declawed (the latter I'm against), but just abandoned her. My upstairs neighbor confirmed that she had been abandoned.

She's a very affectionate cat. She loves to be held. She can be a pest when I'm trying to sleep. If she wants to be petted, and my hand happens to slide out from under the blankets, she'll nudge my hand. She seems to think hands exist for the sole purpose of petting her.

It's very funny when I'm in bed and I slide my hand under the covers. She sees the moving lump caused by my hand and her eyes suddenly dilate and she attacks it. No matter how many times I try to show it's just my hand, she thinks it's a mole or something.

I'm thinking she needs to have kids with this gem RIGHT AWAY. He sounds like a keeper

Amy rox! This is my new favorite :)

First thing I noticed is what Ltw points out. Guys calling me baby is usually a red flag. The rare times beloved does, it is just right.

Thinking back to my Loveline listening days I think Adam would have accused the guy of doing this on purpose to her to bring out the drama. Also sounds like the LW likes her drama in heavy doses too.

And anyway cats are evil

http://www.cracked.com/article/226_6-adorable-cat-behaviors-with-shockingly-evil-explanations/

and that why I like them

"Dogs have masters; Cats have...staff"

Saw that somewhere and loved it!

LW--if he's lying to his parents, why in the hell won't he lie to you too? Think about it. People who are consistently dishonest make their way through life by lying. They're called *liars* If you think otherwise, sorry, honey, but you're living in fantasy-land.

"Recently, my boyfriend asked me to clean out his car..."

He asked you to clean out his car? And you did it? I don't mean to sound flippant, but that's weird -- maybe he'd forgotten about the bra, but it sounds almost as if he wanted to get caught, maybe just to see what you'd do.

My eldest is marrying a nice young fellow next year. When people ask me if I like him, I say yes, because he's good to his mama and he works hard. If he wasn't good to his mama, I'd be less confident that he'd treat my daughter right. LW, if your boyfriend's family are good people, and he mistreats them, he's not going to treat you well either. You sound like a nice lady -- don't waste your time on someone unworthy. Don't worry about losing the deposit on the reception hall or any of that stuff -- they're nothing compared to your future.

This guy sounds like someone right out of HBI's "Manipulator Files". He must have a big dick or something. But the LW needs to figure for herself out that sometimes a big dick, is just that.

You know, there's an old saying that I find holds true a lot of the time in real life: you can tell a lot by a man by how he treats his mother.

The guy I was with (briefly) before DBF treated his mother like crap. Demeaned her at every turn, and she never stood up to him. He tried it with me once and I was out of there.

And yeah, cats...I have an insane calico that runs the house. :D

Let's face it...being in love feels good. Whether it's the oxytocin rush or being the center of someone else's universe for a change, it's addictive. So we fool ourselves into thinking all kinds of crazy things despite the truth in front of us. Every junkie does, even love junkies. :)

Like believing in psychics, we want so much for it to be true and to line up with our own personal brand of mental romance, that we even tolerate the abuse and manipulation.

Life is too short to be treated badly. The advice from Amy and the others here is spot on, but until you're ready to accept the truth, the fantasy wins out. I second that recommendation for Branden's book as well as stuff by Harville Hendrix (the Imago guy).

Until you're ready to love and be kind to yourself, you won't break the patterns that keep attracting you to the same type of lying, abusive people. Takes a lot of tough love, willingness to open up to it and hurts like hell, but you owe that much to yourself.

I'm from a family of 6 raised by a single mom. One of the lessons I learned from that upbringing (besides that my mother is amazing) is you're much stronger than you know. Own that, don't be afraid to be alone, be kind to yourself and others, don't eat someone else's crap, and you'll be much better off. OK...my cat taught me the crap part, but it's still true.

"Recently, my boyfriend asked me to clean out his car..."

I think this was the first red flag also. I mean really? You can do that? I'm pretty sure if I would have asked any women I've ever dated to clean out my car the response would have been short and unprintable (and well deserved).

I do disagree about his motives though. I come down on the side of stupidity.

This one again makes me think...if people would just re-read what they've written to Amy, I believe they could answer their own questions. Seriously. Every part of that letter screamed that he's a loser. Also, the fact that she felt the need to emphasize that he's only done a FEW romantic things because they've only been dating for a few month. Why are they getting married in such a big hurry? Slow down, figure out if its a good idea or not. I speak from experience. I've been divorced once, and I'm in no big hurry to jump back in the frying pan again. I hope the LW gets the giant injection of self-esteem that she needs.

Oh dear, she's about to marry another abuser, and this one is likely to be worse than the last one.

Run, don't walk, away from this dude, and get yourself some support. If you stay with him, plan on being yelled & sworn at too, having your car vandalized, and perhaps your personal safety threatened someday.

You may think now you'd be unhappy without him, but you're going to be much more miserable if you keep this loser around.

Once again, Amy, you've completely nailed it.

And with such verve!

Renee,

My theory is they are too blind to read.

Patrick, very nice of you to take in Seraph like that, lots of people would just take her to a shelter and not think about what happens after. One of mine (I have three, yes crazy cat person) was a rescue from a share house where the original owner had gone overseas for study - he was still sending money for food, vet bills, etc, but they mistreated her and just locked her in the bathroom most of the time. The landlord found out about her and I got called to go pick her up, it took me three months of picking her up then putting her down again before she wouldn't turn and sink her teeth in to the bone - just to teach her she wouldn't be hurt. She's still pretty feisty but she got very affectionate very quickly (in fact she's a big baby really if you don't mind the odd light scratch), still judges herself the boss of the house though. We have the occasional roughhouse over that.

They declawed her? I've heard of it but never seen it - mine love to mock fight with me and I can't imagine depriving them of their chief weapons. I suppose the sort of people who do that are the sort that walk and leave her to starve too.

Lovelysoul, is yours a Norwegian Forest Cat or a Maine Coon? They're the only ones I know of that grow to that size, I have one that despite being a mixed domestic has grown into a monster with a kitten face - something like 2 feet long minus tail and 14 pounds. Shows all the traits of a Maine Coon (if she hadn't been found in a gutter I could probably show her), one of those genetic variability things I guess.

Sorry Amy for hijacking this thread into a cat discussion, but there's so little to say about the LW's situation that hasn't been said. Could be worse, we haven't done any pussy jokes yet.

As Dr. Laura says-you can marry this guy-just have your tubes tied. Seriously.

No kid should be brought in to this mess. And society doesn't want to spend money on you extremely poor decisions. Such as potential welfare, medicaid, mental health for your child etc... The writings on the wall... Are you reading it?

Ltw: They declawed her? I've heard of it but never seen it - mine love to mock fight with me and I can't imagine depriving them of their chief weapons. I suppose the sort of people who do that are the sort that walk and leave her to starve too.

People claim that they do this to protect their furniture, but it's a little extreme. There are ways to keep cats from clawing the furniture that aren't quite so drastic.

Anyway, they should call declawing what it really is: mutilation. They don't remove the cat's claws. They remove their toes at the first joint. It's like cutting your fingernails by chopping off your finger tips.

Cats need their claws. Not just as weapons, but they provide anchors so the cat can stretch. They're also a defense mechanism against other animals, as cats use them to climb trees.

A cat without claws is now an indoor cat as it takes away their first line of defense.

(Seraph is the name I gave her, after the six-winged celestials mentioned in the sixth chapter of Isaiah. I have no idea what they called her before she became mine, nor do I care. I'd just as soon not give her an association with the lowlifes who originally owned her.)

While I completely agree that she should run from this jack a$$ as fast as she can,I want to know what everyones problem with him asking her to clean his car is? My boyfrind asks me to clean his occassionally simply beacuse I do a more thorough job. But back to LW's predicament. Hopeless Romantic I've watched a lot of girlfriends bounce form one bad relationship to the next, before you do that I suggest you try and see a therapist to figure out why you feel the need to say with these creeps.

Is this woman so uneducated and dense that she needs to write to an advice columnist to find out what she should do with this loser? Get rid of the guy, and then go see a counselor on why you can't see the obvious answer that a bunch of strangers on this blog can see.

Better yet, let me have her phone number and I'd be glad to console her...

So it's December... Is she still planning on marrying him or is the deed done?

Sounds like my ex-he always had an excuse/line/story of some sort for suspicious behaviour and then tried to make ME feel bad for questioning him. It's been almost 3 years since I left him for good (after catching him cheating in the act) and life has improved exponentially for me. It took me a long time to recover and alot of hard work on myself but H.R. needs to learn what I did: It's better to be alone (even forever) than to be in shitty relationship.

Ditch this guy pronto H.R., and focus on making yourself happy and you won't need to have a guy feed you meaningless lines to feel good about yourself!

jsmith: My boyfrind asks me to clean his occassionally simply beacuse I do a more thorough job.

It sounds like your BF is asking you to clean his car because he admires your work. The difference is, LW's jerk boyfriend is probably doing it because he wants her to be a servant to him.

*Sigh*....

I... uh... hmmm....

Just... *sigh*....

(That last comment was about all I could think to say to whoever posted the two random abusive posts that seem to have been deleted. I didn't just imagine them, did I?)

I can see how, under certain circumstances, a reasonable person could reasonably ask his or her reasonable SO to clean out his or her car as a favor or a trade. ("I'll clean out the catboxes if you clean out the car." "Sold!") But what type of moron asks his fiance to clean out his car that he uses for illicit sex? That's what's getting me here. If you're using your car as a cheating sexmobile, you should be working overtime to remove all the evidence yourself. It seems to me that, not only is he cheating, part of him wants her to know that he is, because she should love him anyway, because he's just that cool. If he instead insisted that she not clean out his car because he claimed to be VERY nitpicky about it, and she accidentally found a black bra while fumbling for her wallet that had slid under the seat, I wouldn't think any more highly of the guy's morals, but I would think more highly of his basic intelligence.

Hi, I haven't written here before, but I've been reading these columns for a long time.
If my fiancee EVER had another woman's bra in his car, he wouldn't even have time to get his ring back.
This woman is either really stupid or really desperate, because know normal person would be dumb enough to fall for "Baby, I bought that for you, it was supposed to be a surprise".
If it's not your size-IT'S NOT YOURS!