Sorry for the long post. I’m still in shock about what happened and I feel like writing it out is the best way to process these thoughts right now. I’ve been seeing this person, let’s call her L. We met on one of the dating apps and have been officially together for a month and a half. Even though the timeline is short, we talked for many hours every single day, to the point where the density of the conversations made it seem like we’ve known each other for many months. I found out today that she has a boyfriend who she’s been with for about a year. On the day before New Years Eve, I didn’t hear from her at all. Tried texting and calling her around 8pm. Seemed a bit out of the ordinary, but I chalked it up to her being exhausted from work on a Friday night and sleeping in early. After calling her a few times the next morning, she finally picked up and confirmed to me as such. She apologized and said she was tired and slept early, had her phone on silent, etc. She said next time if she ever felt too tired to text or call, then she would let me know beforehand. This gave me reassurance. There was a valid explanation for the temporary silence and I was just being concerned over a bunch of nothing burgers. Things felt back to normal for me. The next day on New Year’s Eve, I texted her once but didn’t get a response. When the new year came around at midnight, I didn’t hear anything. This is when I started to worry. Wouldn’t partners wish each other a Happy New Year, especially when you know they’ll be awake at this time? She said she’d be celebrating the countdown with her family. Like yesterday, her calls went straight to voicemail. I fell asleep extremely paranoid, deathly worried that something bad had happened to her, or if something had transpired that would cause her to not want to speak to me. Now fast forward to this early afternoon. Not having received any text since then, I decided to call once more. Unlike yesterday, it rang once, then went straight to voicemail. That’s odd. Could her phone be dead? I tried calling from a different number. This time it rang multiple times before going to voicemail. This was my confirmation that I had been blocked. But why? Things had been going so well between us. All I wanted was an explanation, and in my sheer panic I decided to bypass the block that was imposed on my number and call multiple times. It seemed intrusive and insane and I normally wouldn’t do it, but something felt weird to me and I felt like I had to investigate. The phone picked up. I could hear heavy breathing on the other end. “Baby?” I said. The call disconnected. Something was off and didn’t seem right. I called again. This time I heard a guy’s voice faintly say in between heavy breaths: “Edward?” I said yes and asked who this was. “This is L’s boyfriend. We’ve been together for a year.” He told me she had been sleeping over at his place and noticed the phone ringing while she was in the shower. He also saw the texts between me and L. I didn’t really know what to say. I just acknowledged what he was saying. We agreed to tell each other everything at a later time. I gave him my number and thanked him for telling me the truth. So that leaves me here right now, trying to process what had just happened. Someone that I had told them I loved, and for someone who did the same for me in a scarily convincing fashion, was able to tell me without hesitation that cheating is the worst thing one can do to a relationship. A lot of seemingly innocent out of the ordinary things made a lot more sense in light of the truth. It explains why she still wore a ring that her ex gave her when we started seeing each other. It explains why she could spent hours at my place over the weekend, but couldn’t sleep over the night. It explains why she would get lots of phone calls while she was at my place, which she told me was her overbearing mom. It was in her projections that explains why she was paranoid about me seeing other women, even though there was no reason to believe I would do that. It explains why, on our first meet, she saw me and turned around, almost bailing and me initially believing it was due to her embarrassment in seeing a person she likes. It’s scary how some people are capable of lacking empathy in the least likeliest of places. You think you are safe and secure with the person you trust with your life, but until you know them well enough they could be hiding skeletons in their closet with you blissfully unaware. Mine just happened to be the ultimate form of betrayal. I feel really stupid right now and I don’t know when I’ll be ready to trust someone new again. If something seems off, not just once but multiple times, trust your gut. Get a second and third opinion. And be careful out there with dating apps. You may never really know someone until you meet someone who knows them better than you.