He Didn’t Want to Tell Me He Was Seeing Someone Else Over Text

I had gone on a few dates with this guy I met on a dating app. We had decided to meet for dinner on this particular night.

He had an issue with his car and had gotten a ride with a friend, whom he invited to join us for dinner.

Maybe that should have tipped me off.

His friend was his ex. She seemed like a pretty cool woman. I think we have a lot in common outside of this guy.

After dinner, he suggested that we all go around the corner to this bar for a drink. So, the three of us were sitting in a lounge area of a bar he recommended with our drinks, talking about nothing in particular, when he casually mentioned his girlfriend.

His girlfriend.

On our date.

He kept talking and I didn’t interrupt him. It was loud at the bar, so I must have misheard him, right? He was engrossed in the story he was telling, but I hadn’t been paying attention since “girlfriend.”

A minute or so passed before he winded down the story and I took the lull as an opportunity to ask, “did you say girlfriend?”

Of course, I was hoping he’d laugh and say he had said something entirely different.

But instead, he looked uncomfortable.

He went on to explain that he had also been dating one of his close friends. He had mentioned her to me before. I just hadn’t known they were seeing each other.

I’m not the most talkative person in person. And my date just kept talking and talking, explaining how their friendship had changed over the past few months.

“It’s nothing personal,” he told me.

“I don’t see how it can be anything but personal,” I said blankly into my drink.

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Photo by Michael Discenza on Unsplash

I glanced at his ex as I took a sip of my drink. She was looking away — probably because she rather have been anywhere else.

What a situation to be in.

I mean, she had dated him too.

I frowned, realizing something I’d been keeping to myself for a few dates now. “I didn’t even get a chance to tell you that I liked you.”

He went on explaining all the reasons why he chose his friend over me. Not that he had to.

Not that I asked.

And then he mentioned they had been seeing each other for a bit and decided to become exclusive earlier in the week.

Once the timeline was clear, his ex reamed him out because he had shared some of his sexual exploits with her from a couple of weeks ago with someone that isn’t the woman he is currently dating.

“But we weren’t exclusive yet.”

“That just seems like a shitty thing to do,” she told him. “She was still your friend.”

And then I saw what I hadn’t seen before.

Photo by Jon Meza on Unsplash

This guy was a mess. Seeing me, dating his friend, hanging out with his ex, and sleeping with other women.

And telling me at the beginning that he didn’t want to rush into anything.

This wasn’t the kind of person I was interested in dating.

I relaxed in my seat a little. The spotlight was off of me and the idea that there was any future between us. I began to realize I wasn’t missing out on something great.

I was missing out on something that never would have ended well.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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