It was one of those experiences that I wish hadn’t happened: sexting a guy I was really into after weeks of chatting, only to discover he was in a relationship. His GF texted me to tell me she’d seen the pics (oh, the shame) and wanted me to back off. It was the first time I was in such a situation — and thankfully the last — but it taught me important things.
- It’s a bad idea to sext someone too soon. I thought I knew the guy (famous last words, huh?) even though we hadn’t really hung out much in RL. He seemed like a great guy but, given the crazy world we live in, it was silly of me to think that just ’cause we were having good conversations and really liked each other that he was single.
- Feeling like the other woman totally sucks. I wasn’t the other woman, per se, because the guy and I weren’t having an affair in RL, but it felt crappy. I didn’t want to be the other woman in any shape or form, and it felt so weird that I was getting in the way of these people’s relationship when that was the last thing I had imagined I was doing. It made me see I had to be much more careful about who I got close to and how.
- I adopted a ‘no sexting’ policy. Who knew how many other women the guy had been sexting. Gross. Even if he was only sexting me, it was so wrong of him and put me in an ugly position. He and his GF had seen the pics, and God knew who else? I didn’t want to risk that violation of privacy again.
- I can’t turn a blind eye to a guy’s dodgy behavior. I obviously never spoke to the guy again, even though he texted me a few weeks later saying he was thinking of me. What a loser. But his GF had told me she was going to try to make things work with him. Good luck with that! If the roles were reversed, I know I would have ended things with him.
- Sexing is cheating. Period. The woman also told me she figured sexting, as bad as it was, wasn’t really cheating. I get that she might have been in love, but in my eyes sexting is just as bad as sleeping with someone. Sharing sexy pics with someone outside of the relationship is intimate and dodgy as hell.
- Without a RL connection, texting (and sexting) means nothing. I had thought I had a connection with this guy, but clearly there wasn’t anything of value there. He was probably just sexting me ’cause he was bored or his GF wasn’t around. How could I have depended on a texting (and sexting) connection to be anything real? The guy wasn’t even interested in making real-life plans. Obviously that was because he had a girlfriend, but even if he didn’t, I shouldn’t have wasted time. Nothing was going to come of things.
- There were signs he was lying. If I look back, there were definitely signs that the guy was up to no good and these were visible through his texting behavior. For instance, there were days when he wouldn’t bother to reply to any of my texts. Then he’d resurface after a few days and be really interested in chatting again. He wasn’t consistent and this should have been enough to make me get the hint that he wasn’t really interested, for whatever reason. It taught me to scrutinize a guy’s texts so much more than I used to.
