Unfortunately they are not as rare as I thought when I came around to slowly realizing all his stories were made up. He also claimed to have served with Israeli special forces and pushed an 'ex-Nazi' out of an airplane to his death over Mexico.

I don't know if my ex suffers from self-esteem issues or if he is just a genuine con artist for whom truth is whatever is convenient for him at the moment.

That's clever in a way to tie your memory to characters in a movie and the plot behind it.

I don't think all people who steal valour are psychopaths or have a personality disorder but I would bet a fair percentage do.

One of the favourite phrases of my ex was 'Trust has to be earned."

Finding these videos of him talking about his 'ptsd' and so on has brought back a lot of the confusion I had. It was devastating to realize that he was lying about who he was so then i realized that the whole relationship was fake too.

I was quite ill at the time I fell for him and the experience has put me off of the idea of getting into another relationship perhaps for good because I really lost trust in my own judgement.

In a way it is kind of a relief to see all these other people fall for his con too.