'I caught my boyfriend on Tinder. He swears it's not true. I'm going to lose my mind.' UPDATED
"I caught my boyfriend on Tinder. He swears it's not true. I'm going to lose my mind."
My friend came to me yesterday at lunch with screenshots of my boyfriend's Tinder profile. The pictures were all old photos so I confronted him immediately expecting to hear something like "Yeah, haha I forgot to delete that."
Which is cool. He denied being on Tinder at all and my friend suggested that she make an account, set it to his specifications, and see if he turns up. and there's his profile.
So, this means that my boyfriend has been active on tinder within the past two weeks. I confronted him with this and he changed his story. Now he's saying that his friend has been using his account. He shows me his phone and says, "Look, I have nothing to hide." and of course the app is deleted.
So I take his phone, download tinder, log in with his facebook and see that he has been active, albeit infrequently. There was one girl that he tried to meet up with back in May when I was out of town. The girl gave him her phone number and even though he deleted whatever messages they exchanged, I still saw that he had her saved in his contacts.
So that's about everything that I know. He either cheated on me or planned on cheating on me while I went out of town, and I'm sure this isn't the only time it's happened. This relationship is pretty much over.
He is swearing up and down that it's not true. He doesn't use tinder and he doesn't know this girl. I'm going crazy with how much he's outright lying. He seems so sincere, but I KNOW what I saw. I can't listen to him deny this one more time.
I know that this is the end, I guess I'm looking for advice on how to end it in a way that doesn't leave me second guessing myself. and moral support.
Edit:
So I did some stuff that was kind of petty and stupid today.
I made a fake tinder account, matched with my boyfriend, and he starts messaging me and immediately asks me to meet him for a drink. We agree to meet by a fountain in the center of my town and I pack up all of his stuff in a tote bag, put on a great outfit and went to the fountain.
I stood kind of out of the way of the fountain in the shadows where I could watch the street that I knew he'd be arriving from. I was devastated, but I figured this way I could catch him without a doubt and end things quickly. All the time, he's messaging this girl on tinder.
But he didn't show up. Two of his roommates did. We didn't speak (I don't know them well), but they watched me for a while, figured out what was going on after a few more tinder messages, and left quickly.
So I wait a few minutes and I call my boyfriend and ask him where he's at. He says he's just gotten off of work and he's going to meet his roommate for a drink. I confront him with the fake tinder profile and he's dumbstruck and furious with his roommate, who he swears up and down is behind all of this.
I'm at home now, just emotionally exhausted and confused. Whatever is going on with his roommates is super sketchy and creepy.
Advice please?
Edit part two:
Thank you all so much for your advice and support! A few things that I think are important:
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Up until this point my boyfriend and I had a great relationship. Really, no red flags anywhere. If I had already been suspicious that he was cheating this would be a much easier break for me.
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The most recent message on his tinder account when I checked it yesterday was sent to a girl he had matched with before we met. It said "Would you want to meet up with my friend?"
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My boyfriend is the kind of person who's iphone passcode is 0000. I wouldn't be surprised if his roommates did know all of his passwords.
So, his tinder account is still matched with my fake profile. To me, that indicates that he probably isn't the person operating the tinder profile. If it were him, wouldn't he have blocked the fake profile immediately?
A lot of people have said that he probably sent his roommates to check things out for him. I can't write that off entirely but my gut says that it isn't true. I just don't think it's very likely.
When it comes to his roommates, I'm very concerned that they have been using his profile to trick women into meeting with them. The fact that his profile hasn't been deleted makes me worry that my boyfriend is in on this.
So that's about where I'm at right now. I'm worried that all of them are working together to at best, scam women, at worst, assault them and my boyfriend is at least passively involved. Either way, I feel some responsibility to do a little more digging.
Here’s what people had to say to OP:
Don't let him make you question yourself. Thats gaslighting 101. Look at the facts and trust yourself, make a decision and stick to it.
AbleAlgae (OP)
I want there to be a reasonable explanation for all of this. When my friend showed me his profile yesterday I was sure that it was something silly. But there just isn't right? It seems pretty clear to me what has happened.
There is a reasonable explanation - your boyfriend is a scumbag that uses Tinder to find girls to hook up with while being in a relationship with you. I know it's hard if you really love it but trust me, you DON'T wanna waste your youth on a guy who you can't trust.
Gaslighting. That’s what this is. And this is exactly what my boyfriend did to me when I caught him cheating. I was literally logged into his POF account looking at the messages and he was trying to deny it, and trying to make me seem crazy for believing it. You are not crazy, he is a cheater. You are not crazy. One more time for good measure: YOU ARE NOT CRAZY no matter how he makes you feel about this.
You want him to shut up and tell you the truth because you think you deserve it. He is never going to admit to it. Maybe when you dump him, he'll finally man up and tell you but that's him being manipulative.
He has dug himself into a hole and he's gonna keep on digging. Leave now or you'll feel like an idiot for staying. You're not going to get any closure from him. Take a deep breath and walk away. You're done with him.
Three days later, the OP returned with an update.
But it got weirder. The girl who's phone number was in my boyfriend's phone was from Brazil, so I wasn't sure about calling or texting the number. but I did find her facebook by searching for that phone number. I messaged her and asked about my boyfriend.
She confirmed that she had matched with him on tinder, and they exchanged phone numbers. The phone number she has is my boyfriend's correct phone number, BUT she never met up with him because when they exchanged more selfies, the man in the photos was clearly not my boyfriend.
I met with my boyfriend, and laid out everything for him. I showed him the fake profile, the messages I had exchanged with the Brazilian girl. I told him about his roommates coming to the fountain the other night and I told him that if he was honest with me about what was going on, we could work through things.
But, I said that if he kept lying we were finished. I told him he needed to get real honest about what was going on between him, his roommates, and this tinder account.
Here's what happened (and I believe this all to be true):
When my boyfriend upgraded his phone, he gave his old one to his roommate and when he reset it, he let his roommate connect to his apple ID. So my boyfriend had shared his apple ID password with him and they've been sharing an account.
His roommate, for reasons we don't totally understand, managed to get on to his tinder profile and started using it as his own. He said he thought he looked enough like the pictures that he could get away with it. They're both of the same ethnicity, but my boyfriend is way hotter so I'm not sure how his roommate thought that would work out.
When his roommate can't pay his own phone bill, my boyfriend will often lend him his phone, or switch sim cards for a while. I know this sounds strange, but I know for a fact that it is true.
When I was out of town in may, boyfriend's roommate matched with this tinder girl, got her phone number, but couldn't text her because he hadn't paid his own bill. So he could contact her on tinder through wifi, but not send texts.
Since I was out of town anyway, and I was the only person my boyfriend needs to contact, he agreed to let his roommate use his phone to talk to this girl but didn't know at that point that his roommate was catfishing this girl with his old pictures.
Both roommates showed up to meet the fake tinder girl because I had told them on the fake account that the girl had a roommate. Their plan was to meet with this girl, and convince her to bring her roommate out as well for his friend. Not a great idea. kind of weird but okay.
Boyfriend of course was furious with his roommates and made sure the account was permanently deleted. This has been the craziest, most exhausting week of my life. I believe that this is how everything happened. My boyfriend and I are working on repairing the relationship.
Here’s what people had to say to OP:
First thought: break up with your boyfriend because he’s cheating on you.
New thought: break up with your boyfriend because he’s a moron.
Holy guacamole OP. That's crazy. First of all, I hope your SO cuts off contact with that "friend." This is how he gets treated after everything he's done? Also I still don't fully believe the roommates' story about why both of them came. Maybe they're socially illiterate enough to not realize how weird that is, but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if they're just trying to cover up nefarious intentions.
Why on earth would you let someone log in with your apple ID? i have android but assuming it's like a google login, wouldn't that give them access to basically all of your accounts and personal information? maybe even digital wallet and password manager?
Wow....it’s actually really good you tried to set him up otherwise you’d probably still think he was guilty (i would too). What worries me is his roommates are lying to girls about who they are. What’s even more worrying is that he brought a friend with on the date when he never mentioned he would.
I genuinely think they may be trying to take advantage of a girl because this is all incredibly weird and suspicious. Seriously, i would file a police report for identity fraud (or something along the lines of that). Don’t delete evidence you have. None of this sounds right. Hopefully since your boyfriend was never lying you will be able to make-up.
I mean, OP needs to break ip anyways bc who tf does this behind their partners back, doesn’t tell or loop them in about this grandmaster plan, and then tries to continuously just lie and make it look worse than it (allegedly supposedly Apparently) actually was?
Like sitting there saying “no OP, You're wrong lemme gaslight you from believing your own eyeballs in your skull but also no more explanation besides this and that you shouldn’t believe your own eyes.” There was no way this plan went well even in his tiny head. Who does that? 😭