My Boyfriend Was Engaged To Someone Else The Entire Time We Were Together

My boyfriend and I were together for over a year when I found out our entire relationship was a lie: he had been engaged to someone else the entire time we together. I’d felt that something was off all along, but I didn’t listen to my intuition until it was too late.

1. He took the initiative from the beginning. I was casually swiping on a dating app one night and we happened to match. We hit it off immediately and he asked me out. The date went really well and I had a great time. He texted the next day and asked to see me again and I agreed even though I wasn’t sure I was ready for a relationship (I had just broken up with someone).  I told him on our next date that I wanted to take things slow, and he said that was fine. I loved that he was taking the initiative and being understanding about my situation so I wanted to give him a chance.
2. We decided to take things to the next level and that’s when the problems started. Although I wasn’t looking for  a serious relationship, things progressed quickly. He was really sweet and we seemed to have so much in common. I found myself falling for him and before I knew it, we were in a relationship. Strangely enough, as soon as we made things official, things started going downhill.
3. He never let me meet his family. Although we got very close, I had a nagging suspicion something was wrong because he never took me to meet his mom and dad. When his brother came for a visit, I wasn’t invited to meet him either even though we’d been dating for eight months at that point. I didn’t make a big deal out of it but it bothered me.
4. I found out he already had a fiance from Facebook, of all places. One day I happened to notice that a certain girl was posting a lot on his Facebook statuses. Curious, I clicked on her profile and saw that her relationship status said she was engaged to my boyfriend. I couldn’t believe it. I knew that she couldn’t have added that by herself; he must have approved the status and hidden his. He and I had never discussed announcing our relationship status on Facebook and now I knew why. My heart started to thud in my chest and I felt dizzy.
5. When I confronted him, he claimed he wasn’t going through with the wedding. I took a screenshot of her profile page and sent it to my boyfriend. He called me and explained that it was something he’d agreed to a long time ago for his parents’ sake but that it wasn’t going to happen and everyone knew it, including her. He said the two of them hadn’t even talked in months and that he was sorry for upsetting me but not to worry about it.
6. He begged me to stay with him. I didn’t know what to believe and I felt sick inside. Just seeing in writing that my boyfriend was engaged to someone else, no matter what excuses he had, was making me nauseous. And yet for some reason, I felt I had no choice but to believe him. Sure, it was a strange story, but why would he want a girlfriend if he was engaged to someone else? We had spent so much time together so I felt I had to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, I was in love with him and he seemed to love me too.
7. Then I found out they’d actually set a wedding date. I asked him if I could meet his family and he promised that he would take me to meet them but he kept putting it off. By this time, my gut was telling me something was very wrong and I was starting to get anxious all he time. I decided to check the page of the woman whose profile indicated she was engaged to my boyfriend again. A few weeks earlier, she posted something about setting a wedding date three months away.
8. I was in shock. I confronted him and he said he was still trying to get out of it and that he loved me and had been hoping to marry me one day. He begged me again not to leave him. I was confused about what was really going on and whether to believe him, but he’d violated my trust yet again. Deep down, I knew he was playing mind games with me and probably with her too but I wasn’t ready to face that yet. I was, however, devastated, hurt, and angry, and I knew what I had to do.
9. I left him and blocked him from contacting me. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Slowly, everything started to sink in. I’d been with a man who had been living a double life. I don’t know why it took me so long to get out of the situation.
10. I’m still recovering but I’ve learned my lesson. I ignored the red flags that something was wrong. That doesn’t make it my fault but it does mean that from now on, I’ll listen to myself when I get a gut feeling that something is wrong so that nothing like this ever happens to me again.