I Caught My Boyfriend Secretly Using Tinder
For better or for worse, nearly everyone's meeting their partners on dating apps these days. Who truly wants to go outside to find people?
While the convenience of meeting potential mates from your couch is great and all, it also means there's the chance that your current fling could be chatting with other women or men on Tinder while they're sitting right next to you. Here, 11 women open up about what it was like to discover their partners were on dating apps.
1. "I noticed my boyfriend of three years becoming distant and not being as open with me as he normally was. Fast forward a few nights...a girl messaged me on Twitter saying she saw my boyfriend on Tinder and he had been pursuing her on Facebook messenger. She sent me the pictures of the profile/messages. He had been spelling his name differently so I wouldn't be able to find him. I confronted him by phone call (because I couldn’t stand to see his face at the moment) and he started crying saying he didn’t know why he’d done what he’d done. I immediately ended that relationship and learned a lot about myself and others that day." -Savannah T., 19
2. "I was in a 6.5 year 'exclusive' relationship with a man who spent the entire duration of it on dating apps. He never really hid what he was doing from me, but he told me at the time he’d never meet up with anyone for real and all guys did this sort of thing. One day I created a fake account to try to find him and saw him on there right away. His profile was full of photos that I'd taken of him. Later on, I caught him on a sugar baby site-which was bold considering that up until his mid-20s, he'd been living with his parents. It took me a few years but I finally realized I was worth more. When our lease ended, I moved out to live alone and he moved back in with his parents again." -Skylar R., 26
3. "I noticed my boyfriend was getting notifications from the OKCupid app, and the curiosity was driving me crazy. I snuck into his phone when he was in the shower and found all these girls he was talking to. The weird part was that he opened all of his conversations by asking "cake or pie?" as an icebreaker. I was furious but held it to myself until later that night. We were at dinner with a group of friends, and it got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore. At the end of dinner, I looked him the eye and asked him if he preferred cake or pie. He knew he was caught and I ended things that night!" -Sarah P., 26
4. "I had a feeling he was on Tinder again (we had deleted our accounts in front of each other when we started dating exclusively) since he had been distant all week with me, so I created a fake account kind to see if he was on there. I matched with him within minutes but didn't send him a message. I confronted him the next day on the phone and told him I knew about his Tinder account. I didn’t tell him I made a fake one-just that a friend showed me it. He claimed he just made it a few days ago (as if that was okay?!) and that he never cheated on me. Within seconds of us breaking up on the phone, he messaged my catfish account with a corny GIF of him sliding into this fake girl's DMs." -Amy W., 23
5. "One of my exes thought it was a good idea to have his Instagram connected to his Tinder. A girl had matched with him, found me tagged in one of his pictures, and DMed me with screenshots. I confronted him and he claimed he was just on there for the Instagram followers, which was a lie because he ended up dating a girl from Tinder after we broke up. The thing is, I would've been down for an open relationship or even breaking up if he had just said so. I'm just not about shady activity-so I ended things." -Maria M., 22
6. "A friend sent me a screenshot of boyfriend's Tinder profile while I was at home taking care of his sick child. At the time, I was about to move in with him. She said that he'd been messaging her and trying to hook up. I waited for him to come home and asked him about it, and he denied it. When I asked him to show me his phone, he finally admitted it to me. We then broke up, and he moved to another state." -Catherine N., 28
7. "I was getting out of the shower at my boyfriend’s house when a friend sent me a screenshot showing him being active on Tinder as I was in the shower. I walked out of the bathroom and confronted him about it and he denied it. He said he and a (married) coworker had downloaded it as a joke to see who could get the most matches in one day but he hadn’t touched it since. When I brought up how the screenshot showed him active on it a few minutes ago and asked to see his phone, he deadass tried to swipe it off his screen right in front of my face! Moral of the story: we love girls who help out other girls!" -Kay C., 25
8. "My neighbor was on eHarmony and saw my girlfriend on there. I would periodically check if she was active (which she was, nearly every day) for a month until I finally confronted her. She told me it was an old account and she'd only recently logged on to 'delete it.' I had no inkling she was looking for other partners and would have never known if my neighbor didn’t see it! We broke up, which was for the best!" -Isabella P., 24
9. "I became suspicious when I received a few texts from a friend of mine saying that he had seen my boyfriend out with other girls. Conveniently, my boyfriend was sleeping when I received the texts, so I decided to check his phone. He had every dating app downloaded and was Snapchat messaging a girl named, “Mandy Bumble.” When I told him we were over, he legitimately tried telling me that it was a friend from work and her last name was actually ‘BUMBLE.’" -Brooke B., 29
10. "I'd been seeing a guy for three months, and while we hadn't had the 'exclusive' talk yet, we saw each other multiple times a week and it was pretty obvious we were an item at that point. One morning after I slept over and was lying on his chest, he woke up and checked his phone. Almost out of habit, the FIRST app he opened was Tinder. He realized what he did and closed the app really quickly. Neither of us said anything at the time. Things were awkward between us after that and later that week, he told me he didn’t want to be exclusive (which I figured at that point). I ended things with him after that." -Rose H., 20
11. "I didn’t catch my boyfriend on apps-I caught him talking to girls through his PlayStation messenger. I don't think enough girls are aware of this possibility. I sure had no idea it was possible until I decided to dive deep and follow my instincts. I just knew something was up! Hot tip: You can also access the internet through PlayStation and my idiot BF (and probably most men) stayed logged into FB where I found even more scandalous messages." -Margarita M., 27
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.
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