“When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time” – that sounds like good advice.

But – from what you have said, it seems that you have known him a long time and believed him to be basically a decent person. His childhood background was likely to make it very hard (perhaps unimaginable for him?) to risk trusting someone to really love him – could the rejections in fact have been reflecting just how much he cared about you, but with deep underlying fears that you wouldn’t continue to care back, because of his early experience with his mother?

(For work, I was reading about attachment disorder in children, earlier this week – on/off attachment/rejection of others because it was what they grew up with and they don’t trust themselves to be loveable. Changing those patterns is slow, and hard work – it is possible, but not lightly taken on.)

I can’t begin to imagine how much you are hurting now. Take care of yourself – that sounds trite, but it is heartfelt. I hope there are things that you can do to nurture yourself.