I am also new to this, but I really want some other insights. Ive been living with my boyfriend for 7 years now, we are best of friends and we also created a very open relationship. About 2 years ago he told me about a girl (very close to us) that he slept with and continued too. At first it was very hard for me but I then found someone that tickled my fancy so I told him about this guy. Some months later this guy starts smsing me and we really hit it off (never got together)My boyfriend was aware of my every step as I never kept anything from him. He then also got a new girl (also very close to us) and went and slept with her a few times. The day before Xmas we got into a big fight and my boyfriend told me that all the girls and even the guy that I was chatting with never existed, it was all him. Ive been living a lie all this time. I really feel empty inside because I feel that he played with my feelings. He had no right to do that.
Am I overreacting?

That is about the strangest thing I've ever heard.

IF what he says is true, do you have any idea why he created two relationships for himself, and one for you? Three people that didn't exist? Was this some sort of test to see if you could actually handle an 'open' relationship? And if you had already both agreed to the multiple partners, why did he have to make them up in the first place.

I presume that it was the past two years of this 7 year relationship that the 'open relationship' part was agreed upon.

And how can you be so sure that he hasn't had relationships with other women.

It is a strange thing, in my opinion, for a man to say he's had two 'open' relationships that you agreed to, only to turn around and say that they were fake, and never happened.

Do you have any idea at all, why he would have done this?

Strange and extremely cruel to play those types of mind games, and maybe a lie told in retaliation during the fight, I don't know, but if he could fool you by being someone else, I would be cautious of this online searching for partners. More so I would never believe anything out of his mouth after a revaluation like that and would be long gone, which may have been his intent anyway. I don't know, not a lot of facts to go on.

What was the fight all about that started all of this?

Have to agree with others, it is a very odd thing. This guy is a master manipulator and he just enjoys playing with you heartstrings. Please rethink continuing on your relationship with him, he doesn't seem like trustworthy person. It's not going to end nicely for you.

This doesn't sound like a loving,respectful relationship. Its more of a relationship of convience. Your both looking for the right one to complete you outside the relationship!!

Why would you want to stay with someone who would go out of his way to hurt you like this. Wow, isn't it sad to know that most complete strangers wouldn't not lower themselves to the point that your so-called boyfriend did to make you feel like ****!!

Its time to move on, and learn that a real relationship is give and take on for BOTH individuals. That doesn't mean that YOU SHARE your man!! Good luck

Thank You Jake for you answer. He said it was to better our sex life, but was the "open relationship" not already a reason to better the sex life?
I honestly can't say if his relationship were fake but I do know that mine is. I saw the email address that he created with the guy's name and also all my messages that I wrote, and the email address belongs to my boyfriend.
As for me being able to handle a "open relationship" I think it was more than proven that I could. He had 2 girls that I had no problem with even though they were suppose to be my friends.
I know this sound very weird having a relationship like this but it really brought us closer to each other. We shared everything, and it did indeed better our sex life. That is while I thought it was all real.

The overall impression that I have bush, is that what you thought you had with your partner, was not what it turned out to be. It was a strange collection of story lines that manipulated you into thinking that what you had agreed to with your partner, was real. He was playing the part of a story teller, making up sexual encounters with other women. What he failed to disclose, was that his story telling, the situations he created, and the women he had sex with, were all fiction.

If what he did was convince you that it was all real. This in turn, the story itself, you bought as being real. The result of what he did, according to you, improved your sex life. That is, until you realized that the work he created, was fiction, and not fact.

He used you, and played a game with you, that only he got the benefit of, although you participated with a fake partner of your own, and unwittingly kept the game going. But, it was really only to his benefit to have you believe everything was real.

It is one thing to be mature enough and committed enough to take on the emotional exercise of adding other people to one relationship. When that is done, in my opinion and experience, and sex with multiple partners under the umbrella of 'open relationship', it seldom works out.

But, to create a work of fiction that involved you believing you were now in an entirely differently type of relationship with him, only to realize eventually that nothing had changed except his work of fiction (that you believed), then it goes from an honest agreement to change the relationship, to one of being psychologically used and emotionally manipulated. Both negatives.

Now you know how manipulative he is, and how easily he can lie, and how deceptive he is. Regardless of an open relationship or not, he changed the rules of the game by exposing that part of his character that allowed him to be this way in the first place.

All I can add to that is that had my partner done that to me, and eventually came clean and said it was only to improve our sex life, I would send him, his stories, and his imaginary women, straight to the curb.