After 3 Years With My Man, I Discovered He Was a Compulsive Liar — Even His Mother Wasn’t Dead
"Jonah, why is a dead woman calling your phone?" I screamed, the phone vibrating in my damp palm like a heartbeat. The caller ID read Maa, a name that should have been carved in headstone granite, not flashing on a digital screen. He didn't flinch, merely adjusting his cufflinks with a terrifying, rhythmic precision that made my skin crawl.
Source: Getty Images
"Mia, darling, you're overwrought," he whispered, his voice as smooth as polished mahogany. "Put the phone down before you say something we both regret."
"Regret? You told me you buried her in 2015! You described the orange dust on the casket!" I fumed, my chest heaving as the phone rang again, relentless and haunting. "How does she even have my number? How did a ghost find me?"
"People find ways, Mia. It’s a misunderstanding," he replied, his eyes devoid of panic.
I took a step back, the smell of his sandalwood cologne suddenly cloying, like incense at a wake for a woman who was apparently still breathing. My world was tilting, the foundation of three years dissolving into a puddle of lies.
I met Jonah when I was twenty-seven, at a quiet jazz bar in Osu where the air was thick with the scent of grilled tilapia and humid ambition. He was charming, soft-spoken, and possessed an unusual thoughtfulness that felt like a warm blanket on a rainy night.
Source: UGC
"You're observant," I told him that first evening, impressed by how he noticed I preferred my malt with no ice. He didn't just listen; he absorbed every flicker of my expression as if he were studying a map of my soul.
"Loss makes you pay attention to the small things, Mia," he replied, his eyes darkening with a practised, elegant sorrow. He leaned in, the candlelight dancing in his pupils, making the world outside the jazz bar vanish.
He told me he grew up in a modest household, lost his mother young, and had been largely self-made since his early twenties. This tragic history explained his fierce independence and why he rarely spoke about his family or childhood home.
"It was just me against the world after she passed," he’d say, holding my hand tightly under the table. "I had to bury my childhood with her just to survive the streets of Kumasi on my own."
Jonah claimed he studied civil engineering but dropped out in his final year due to crippling financial constraints that broke his spirit. He then worked as a project coordinator, speaking with such confidence about infrastructure and timelines that I never doubted his expertise.
Source: UGC
"The blueprints of life are harder to read than any bridge design, Mia," he’d muse while we watched the sunset over the Atlantic.
He always had a poetic justification for his struggle, a way of making his failure sound like a noble sacrifice.
"One day, I'll build you a house that never shakes, because I know exactly how foundations fail," he promised. I used to lean my head on his shoulder, convinced I had found the rarest thing in Ghana: a man who was both strong and vulnerable.
Over the course of three years, he was remarkably consistent, repeating the same stories with the same sombre tone and heartbreaking details.
There was nothing flashy about his lifestyle, nothing that screamed 'fraud' or 'deception' to my trusting, naive heart.
"I don't need riches, I just need stability," he whispered during our second anniversary, gifting me a simple gold locket.
Source: UGC
I built my future on the bedrock of his supposed honesty, never imagining the ground was actually hollow.
The first crack in the porcelain was so small I almost missed it, a tiny splinter in a mountain of perceived truth. We were sitting on the balcony, the sound of distant music drifting through the evening air, when a mutual friend mentioned a cousin's funeral.
"I can't attend that, Mia, I’m no longer in touch with that side of the family since the fallout," Jonah said, looking mournfully at his drink.
"I thought you said that side of the family lived in London and sent you books?" I asked, a slight frown crossing my face.
"No, you must have misheard me, they are in Takoradi, and we haven't spoken in a decade," he replied effortlessly, squeezing my shoulder.
Months later, while we were stuck in traffic near the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange, he casually mentioned that very same cousin was currently working in a bank in East Legon.
Source: Getty Images
"Wait, I thought you were estranged? And I thought he was the one who died last year?" I pressed, my heart beginning a slow, steady thud against my ribs.
"Mia, you're getting confused again. That was a different cousin entirely," he laughed, but the sound was hollow, like a stone dropping into a deep well.
Then there was the peanut allergy, a fact I had lived by for three years, meticulously checking every ingredient in every kitchen. I had sacrificed my favourite snacks to keep him safe, driven by the fear of a closed throat and a hospital dash.
One afternoon, I spotted him at a roadside stall near the office, laughing as he tossed roasted peanuts into his mouth with reckless abandon.
"Jonah! What are you doing? You'll have an anaphylactic shock!" I cried out, rushing toward him through the heat haze of the street.
“Oh, this?” he said, laughing out loud. He looked at the packet and then back at me, and his face broke into a playful, boyish grin. "I think I outgrew the allergy last month, I forgot to tell you."
Source: UGC
"Outgrew a life-threatening allergy in a few weeks?" I whispered, the texture of the hot pavement feeling strange and unstable beneath my feet.
The most jarring moment came when we bumped into an old school friend of his at a wedding, a man named Kwesi who looked genuinely thrilled to see him.
"Jonah! My man! Congratulations on finally finishing school. I heard you topped the class!" Kwesi beamed, slapping him on the back.
Jonah laughed it off, steered me away quickly, and claimed Kwesi was "always a bit of a joker" who confused people.
"But he seemed so specific, Jonah. Why would he lie about your graduation?" I asked, the light in the room suddenly feeling too bright, exposing the sweat on Jonah's brow.
Source: UGC
"People see what they want to see, Mia, just like you see shadows where there are none," he snapped, his voice losing its usual melodic calm.
I began noticing how his stories adjusted depending on his audience, the dates shifting like sand, the details softening or sharpening to fit the mood. Every conversation felt like a game of chess where I didn't know the rules, and he was playing with two sets of queens.
The pressure began to mount, a heavy weight in my chest that wouldn't dissipate, no matter how much I tried to breathe through it. I started keeping a mental log of his inconsistencies, a dark library of 'misunderstandings' that were beginning to look like deliberate choices.
"Is there anything else you've 'outgrown' or 'forgotten' to tell me, Jonah?" I asked one night, the air between us thick with unspoken questions.
"Only how much I love you, which grows every day," he replied, but for the first time, the words felt like a script he had memorised long ago.
Source: Getty Images
The air in our shared apartment began to feel thin, as if the oxygen was being displaced by the sheer volume of his fabrications. I found myself becoming a detective in my own home, a ghost haunting the corners of a life that felt increasingly like a stage set.
I started cross-referencing his "work trips" with the news; he claimed to be surveying a bridge in Tamale, yet his boots were caked in the red dust only found in the coastal quarries of the South.
"The dust is different up North, Jonah, it’s paler," I remarked one evening, running my finger over the rim of his shoe.
"Wind patterns, Mia, the Harmattan carries the soil from everywhere," he countered, not even looking up from his laptop.
The tension reached a boiling point during a dinner party we hosted for my colleagues, where the smell of spicy jollof rice usually signalled celebration. Jonah was mid-anecdote, describing a harrowing scar on his shoulder, which he claimed was from a childhood fall in a village he'd previously told me he'd never visited.
"Wait, Jonah, I thought you grew up in the city, near the harbour?" my friend Sarah asked, tilting her head in confusion.
Source: Getty Images
"I lived there for a bit, but the accident happened during the summers I spent with my grandmother in the mountains," he replied, his eyes twinkling with a manufactured nostalgia.
"But you told me your grandmother died before you were born," I interjected, my voice cutting through the laughter like a cold blade.
The room went silent, the only sound being the rhythmic ticking of the wall clock, each second feeling like a hammer blow. Jonah just smiled, a slow, indulgent stretch of the lips that made my blood run cold.
"Memory is a fickle thing when you're grieving, Mia. Perhaps you should drink some water," he said softly, patronising me in front of my peers.
That night, after the guests left, the silence was a physical weight, a thick curtain of unspoken accusations. I watched him move through the kitchen, his movements so graceful and calculated, and I realised I was living with a stranger whose silhouette I merely recognised.
Source: UGC
Every "I love you" now felt like a counterfeit note, beautiful to look at but worthless upon closer inspection.
"Who are you tonight, Jonah?" I whispered into the darkness of our bedroom.
"I am whoever you need me to be, always," he whispered back, and the chill that raced down my spine was more honest than anything he had said in three years.
The collapse didn't happen with a bang, but with a simple, accidental vibration of a phone left on a marble countertop. I saw the caller ID—"Maa"—and the location tag: Kumasi. My heart didn't just break; it shattered into a million jagged shards that pierced my lungs.
"You told me she was dead," I rasped, holding the phone out as if it were a live grenade. "You told me you visited her grave every October!"
He looked at the phone, then at me, and for the first time in three years, the mask didn't just crack—it fell away entirely. There was no panic, no desperate scramble for a new lie; instead, a terrifyingly calm expression settled over his features.
"She’s a difficult woman, Mia, it was easier to tell you she was gone than to explain why I don't want her in my life," he said, his voice flat.
Source: Getty Images
"Easier? You made me cry for you! I bought you flowers for a grave that doesn't exist!" I felt the heat of a primal rage rising in my throat.
I began throwing questions at him like stones, and to my horror, he caught them all and dropped them into the abyss of his truth. He admitted he never studied engineering—he’d dropped out of a basic diploma in his first semester because the work was "tedious."
His "project coordinator" job was actually a low-level administrative role at a firm where he’d lied about his credentials to get through the door.
"Even the football, Jonah? You told me you played for the national youth team!" I cried, the absurdity of the lies piling up. "I hate football," he admitted, shrug-shouldered. "But men who play are seen as leaders. I wanted to be a leader for you."
"Why?" I screamed, the sound echoing off the cold tiles of our kitchen. "Why lie about the peanuts? Why lie about the cousin? Why lie about your mother?"
“Truth is a cage, Mia,” he said, and his voice dropped into a low, hypnotic register. "When I lie, I am whoever I want to be. I am safe. When I tell the truth, I am just a boy from a broken home with no degree and no future. Lying made me interesting enough for you to stay."
Source: Getty Images
I looked at him and didn't see the man I loved; I saw a void shaped like a person, a hollow vessel that had consumed three years of my life to fill its own emptiness.
The breakup was not a dramatic explosion of suitcases and shattered glass; it was an eviction of a ghost. When I told him to leave, Jonah didn't plead or cry or offer the grand gestures he was so famous for inventing.
He simply packed his things with a terrifying, efficient silence, as if he were striking a set after a final performance.
"I'm sorry you couldn't handle the story," he said at the door, his hand resting on his suitcase handle.
"It wasn't a story, Jonah, it was my life," I replied, my voice steady despite the trembling in my knees.
In the weeks that followed, the "karma" wasn't a bolt of lightning from the sky, but the slow, corrosive peeling back of his existence. I reached out to his workplace; they had already let him go after discovering his forged certificates.
I spoke to his "Maa" in Kumasi, a tired, kind woman who told me she hadn't seen her son in five years because he told everyone in the village he was a diplomat in Switzerland.
Source: UGC
"He was always a dreamer," she sighed over the crackling line. "But he dreams with other people's hearts."
I saw him one last time, months later, at a cafe. He was sitting with a beautiful woman, leaning in close, his eyes reflecting that same practised, elegant sorrow I once found so intoxicating.
I watched him mouth the words, "My mother passed when I was young," and I felt a wave of nausea so strong I had to turn away.
He wasn't a monster; he was a parasite of identity, moving from one host to the next, weaving a new cocoon of lies to keep the cold reality of his own mediocrity at bay.
I realised then that my "special" connection was just a script he'd perfected. I wasn't the leading lady; I was just the latest audience member.
I changed my locks, my number, and my perspective. I began the slow process of deconstructing my own memories, separating the genuine moments of laughter from the calculated moves of a master manipulator.
Source: UGC
It was like recovering from a long illness; the world looked different, sharper, less padded by the comfortable delusions he’d provided.
I spent three years loving a ghost, a man who was essentially a collection of well-rehearsed shadows. The most painful part wasn't the loss of him—for there was no "him" to lose—it was the loss of my own intuition.
I had ignored the whispers of my gut because the melody of his lies was so much sweeter. I learned that the most dangerous lies aren't the ones told to cover up a crime, but the ones told to build a pedestal.
Jonah didn't lie to hurt me; he lied to make himself worthy of a love he didn't believe he deserved as he truly was. But in doing so, he robbed me of the chance to love a real human being, flaws and all.
Now, when I meet someone new, I don't look for the "perfect" story. I look for the cracks. I look for the mundane, unpolished truths that don't always sound like a movie script.
Source: Getty Images
I’ve learned that red flags don't always scream; sometimes they speak in the softest, most comforting tones imaginable, convincing you that the rain is actually sunshine.
I am rebuilding my foundation now, not on the "unshakable" engineering promises of a liar, but on the messy, honest gravel of my own reality. I’d rather be alone in the truth than adored in a fiction. I find myself wondering about the woman in the cafe, and every other woman who will follow me.
Can you ever truly love someone if you only love the version of them they’ve curated for your approval? Or is love only real when the mask finally slips, and you’re brave enough to look at the stranger underneath?
This story is inspired by the real experiences of our readers. We believe that every story carries a lesson that can bring light to others. To protect everyone’s privacy, our editors may change names, locations, and certain details while keeping the heart of the story true. Images are for illustration only. If you’d like to share your own experience, please contact us via email.
Source: YEN.com.gh
