<human>: Can you summarize the given text in a few sentences?

My boyfriend is a genuine, reliable individual with a strong moral compass. However, there is one aspect of his personality that causes me to mistrust him: his people pleasing tendencies and avoidance of conflict. We have been dating for eight months. 

He tends to keep deep, emotional things to himself. He'll make it appear like everything is okay, but when he eventually "fixes" things on his own, he'll finally open up and admit that things were excessively difficult in the past. For instance, recently he'd been having a lot of financial problems (as in only having $8 in his bank account at one time and relying on his parents on support), but I had no idea because he was still taking me on nice dates. I felt emotionally estranged from him during this time and the only reason he admitted it was because he got a better job offer. 

He also really struggles to please everyone and be a "nice guy." At the beginning of our relationship, he had an ex-girlfriend who repeatedly came onto him. He complained about her advances and said he wanted nothing to do with her, even as a friend. Eventually, after I pestered him, he finally asked her to back off. She did. A couple months later, I discovered that he sent her an excessively warm birthday message (nothing romantic, but still very warm). He was "just trying to be nice," but his kindness contradicted his previous statement that she's "annoying and I want nothing to do with her anymore." It has since been handled, but I was annoyed that he was being buffeted between being nice to her and respecting my wishes. 

Instances like this make me struggle to believe anything he says. Even simple things as like, "You're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen," get dismantled by statements like, "You know, my friend X is a very beautiful woman." 

He means well and he's been opening up to me a lot more lately, but I still feel kinda lost. Does anyone have insight about what I should do?
<bot>: My boyfriend is a chronic people pleaser and sometimes I question if he's being honest with me. How can I communicate with him better and learn to trust him more?