Dear Rose:

Here is a possibility as to what happened:

“He got angry at everything” in the relationship with you because he is still the angry child that he was. (We all are very much still the children that we were). His anger at his parents is why “he didn’t allow them to physically touch him, not even his mother. He kept to himself”  (your own observation).

In the relationship with you he kept “repeatedly asking me for reassurances that I was his and only his, if the things I told him about my past were true or was I just filling him up with lies and deceit” because in his childhood experience he was indeed filled with lies and deceit … by his mother or by both parents and/ or his parents told him repeatedly that other people are not trustworthy, have dishonest motivations, women being after a man’s money and so on.

You wrote that “he loves and respects his family very much”, and so, he is loyal to them in spite of their lies and deceits and/ or he is loyal to what they taught him about other people. This is why what his father told him about you was so powerful in his mind (and was major in leading to his withdrawal from the marriage plans, correct?)

If you would like to share more, if it may be helpful to you to get more on my input, you can elaborate on things you mentioned: what is it that his father said about you, what were your family’s concerns regarding the marriage plan, concerns they expressed to you and you then expressed to him, as well as what is his religious input about sex outside of marriage (this is regarding his suggestion that the two of you limit your relationship to a sexual one).

anita