I met my boyfriend seven months ago at the bar where I worked in Ohio. I’m 24, he’s 27, and from the first night we were laughing at all the same things. I liked him right away. I also knew he had a girlfriend in California. Everybody at the bar knew. They’d been together four years, on and off, and her picture was the background on his phone. He told me she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
When I finally told him I liked him too much to keep hanging out as friends, he said they’d actually been broken up for a while. We started dating, and I kept learning things about her. She was his first girlfriend, the first person he’d slept with. They were both Christian. She also called and texted him often enough that I asked him to stop talking to her.
About a month in, he admitted he’d made up the relationship. I went through their texts and found that they’d gone on one date and he’d sent her flowers. Beyond that, what I saw looked like a friendship. He said he’d been lonely and embarrassed and wanted to impress people at the bar. I kept thinking about how easily he’d told me all those details, even after we were together.
He mostly stopped texting her, but she still reached out and even mentioned him in a speech about getting into college. After one of our fights, I messaged her and told her what he’d been saying about her for months. Then I left for a couple of days. While I was gone, he texted her about how bad our fights got and told her they were about my insecurities around her. When I found out, I made him block her everywhere.
His dad and his best friend still spend time with her. He insists he never had feelings for her and that the whole thing was about his ego. I know he loves me, and I’m uncomfortable with how far I’ve gone to get her out of his life. Even with her blocked, I keep coming back to the same question. Why spend months telling people you’re in love with someone if you’ve never had feelings for her?
