My Boyfriend Made A Dating Profile

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Imagine an unsuspecting single friend swiping away on Hinge or Tinder, spotting a familiar face, realizing they've caught your partner on a dating app, and almost dropping their phone. They quickly send a screenshot of their profile your way, and just like that, you learn your relationship isn't as solid as it seemed.

Lol i caught my boyfriend with a dating app XD take his phone and go on his dating app and ruin it for the rest of the girls jkjkjk well that really depends how angry u are i was not angry at my boyfriend he told me he was just bored and wanted to talk and i went on the app (i checked the messages can not be deleted on this dating app) and he was just doing harmless conversation with everyone. My Coworker Found My Boyfriend On A Dating App & Here's What Happened Next. “I have a theory. Well, I have many theories, but chief among them is the belief that people come into our lives when. My Boyfriend Still Has an Active Online Dating Profile! So, don’t make up what it means. Say something like, “Harry, I’m happy with how our relationship is progressing and have really enjoyed getting to know you over the past few weeks. I’m not interested in dating anyone besides you right now and I’m ready to shut down.

'When you first find your partner on a dating platform, thoughts automatically start racing through your head, and you can’t help but think of the worst possible scenarios,' Maria Sullivan, a dating expert and vice president of Dating.com, tells Bustle.

Stephanie, 27, didn't want to wait to process those feelings. When her best friend informed her that she'd found Stephanie's partner on a dating app, she immediately decided to confirm her worst suspicions. 'I logged into her account and messaged him as her for a little bit and then asked if we could text,' she says. 'I wanted to make sure it really was him instead of just someone using his picture.'

Experts say the discovery of a partner's dating profile is most often met with shock and disbelief, followed by suspicion. And while some scenarios can, in fact, be the result of a case of identity theft or an account that has deactivated, for Stephanie, her fears were confirmed. 'He shared his number, and sure enough, it was my then boyfriend’s phone number,' she recalls. 'It was gut-wrenching. We had dated for almost two years, and I had no inclination that anything was wrong or that I shouldn’t trust him.'

It can take a while to establish a sense of mutual trust in your relationship, Sullivan says — but this kind of breach can be a major setback.

For Melissa, 26, catching her partner on a dating app burst her seemingly idyllic relationship's bubble. She was living with her partner, and they had met each other's families and were planning for the future. But one day, when he was showing her something on his computer, a notification from Tinder popped up. Melissa's partner responded by panicking.

'What really bothered me was that he looked like a perfect boyfriend,' she says. 'He spent his free time, holidays, and weekends with me, but was still scouting potential flings on his phone.' When someone's online activity directly contradicts their IRL persona, it can be easy to feel deceived or 'played.' Genevieve, 27, experienced a similar beguilement when her coworker found her partner while swiping through an app. 'I genuinely never imagined that he could or would have entertained the thought of cheating on me, let alone sought out that opportunity on a dating app,' she says. 'This is going to sound wildly dramatic, but it was one of the most heartbreaking moments of my life. It felt like such a breach of trust, and a boundary crossed.'

According to Sullivan, swiping through a dating app while in a relationship is a form of micro-cheating, or smaller breaches of trust that could lead to infidelity down the line. Even if your partner isn't using their dating app account to cheat on you, keeping it a secret implies lapse in honesty and communication. Additionally, using an account to 'look around' can indicate a lack of commitment to your relationship.

There's only one way to know for sure: By opening up a dialogue with your partner about what you've seen and how it makes you feel. If your partner gets angry when you try to start a conversation or outright tries to deny what you're alleging, Sullivan says you may have cause for concern. Your partner may be attempting to gaslight you by deflecting the blame and making you feel like you're the one at fault.

Their partner's dating profile was more than just a swipe at their confidence — it was a permanent breach of their trust.

'[My boyfriend] said that he was letting a friend use his account, but couldn’t come up with a good explanation as to why his friend would be sharing my boyfriend’s phone number,' Stephanie says. 'He then got mad at me for 'snooping and stalking' because that’s what manipulative people do when they’re caught.' Similarly, Genevieve's partner declined her phone call when she tried to reach out for answers and later claimed his profile was old. 'None of it was true, of course, but the reasons and timing hardly mattered at that point,' she says.

If you catch your partner on a dating app, Sullivan suggests first and foremost taking a few deep breaths to clear your head and center your thoughts. When you've taken space for yourself to check in with how you're feeling and thinking, communicate that process to your partner. 'Starting off with a conversation between you and your partner is the first step,' Sullivan says, 'and if they don't respond well to it, then it might be time to take it to couples therapy.'

Of course, if your partner is acting in a way that feels manipulative, or you can't rebuild what's been broken, it's always OK to walk away. Genevieve and Stephanie called it quits right then and there, and Melissa ended her relationship a year later. For all three, their partner's dating profile was more than just a swipe at their confidence — it was a permanent breach of their trust.

Expert:

Maria Sullivan, dating expert and vice president of Dating.com

My Boyfriend Made A Dating Profile Song

Genevieve Wheeler

“I have a theory. Well, I have many theories, but chief among them is the belief that people come into our lives when we need them most. The important ones tend to, at least. And Rory* is the perfect example, I can already tell.” These are the words I jotted into my journal after my first date with my most recent ex — scribbled in messy blue ink and injected with hope — about 17 months before my coworker found my boyfriend on Hinge.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let’s rewind to the chilly April evening of that first date. Fairy lights and expectations hung above us at a cozy, Italian wine bar. I can still picture him sitting in his red knit sweater, the perfectly squiggled shape of his chin, the curl above his forehead. I remember the butterfly-inducing flash in his eyes when I mentioned Basquiat and ‘90s sitcoms and Atticus Finch; then there was that deliciously crisp English accent. Oof. I fell in love with Rory instantly, which makes the bit that follows so much more crushing.

Search Dating Sites For Boyfriend

On paper and on our first date, he was the dream. But Rory was also, unfortunately, a not-so-great boyfriend. He blew off my grad school graduation dinner for improv club (?!). He’d ignore my texts for days at a time and nudge me out of his apartment in the middle of the night because he “just slept better” when I wasn’t there. And while I was immediately smitten, he was visibly hesitant — no matter how many lemon drizzle cakes I baked, pizzas I sent, or weekends we spent watching Fleabag in his bed, he refused to put a label on our relationship. One day, about a year after our first date, he unceremoniously said, “I’ve been calling you my girlfriend for months now… It’s just easier to say than 'that person I’m seeing.’” That’s how I learned that he was, indeed, my boyfriend. What charm!

It was thoughtless and frustrating, but Rory had a number of personal tragedies strike over the course of our relationship, and — ever confident that I was an important person in his life — I believed I owed him grace and support. So I bit my tongue and turned the other cheek, over and over and over again. No matter how frustrated or hurt I felt, I’d swallow my pain, trace the squiggly shape of his chin, and slip back into a mushy little puddle — unable to imagine ever tracing the chin of another guy.

Rory, as it turns out, had a much more powerful imagination. Which brings us to last September.

Cut to the most hectic week and a Wednesday afternoon spent drowning in calls and emails. I work in communications at a tech company, and we had two massive events taking place, so I was up to my eyeballs in work. I was checking the last few boxes on my to-do list when I heard my coworker Allison gasp like a juror in a courtroom drama. She asked, “G, can we chat for a sec?”

I was sure I’d either messed up a project or one of the Kardashians was pregnant, so I ushered her over to my desk to discuss. Then she showed me her phone. She didn’t say anything, just flashed Rory’s smiling face on her screen — the same smile I’d taken a screenshot of and shared with a few dozen friends after our first date (“Doesn’t he look like Steve Harrington?! Do you think we’re married now?!”). It was his Hinge profile.

I didn’t know what to say — I just ran to our office bathroom, threw up, and started sobbing. I hunched over the sink and tried calling Rory, but he promptly declined. (“Can’t talk at work, what’s up?” he texted.) My colleagues knocked on the door and squeezed into the bathroom with me — petting my hair, wiping my tears, speaking kind words I could barely compute. I'm pretty sure I could physically feel my heart crumbling in that moment, could feel the dusty remains settling in my chest.

I’d responded to Rory’s text with a swift, “Why did my coworker just find you on Hinge?” and he jumped into denial mode. “What?” “It’s not me.” “I’m not active.” “I don’t know how she’s seeing that.” Had I never been a dating writer, these excuses might have flown, but I know how these apps work. I understand that inactive profiles don’t show up a year and a half later.

Once I’d shut down that argument, he pivoted and claimed he'd re-downloaded Hinge when 'we were on a break' over the summer — which, in the words of Rachel Green, was Not! A! Break! (It was a three-day stretch during which I said I needed some space, but that is neither here nor there.)

I'd later do the math and learn that the timeline didn't match up: Once a person deletes their Hinge profile, they’ll no longer show up as a potential match. (I confirmed this with a rep for the dating app.) Our fight/break/whatever it was had taken place six weeks prior — even if Rory had just downloaded the app for a few days in July, there was no way his profile would still be making the rounds in mid-September. He’d been metaphorically window shopping for months: accepting the pizzas I sent, ignoring my texts, and shamelessly chatting with strangers online.

But I didn't know this yet, slumped on the floor of my office bathroom. All I knew was that I was incapable of having this argument over text and I needed to cry and clear my head, which is essentially what I told Rory before I stopped responding. He sent message after message — 'F*ck, I feel sick,' 'I hate to have made you feel this,' 'I messed up and I'm sorry,' 'I didn't do anything, I just had it those three days' — until I called him around 10 p.m. that night, calmly explained that this breach of trust crossed a line I didn’t know how to come back from, and said I was done. I wished him nothing but good, happy things, but this was over. We were over.

About a week later, once I'd sorted out the timeline, I sent one more message and called out the lie that he'd just been on the app 'those three days.' He came clean, said, “I hate that you’re dwelling on this,” and left it at that.

While writing this essay, I reached out to Hinge to inquire about their policies for removing users who might be cheating. 'We remove anyone reported to be using the app for other reasons than to delete it or find a relationship,' a rep told me. 'That includes users already in monogamous relationships.' But neither I nor my coworker had reported Rory. I didn’t even know how to process this, let alone report it.

How To Write A Man's Dating Profile

His actions didn’t make any sense; none of this made sense. I’d been kind, I’d been caring, I’d been patient and compassionate. How was that not enough? I’d given this boy my heart on a platter, and he was still browsing the menu for a better dish. I was devastated.

The reality, I’ve learned (shout-out to my therapist!), is that I was never the one who wasn’t enough. I was booking massages, baking cakes, and buying theater tickets for a boy who couldn’t take the time to respond to my text messages — stretching myself gossamer thin to patch up voids only he could fill. It was a losing game, and in playing it, I lost a lot of myself.

Maybe the dating app overlords knew this? Maybe they lit a match and tossed it into my gasoline-filled relationship to set me free. And though the weeks and months that followed were far from easy, I am very grateful for this explosion, in the grand scheme. This experience taught me to value myself and pour energy into the people and things that feed my soul, not those who suck my time and energy like a leech (albeit a handsome one).

Admittedly, I’ve not had an easy go of this breakup. Four months later, I’m still healing, still piecing the broken parts of myself back together, still struggling to remember that I am, indeed, deserving of love and care. But from here on out, I’m done giving so much of myself to toxic relationships and text-ignoring, fight-picking individuals. They’re the ones who aren’t enough — in compassion, in kindness, and in thought — not me.

*Name has been changed.