Shattered Rose-Tinted Lenses

And we are back! Welcome newcomers and old friends. This week’s post strays a little bit from my usual format. Normally, each of my posts are a standalone soliloquy. But every once in a while, it takes a bit longer to cover all the details. I know I will not be able to keep your attention for more than five minutes, so I break up the larger tales into manageable shorts. If you are new to this page (or need a refresher), I highly recommend you read the previous post (here) because this is a continuation of that story. Y’all ready for the rest of this story?

It was distressing to find out the guy I had been speaking to for the past two months was married. I was questioning everything he had ever told me. Was he double-speaking? You know, disguising, obscuring, or distorting his meaning so that he could deny any assumption a reasonable person would have made. No, Grant flat out lied to me.

On January 27th (10 days after we matched), I asked him, “So tell me, how is someone caring and fun like you still single?” His response, through multiple messages, basically mentioned how girls want more time from him, but his job is a big responsibility. After all, he “took an oath to protect this country with [his] life.”

I took it a step further and asked him if marriage was something he was looking for or wanted. He evaded that question with, “as long as they understand me and my job.” At the time, his responses sounded noble and admirable, but hindsight shattered those rose-tinted lenses. I guess I should have been more specific; I should have asked if he was ever married?

About a month later, I brought up the issue again. This time, I asked why he was on Dil Mil to begin with. He said he was bored of being single. Massive eye roll. I followed up with another question, how long has he been single? “8 months now, I think.”

NO, YOU ASSHOLE, YOU ARE MARRIED! YOU ARE NOT SINGLE!

The audacity of this man to blatantly lie to me like that is astounding! I needed confirmation. There was no way I was going to accuse someone of cheating without some solid proof. While I trust Rowan, and I have no reason to believe he would lie to me about this, he and Grant had two degrees of separation. Grant was only a friend of his friend, whom he hung out with once. There were a lot of things Rowan was unsure about.

I spent the rest of Thursday and all of Friday doing as much research as I could. I found out more about this guy in two days from my own than from all the things he told me over the course of two months. But I did not find the smoking gun. I needed information from someone who knew Grant more personally.

I should add, everything I found out about him was publically available information (social media, whitepages, and google searches). As much as I was hurt by this revelation, Grant was not worth the money to access information behind a paywall. It is amazing all the information you can find with just a name, an astrological sign, and a location. It just takes a lot of time (and determination) to sift through all of it. We really do not realize how much we put out there.

I was becoming impatient, so I upped the ante. I reached out to other mutual friends. There was one person whom I thought might give me the information I was looking for. I found pictures of them hanging out, going camping, Grant even danced at this person’s wedding. Safe to say, they were close. But Andrew and I were not. Now was not the time to be bashful, I swallowed my anxiety and messaged Andrew on Saturday morning.

He did not respond to me until that night. It was better that way, I was busy during the day (a story for a future post). I asked how he was doing and how his kids were, but I did not waste too much time with small talk. After all, it would have been odd if I messaged Andrew just to catch up. I asked him if he knew Grant. Andrew wanted to double check we were talking about the same person. When I confirmed, he gave me the bad news.

“It’s better you know this. He recently got married, idk if he ever told you that. Not really recently, about 2 years ago.”

Well, there you go. He is married. Even though I already knew that, it stung when I read it again.

Andrew sent me a photo of the two of them together (Grant and his wife). She was pretty. She has this homely girl look, or maybe it was because they were wearing Onam outfits. My heart ached, not because I lost something (I never had it in the first place), but because I was the “other” woman. How did this happen?

Andrew told me Grant was something of a player. He had told him to stop now that he was married, but I guess he did not listen. Apparently, I am not the first person Grant has cheated on his wife with; she found out about a previous one. Andrew told me he would talk to Grant again.

I asked Andrew if she knew about me, he did not think so. Then I asked if she deserved to know. At first, he felt that I should just keep it between the few that already knew. Was there a need to cut open new wounds? But the thing is, I would want to know. It would mean I could make an informed decision.

I told Andrew about how, back in college, my ex cheated on me. Everyone in my friend group knew, but not one of them was kind enough to tell me. I only found out after we had broken up. In hindsight, it was pretty obvious, all the clues were there. I was just too naïve to understand what they meant. Had I known, I think I would have handled that break up a lot better. After hearing my story, he understood where I was coming from. He said that I could reach out to her if I wanted to. Andrew gave me her Facebook profile. Seeing that it was well past midnight by the time I was done talking to Andrew, I decided to wait until it was morning before I messaged her.

Unfortunately, y’all are going to have to wait until next week to find out how this conversation went. But before I sign off, I want to ask you, would you make the same decision I made? Would you tell someone their partner was cheating on them, especially if you were the “other” person? Would you want to know if your partner was cheating on you? I would love to know your thoughts, comment your responses below. Until next time!

-Aemi