'I gave up everything to care for my cancer-stricken husband, until I uncovered his dark secret.'

As told to Ann DeGrey.

I'd been with Rick* for three years, though most of that time didn't feel very stable. We were on and off so often that my friends stopped asking whether we were together. The relationship was always either in a dramatic high or an excruciating low. I lost friends over him, not because they abandoned me, but because they were tired of watching me choose someone who treated me badly.

"Why do you put up with him?" my best friend once asked me. And I didn't really have an answer. I think, maybe I just didn't want to be single.

Rick could be charming and funny when he wanted to be, but even in public, he lashed out at me if he found me annoying. In front of my friends, he'd make comments about my makeup being "too much" or joke loudly about how emotionally unhinged I was.

People laughed, but they'd always look at me with that expression that says, "What are you doing with him?"

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My friends said that if this was how he behaved in front of others, they all wondered what he was like behind closed doors. The answer to that is that he is usually much worse, but I learnt to ignore him when he was being awful to me.

The last straw was a night I'll never forget. I had a work function, something I told him about days in advance. It ran late, as they do, and by the time I got home it was raining. I walked up to the porch and saw all of my clothes were thrown outside. Dresses, coats, even underwear, was saturated. It looked like he was kicking me out, which was funny because it is my house.

When I got inside, Rick was furious about me being late and said I should "learn to respect his time." It was such a petty thing to do. Something in me finally snapped, just the humiliation of having to pick up wet clothes in the dark was enough. I told him it was over.

He looked shocked and said he was sorry for upsetting me. Then he told me he had something serious to talk to me about. He said he'd been hiding something; he was diagnosed with prostate cancer two weeks earlier. He said he had been too scared to tell me and didn't want to "burden" me.

I wish I could say I didn't believe him. But, of course, it didn't cross my mind that he might be lying.

I cancelled my plans to move interstate, something I'd planned on because it was only a matter of time before this relationship fell apart again. I told Rick I wasn't about to walk out on him and I'd be there to help him.

But then the weird sh*t started. I noticed he just didn't go to doctors' appointments and when I asked for details about his treatment, he'd be very gruff and tell me it was "none of your business." I didn't see any medication and I caught him drinking beer at least three times a week.

He didn't seem sick or in pain at all. When I asked about treatment schedules, he said something vague about "alternative therapy." When I asked to come to his doctor's appointments, he said he needed to go alone.

That was when I really thought he was making things up. I spent a lot of time researching prostate cancer and asking him appropriate questions, but he just replied, "I don't know, I just leave it to my doctor."

I spoke to one of his close friends one afternoon when I ran into him by chance. I asked if Rick had spoken to him about his diagnosis. But his friend looked confused. He asked me what I meant, so I told him Rick claims he has cancer. His friend almost smiled and said, "Rick doesn't have cancer."

It wasn't a dramatic reveal. His friend just felt sorry for me as he'd heard that I was being fed this lie. So that night, I confronted him. He didn't deny it, and he didn't really apologise.

He simply said he did what he had to do to make me stay. As if trapping me was logical.

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I realised then that he hadn't faked the diagnosis because he couldn't live without me. He faked it because he couldn't stand the idea of not controlling me.

It was such a revelation. I left that night, moved in with my best friend, and told him he had one week to vacate my house.

It took me a long time to stop feeling like an idiot. An idiot for staying for as long as I did, an idiot for believing his lie. But I am absolutely done feeling guilty now. I'm very much enjoying being single and looking after my cats.

If I never have another man in my life, I really don't care!

*Names have been changed to protect identities.

Feature Image: Canva. (Stock image for illustrative purposes).