AITA for not telling my boyfriend about my plastic surgery after we’d already been together for over a year?

I honestly never saw this as some huge secret, but now my boyfriend is acting like I built our relationship on a lie.

I’m 24, he’s 26, and we’ve been together for about a year and a half. My relationship with my appearance has been complicated for as long as I can remember. My mom is a former model, and growing up, she was extremely focused on looks. I was put on restrictive diets starting around age 10, and by the time I was 16, she was already pointing out my “flaws” and encouraging plastic surgery to fix them.

By the time I was 20, I’d had a nose job, lipo, veneers, under-eye filler, and a Bobs job.

And none of that happened in a healthy mindset.

The way I was raised, mixed with all that pressure, eventually led me into treatment for body dysmorphia and disordered eating. I had a pattern of either binging or starving myself, and I’d been on and off prescription diet pills since I was 15. My boyfriend does know some of that part. He knows I’ve had treatment for disordered eating. But I never told him about all the cosmetic work I’d had done.

Not because I was trying to trick him.

From my point of view, it always felt deeply personal and honestly embarrassing. The work was done young, and it’s all pretty subtle, so it never felt like some big reveal I owed people. I never outright lied. I never said I was completely natural. He never directly asked me if my face or body had been changed, so I just… didn’t bring it up.

Then recently, I was showing him photos of myself from when I was around 14.

He commented on how different I looked, especially my nose, and that’s when I admitted I’d had a nose job. Once I said that, he asked if I’d had anything else done. So I told him everything.

And that’s when things got ugly.

He got upset and told me I had basically been lying by omission. He said I let him believe I was natural and that it bothered him that I was “fake.” That word hit me hard. Because all I could think was, after everything I went through, after how much shame I already carry about this, now the person I’m with is reducing me to fake.

That was the turning point for me.

Because suddenly this wasn’t about whether I should have mentioned my surgeries sooner. It became about judgment. It became about him making my past sound gross, deceptive, or lesser. And I just don’t see it that way. I didn’t hide this to manipulate him. I hid it because it’s painful, awkward, and tied to one of the hardest parts of my life.

Now he says he needs time to think because his trust is shaken.

And I’m sitting here wondering how this turned into a trust issue at all. I can understand him being surprised. I can even understand him wishing I’d told him earlier. But acting like I’m some dishonest person or calling me “fake” feels cruel and completely misses the bigger picture of why this is such a sensitive subject for me.

Looking back, I still don’t feel like I lied. I feel like I kept something private until it came up naturally. And more than anything, this whole situation has made me question whether he actually sees me with empathy… or just through his own idea of what I should have been.