Long Distance Relationships (LDR) Support Group
This community is a place where you can share your long distance challenges and triumphs, vent, give long distance tips and ideas, or just get support from people like you who are going through the same thing. Whether you live a couple hours away or a couple continents away, the specific challenges that face a long distance relationship are unique and difficult.

If he gets defensive of his privacy and makes like he can have secrets from you, then I would start to feel uncomfortable. But if he was just responding to the idea of not wanting to deal with unnecessary drama, I believe he probably didn't mean anything badly by it.
"if he was just responding to the idea of not wanting to deal with unnecessary drama"- yes that is exactly what he was responding to because he's had overly jealous girlfriends in the past. In truth, in our relationship I am fine with him once in a while dropping a hi to an ex, or her saying hi and him responding and I don't need to know all the details of the conversations. What bothers me is that he thinks it's ok to make promises that he knows even at the time of making, that he's not going to keep. Why make a promise you KNOW you are not going to keep.
Promises are also hard, no matter what the intentions of the person are. Life has a habit of changing things. For example, everyone who gets married says they promise to have/hold forever; but in reality, half of them get divorced. On the one hand, people shouldn't make promises you have no intention of keeping. Even promises with the best intentions often lead to disappointment
Perhaps it is better to discuss things in concrete terms in the future. For example, if an ex did contact him, there is a big difference between "hey, happy birthday" or "Your look really happy in that fb picture with your GF, I'm happy for you" and "I'm in town next week, dtf for old times?"
So, rather than talk about how he would tell white lies to save your feelings, ask him what he thinks is appropriate and inappropriate behavior.