His Super (Crazy) Ex Girlfriend

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Originally uploaded by macslost.

Disclaimer: I got this question and it's a little long, but I decided not to edit it for brevity to preserve the integrity of the story...

Tracy, 26
New York, NY

I heard about your blog from one of my friends, and she told me you always give blunt advice, so I thought I’d give you a try.

I met my last boyfriend on a popular online dating site. We went out for 11 months, 3 of which we lived together. Everything in our relationship was fine until we started living together (which I suggested because he was in a bad living situation with his roommates). After we started living together, I felt like he was cheating. I didn’t have any proof, but just little things wouldn’t add up.

One day I recommended the online dating site to a single girlfriend of mine as a place for her to possibly meet some guys. She came over and we were messing around on the site and did a search based on her criteria. My boyfriend’s profile popped up as one of her matches! Mind you, 2 months into our relationship we had both decided that what we had was serious and had gone and removed our profiles. But here was his, up again with a picture that was less than a month old, and listing himself as single!

I was so mad! I wanted to confront him immediately, but my girl said he technically hadn’t done anything wrong yet, so I should get some more proof. Although it was hard, I didn’t say anything to him about the incident. But I started to be more observant. I got the password to his email account (I’ll take that secret to my grave, tho) and realized that he was corresponding with a few females from the site and had even gone on a movie date with one of them, to see X-Men, which he’d told me that he didn’t want to see and I ended up going with my friends.

I admit that I kinda got caught up in reading his emails and started checking his account a lot more often than I’d originally intended. This went on for about 2 weeks then via email, he came clean to one of the girls he’d met online (Tamara – the same one he took to the movies) and told her he was living with his girlfriend, “but there was absolutely no potential for anything long term because she just doesn’t excite me.”

That was the last straw. I confronted him when I got home with printouts of the email. He had the nerve to tell ME it was over!!!! Said he was disgusted at my snooping into his private affairs, and that he couldn’t be with someone who didn’t trust him. Then he packed a bag, and told me he’d be back to collect the rest of his things on the weekend, but I could “feel free to check through all those things if I wanted to”! I did him one better. I emailed Tamara and explained the situation. I told her about the other two girls he was kicking it with online, then emailed them to tell them the whole situation.

Coincidentally his email password also worked for his online profile (I had never thought to check it before). I went on, changed his profile, and instead put up all the details of his cheating. Did I go too far?

Mmm. Mmm. Mmm Dude played you not once, not twice, not three times…actually I stopped counting after three…but I think it’s about equivalent to the number of times you played yourself. Did you go too far? Let’s use an analogy. Let’s say you’re in New York; normal would’ve been DC; too far would’ve been Florida…you’re all the way in Australia right now.

Congratulations! You have succeeded in looking like The Crazy Ex that almost everyone has a story about – all that’s left for you to do is throw his clothes out the window and key his car. And you’ve also validated everything he’s told the other girls about you regarding your suitability for a long-term relationship.

Brutal honesty aside, I think I can understand how you went from Wronged Girlfriend to Crazy Ex. No doubt you loved the guy; you’d settled into a comfortable relationship with him and then to find out that 1) he isn’t claiming you as his woman and 2) he doesn’t see any long-term future for you two is hurtful. But you probably could’ve saved yourself the heartache and drama even before you found his picture on the dating site.

Remember those “little things that wouldn’t add up”? That was just your natural female’s intuition try to give you a warning. I can’t say it enough: trust your gut. If something doesn’t feel right, chances are it isn’t…and you should always try to address it. If you’re wrong, you’re wrong, but don’t let that little voice just keep nagging you and you just ignore it. Think about if you’d just sat down with dude and had a conversation about those “little things”? It might’ve given him some clue that you were on to him and forced him to come clean or it might not have made a difference…but now you’ll never know, will you?

Dude was unequivocally wrong for representing himself as a single man when he wasn’t and for going on dates with women while you two were together. (And you shouldn’t have let your friend tell you how to handle the situation, either!) But isn’t there a point – whether it’s when you’re employing 007 tactics to get his email password, or reading the actual emails, or emailing Tamara, Joan, Mary and Helen – when you have to say to yourself, “If I have to do this, then I don’t need to be in this relationship”?

It sucks, but it seems like dude has a win-win situation on his hands: he’s gotten out of a relationship he obviously no longer wants to be in, and Tamara and the other girls probably think you’re crazy, so at least one of them will probably still date him anyway. But look at the bright side: at least you got a cheating loser out of your life before you married him or had kids!

Finally Tracy, stop the snooping. If you have to go there, it just means you’re choosing to ignore what you already know.

What do you think? or Email me your own dating question