I (28F) think I was played pretty hard by my friend (38M), why would someone lie about all of these things to me? Still having a hard time wrapping my head around what happened.

I (28F) have a pretty crazy relationship story that I’ve been keeping mostly to myself, but I wanted to make this thread to get it off my chest and get some outside perspectives. I am still in a haze and can’t believe I got out when I did. Bear with me since this has several months of timeline.

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**OCTOBER 2022 -**

The pandemic took it’s toll on my 4yr relationship and we ended up going our separate ways. Separately, during this time, I had become close friends with a male friend – let’s call him “T” (38M) – and we established what felt like was a very solid and meaningful online platonic friendship. We lived in different cities but had dozens of mutual IRL friends, worked in the same industry, and had a lot in common. He is successful in our industry, whereas I was barely starting mine and appreciated any advice he had. In hindsight, there were early inconsistencies I didn’t pay much attention to, as I had no reason to be suspicious. Such as: T would often skirt around the topic of his SO (I wasn’t even sure if he had one?), and he would tend to over-exaggerate his luxury lifestyle/spending, but I didn’t read too much into it because our conversations mostly revolved around industry talk.

In the midst of my breakup I had a visit to T’s city for a conference, so we grabbed dinner. It went really well, but I could tell things weren’t entirely platonic, and when I brought it up he agreed. I told him I wanted to go home first and sort out everything in my life before I could even consider starting anything with him. In this same convo I addressed the elephant in the room – was T married? Why were people telling me they met his wife years ago and I had no idea he even had one? He told me: he doesn’t have a wife, but a long-term partner (33F) who moved out in 2020 to take care of an ailing family member; they are “separated” but not fully untethered. He explained further that they were in the process of legal asset separation. I did wonder why he hadn’t brought this up sooner, but it felt like he had come clean.

**LATE NOVEMBER -**

In late November 2022, about a month after my relationship ended, T and I made plans to spend New Year’s Eve together in a new city. He buys me first class plane tickets (very unexpected but also related to the lavish spending he’s bragged so much about), and makes multiple dinner reservations for us.

**DECEMBER -**

In mid-December T flies overseas to spend Xmas with his family, and the plan is he’ll meet me back in the States for NYE. Sometime during the week of Xmas, T stops reaching out to me. I don’t even get a response to my “Merry Christmas!” message. I figure he must be with his family so no biggie, I’ll see him in a week.

On Dec 29 (two days before our flights), T finally responds and says his dad started having heart problems. He has to cancel our whole trip since he needs to remain overseas to take care of his family. We cancel the flights, hotel, and ditch the NYE plans. We rescheduled for me to fly down to him in late January 2023 instead.

**JANUARY 2023 -**

From Dec 29 until that visit in late January, communication was *super* dodgy. This is what really started weirding me out. He hardly responded to me the week I was flying down, the day before we were supposed to meet up he barely confirmed our plans… I wasn’t sure if he’d show up to our dinner. But I held out hope because, it’s important to remember, we had forged such a meaningful friendship over the pandemic. He *did* end up showing however, despite all the weirdness. Our dinner went so well that we went back to the hotel together, but he had performance anxiety (this is relevant later). After, I tried getting an answer why he hadn’t been replying, and he explained that it was because of work and family. Despite this, he insists on meeting up again in February, this time in Vegas.

**SOME BACKGROUND INFO -**

It’s relevant to point out that one of the few conversations we did have back in January was T mentioning he gave a lecture at his alma mater overseas. This exchange is from shortly after the class:

>T: I had a female student slide into my DMs and basically proposition me, saying she was “turned on by watching me do my thing”.
>
>Me: Whatttt that is so disturbing
>
>T: I’m like…1. you’re 19, 2. No
>
>T: She also sent me a selfie and a bikini pic
>
>T: I actually feel sorry for any men that might get caught up by someone/something like this. Some men don’t have any mental fortitude

Let’s call the girl above ‘Z (23\~F, AGE TBD)’. Without being prompted, T sends me the photos. He claims to have blocked her immediately (he volunteers this- I don’t ask him to), and is going to avoid her from now on. The whole conversation was fucking weird but I chalked it up to him being sort of a celebrity so maybe it’s par for the course.

My curiosity gets the best of me and I decide to check his Following list on Instagram; he doesn’t follow many people, so I actually find her account very easily. Not only does he follow her, but the pictures “she sent him” were public. Through her very active account, it becomes clear that she is not a student nor in our industry, is over the age of 19, lives oversees, and really did attend T’s lecture. But if she wasn’t a student, how did she attend? Who the fuck was she? How did they meet? Why is he still following this woman after bragging about having mental fortitude/blocking her? Despite my questions, the fact that she somehow attended his lecture reassured me for a short while. Maybe she really was a student that attended his class. I don’t find any further information so I table Z’s instagram profile, checking it here and there.

**BACK TO VEGAS IN MID-FEBRUARY 2023 -**

I’m pretty apprehensive at this point, so I book my own hotel room in Vegas and make a trip out of it with my other friends. If T wants to make time, he will – and he does. He ends up taking me out to a very expensive and romantic dinner, and when we go back to the hotel room, his performance anxiety happens again. I assure him it is completely normal, and we agree to try again tomorrow, but he ends up ghosting me for the rest of the trip. I draw the line and say I’m done, I feel incredibly disrespected.

He responds with an essay about how his performance anxiety has freaked him out, and he thinks it’s related to trauma from an ex, and that he wants to work things out with his therapist before he can get closer to me. He wants to keep me in the loop and give me his full explanation when he’s ready. I figure sure, what the heck, give me an explanation when you want to. I’ll hear him out of sheer curiosity.

**MARCH 2023 -**

3 weeks pass by, we rarely talk except for every week he sends me little updates: “Talked with my therapist but I still have some stuff I want to work through. I promise I’ll call soon” or some rather. He never does call me, and in mid-March I say “Look, I’m good. I don’t need any closure explanation from you. Whatever you have got going on, I needed to walk away. I don’t want any part of it.”

Yet again he responds with an essay, explaining that his last long-term relationship created residual trauma; he cares about me a lot, doesn’t want to fuck it up, and he thinks we’re better off being friends etc. He wants to make sure our friendship will be okay, especially since we’ll be at the same conference near the end of March and we’ll probably run into each other. I just want nothing to do with him at this point, but I also don’t want to burn a professional bridge so I play it cool. I assure him I’ll always care about him and our friendship will be fine.

This is where it gets freaky.

**A DAY** after T and I have our closure conversation, Z posts on her instagram story that she’s flying to the US next week on a first class ticket (she’ll be in the same state the week that the conference is happening!). That’s an uncomfortable coincidence. I’ll admit I began to check her stories regularly because of this.

**AT THE CONFERENCE IN MID-MARCH -**

I’ve been keeping T at a distance since our conversation. We don’t have any plans to meet up, but he’s constantly asking me what I’m up to. He sends me a picture of his hotel room view once he arrives at the conference. Then…on Z’s instagram, she posts a video of the SAME room view. Earlier in the week she had posted a video of the same luxury airport terminal T uses, another confirming evidence. I spiral – they’re together. This dude flew this \~23yrold girl first-class last minute from out of country, then brought her to a random conference with him.

Throughout the whole conference, he’s hitting me up. I respond to none of it. I end up running into him once or twice in person, but I was very brief and didn’t engage.

I leave the conference and try to shake it all off. What the fuck is this situation? Who tf is this girl? What the hell was I involved in? Why did every single thing he tell me end up being a total lie?

**A WEEK AFTER THE CONFERENCE -**

I find a Hotpads listing of T’s home – his SO (that he’s supposedly separated from) is apparently renting out a room in their house. She’s his WIFE, I know now because the description on the listing says “We’re a married couple in our 30s looking for a roommate \[etc.\]”. The wife wasn’t even moved out!!

I show my girlfriends the Hotpads listing, and we all try to piece together what might’ve been going on. We suspect maybe he met this Z person in December and he wanted to end things with me. I start to believe that maybe he even lied about his dad being sick. With the lies piling up, I’m lucky I’ve been getting STD checks and we didn’t actually have intercourse. I wanted to confront him about everything but I didn’t think he’d give me the truth.

**THE AFTERMATH -**

One of my friends was really upset about the situation and felt the Z girl might be taken advantage of, so unfortunately she DMs Z out of her own volition. My friend forwards all of the information (emails, my message history, contact info of his wife etc.) and says T is a three-timing POS, ending it all with “do what you will with this info”.

Z IMMEDIATELY responded with “I’m with him right now and I’ve locked myself in the bathroom. Am I in danger?”. She also asks if the person he’s been seeing at the same time was me. Z pleads to my friend to connect us so she can talk to me. I say no. Z thanks my friend and says she’s going to talk to T about me.

T messages me immediately after Z and my friend’s conversation (after I’ve been ignoring him for weeks) – and says one word: “Goodbye.” And then he blocks me on everything.

Z and T unfollow each other on instagram and don’t seem to be connected anymore. As far as I know Z is alive and well.

I haven’t talked to T since.

**TL;DR** I started dating a friend who lied to me about his wife, his sidepiece, and a bunch of other things. I managed to find out all this info on my own through internet sleuthing and never let him know I knew about any of it. The situation ended up blowing up in his face, but I still can’t understand what would compel someone to lie the way he did. What did he gain from treating me this way, if it didn’t end up in sex anyways?

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Happy to answer any questions since it’s near impossible to detail everything, and I’m sure I missed some helpful details!

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edit: for formatting