Actually, not unless you consider his high school GF, a real relationship, after they broke up, he dated for a couple of yrs, before we met. So, I never really thought of it that way, maybe the ow showing him an idealized, fantasy version of life, made him begin to believe that real life was not really real life. The the fantasy was real life. He is a smart guy, how could he fall for crap like that? But, he also said I thought he was stupid, because I mentioned a few times that Duke University did a study once that showed that boys got their intelligence from their mothers, and girls got theirs from their fathers, so our S got his from me. I was joking with him, but he could not understand that. I never thought he was stupid, I have bragged about him to others, but I guess they were not the type to tell him the nice things I said about him.
I think what you said I should consider saying to him, is a good thing to say, because I do know what true abuse is. I even had a physically abusive BF once. But only once. Yeah, I think it's amnesia on his part, maybe.
On the plus side, he was talking yesterday, when we were working in the yard, about the things he wants to do to the landscape, things which will take years.
