He Already Had A Girlfriend When We Started Dating—Here Are The Signs I Missed

I thought I was the only one in his life but I soon learned how wrong I was. He was totally playing me because he already had a girlfriend at home. Here are 11 signs that basically told me that he was already spoken for even though he kept his lips zipped.

1. He couldn’t be spontaneous. He was a spontaneous guy but he could never fly by the seat of his pants in our relationship. He could never come visit me later in the day when I suggested it. Instead, he always wanted to plan dates in advance. Way in advance. While people always say that’s a good sign because it shows the guy sees a future with you, it was actually the opposite here. He had to check where his girlfriend was before he could see me.
2. His dating profile was on private. The info on his profile on the dating app we met on was minimal. At first I didn’t think much of this—I assumed he just wasn’t keen on speaking about himself too much—but when I discovered that he had a girlfriend, I realized he was trying to fly under the radar so that if she happened to see his profile, she wouldn’t know it was him. He cleverly also had fiddled with his profile settings so his profile picture only showed up for a few hours in a day, usually after office hours.
3. He often had to rush off when we were hanging out. Although he couldn’t be spontaneous about our dates, sometimes he had to rush off to do stuff… right in the middle of our dates! The common excuses were that he had to rush into the office even though it was a Sunday. Yeah, whatever.
4. He was difficult to get ahold of. He’d really annoy the hell out of me because often when I wanted to talk, video chat, or text, he was always unavailable. It would piss me off, especially when I really felt like talking to him. He’d go AWOL for hours at a time, but then at other times, he was always super keen to chat to me and had all the time in the world. This inconsistency raised a few warning bells for me.
5. He was pretty much nocturnal. As our relationship progressed, he was less and less available during the day and only got in touch at night. WTF? In fact, he loved talking at all hours of the late evening/early morning. At first I thought it was just that he wasn’t busy with work or other things at that time, but then I realized it was because he was finally alone.
6. He had female items in his car. I once found a pink bag that was clearly a toiletry or makeup bag but which he said belonged to one of his work colleagues who’d needed a lift one day during work. Hmm. And she hadn’t asked for it back or he hadn’t seen it? Double hmm.
7. He surprised me with roses… and it was a nasty surprise. So, Valentine’s Day came around and he delivered me beautiful roses. I happened to notice, however, that there was an identical bunch in the delivery van and the delivery guy commented that he had another bunch to deliver. I thought, “What are the chances that they’d be identical?” They even had the same wrapping! Later, I asked my BF about it and he said that it was a gift for his colleague who’d recently had a heart attack and needed cheering up in the hospital. Again with the colleague excuses? It was becoming a little too odd.
8. Then there were children who couldn’t keep secrets. The great thing about a guy who has nephews and/or nieces is that they don’t keep secrets very well. On more than one occasion, his niece kept telling me that another woman had had dinner at his place and she was visiting on the weekends… WTF was going on? The signs that he had a girlfriend were becoming more obvious with time and weren’t going to go away. I couldn’t write them off as paranoia any longer.
9. His stories didn’t match up. As our relationship continued, he started spinning more and more lies. I guess his other relationship was becoming more serious or something and he was reaching a crossroads. His stories just didn’t match up. It was infuriating to have to listen to all the contradictory statements he made about where he was or what he’d been up to on the weekend.
10. He avoided displays of affection. When I tried to be loving and flirtatious, he’d often change the subject, especially if we were out. He never held my hand in public and then would go OTT with the displays of affection when we were alone (usually at my place because we rarely hung out at his home).
11. He confused details about me. I would’ve thought that the guy knew me well enough after six months of dating but I was in for a rude awakening. I’d previously told him that I hated adventure sports but he went ahead and booked bungee-jumping for us on my birthday. Umm, seriously? He flushed beet-red when I told him that he knew I was the last person in the world who would do that stuff. I knew by his reaction that he’d made the rookie mistake of mixing me up with his other woman. This was the last straw!