What to do when your roomate/friend and boyfriend hook up behind your back?

Revise your selection process. And go through all the feelings you’re having. There are no shortcuts. Get all the way through all those unpleasant feelings and process them well. Just find things to do. Sounds lame but time will heal that. Just takes time.

Look at it from the positive side.

You have played a central role in bringing them together. A matchmaker. If not for you, they might never have found each other.

This sucks, no question about it. At some point in time, one or both of them will come to you to explain and maybe apologize. Maybe not right now, but when they get tired of each other.

So your role is to look to the future. Suppose roommate apologizes. How would you respond? That’s what I would be concentrating on.

As for the boyfriend – he’s history. You don’t want him back. Why would you believe anything he says in the future?

I know, under the circumstances, it would not be an immediate feeling but you could try feeling enormously relieved that you found out when you did and not much further down the track. Best of luck @OlianderClub, I wish you well for your future.

Welcome to Fluther.

Your feelings of betrayal by your boyfriend are somewhat normal, though perhaps exaggerated. I don’t mean “meaningless” – obviously, if you thought that you had a close, committed and intimate relationship with him and then find out that he’s still “shopping around”, then clearly he didn’t have the same sense of commitment that you had to the relationship.

But the reason I say that your feelings may be unduly exaggerated is – you’re not married, are you? What kinds of actual commitments and promises has he made to you?

This is one of the steep down sides to the “free love” attitudes that have come to the fore since I was a young man. I’m not saying that “the way you kids handle relationships is awful” and “you’ve gotten what you should have expected”; I’m just saying that this is a problem in these kinds of modern relationships that should be recognized and dealt with. When there isn’t a marriage or some other clear commitment that has the same kind of solemnity and promise – verbalized and made plain, each partner to the other – then you’re part of the “hookup culture”.

I’m not saying that you’re a slut or that he is – I try to avoid making those kinds of judgements about people whom I do not know – but in order to know if he really betrayed you we would have to know what kinds of promises he really made to you. (Maybe he’s as bad as you portray him; if you said “my husband did this…” then I would normally assume – if you had a “traditional” marriage which is also going out of style – that he was a pure cad.)

On the other hand, there’s your roommate.

Unless you have evidence or an admission from her that she was hooking up with him (never mind her fantasies; you cannot reasonably hold her accountable for the thoughts and feelings she may harbor), she’s blameless. Maybe she didn’t handle the discovery of your ex’s profile on the dating site in the way that you would have preferred, but it doesn’t make her complicit in any of his actions.

To give you another analogy: Last time I lost a job was in 2001, and I was pretty desperate at the time to get re-employed, since my mortgage was going to eat me alive. I registered on I-don’t-know-how-many job search websites – literally, dozens. Within four months of losing that job I had gotten the job I now hold.

I STILL – 14 years on – get come-ons from employers running across my résumé online and wanting me to come in for an interview. I used to try to find “where did you find my résumé?” so that I could go to the site and remove it, disable the account, kill the profile or whatever. Almost no one bothers to respond, so I have also given up trying to track down where I may or may not be active still.

It’s just possible – not that I’m saying “he’s not guilty” – that your boyfriend’s profile on dating websites is “ancient history” that he simply hasn’t gone back to kill yet. But in any case, if he’s still active on the dating website, unless he has made some kind of solemn commitment to you, well, you’re young people, right? And he’s still shopping for a life partner. At least you found out now, so you can dump him and better manage your next relationship, including knowing what you will give up to it, and when, and in exchange for what.

And your roommate should not be taking all this on her own shoulders (assuming that seeing his profile was all that she “did”). Again, never mind what she thought might be going on, or what her dreams and aspirations were. (If she would want a “cheating” boyfriend, then she’s an idiot. The fulfillment of her own desire, in that case, would be her punishment.)

What @Adagio said. Find a win in this and walk away.

Welcome to Fluther.

@OlianderClub You state “I don’t know what to do to “get over” this and move on, forget … ”

You will get over this in time but don’t forget what happened because there are valuable life lessons to be learned from this experience. Don’t waste them.

@CWOTUS

It was a very serious relationship. We were not officially married, but we were engaged. I was with him for almost 3 years.

@Adagio

Yeah, that is pretty much what I’m thinking. It’s extremely painful right now and I hate thinking and remembering….. I think this is just something (as others have stated) that will heal with time….... At least I know now…...

Yes definitely, this is a valuable lesson for sure…... Painful, but a good lesson. I’ve never felt more betrayed but I can see the silver lining in this too…...

@elbanditoroso I understand what you’re trying to say. I don’t know what’s positive about this, other than me moving on…..

I don’t believe or think they will date or be an item. All I know is that they might have spoken on the dating app. She told me that they talked on there, he denies it and says he blocked her. He also says he doesn’t have her number and has never slept with her. But I have no idea who is telling the truth. I have no idea whether they did hook up or not – I have no idea if they has sex in the apartment while I wasn’t there….. The point is I can’t believe anything he or she says. It’s heartbreaking but also confusing.

@CWOTUS

Pretty much when I found out about the dating site, he closed his account and deleted it. He says he was just on there to look at pictures and talk. He says he never met anyone or did anything. He told me he never talked to my roomate and that he blocked her on the app as soon as he saw her.

Me and him were very serious, engaged, together for almost 3 years. We have ups and downs like any normal couple but I did not think he was on a dating app. Maybe I was blind or missed something, I don’t know.

It felt like a marriage. We were engaged.

We talked about the future, children, houses, everything. His entire family knows me, loves me, and knows we were engaged.

I’m not into “modern relationships” like what you said. I am very loyal and like “traditional” kinds of relationships…. I don’t hook up, do one night stands or anything like that. I don’t judge others who do, just not my cup of tea. If I’m going to be with a man it’s because I think we have the potential to truly be soulmates, husband/wife, etc. I wouldn’t just hook up with anyone or take relationships lightly…

I tried so damn hard to make it work.

That’s how I feel as well—disgusted that she would want a cheating boyfriend or “sloppy seconds”. I’ve never hooked up with a friend’s boyfriend and never would.

I don’t think there’s anything I can do for the pain.

As everyone else said I think it’s just a learning lesson. I hope time will heal this, I think it will. I feel like shit.

I know, under the circumstances, it would not be an immediate feeling but you could try feeling enormously relieved that you found out when you did and not much further down the track. Best of luck @OlianderClub, I wish you well for your future.

@Adagio

THANK YOU….. I agree….... Better to find out now at this moment…...

So the issue isn’t your roommate and your now ex hooking up, but that there was a possibility.. Was this on Tinder? Your ex may have been window shopping, but you don’t believe him that he didn’t get together with your roommate.

I think you are reacting to a possibility, while not focusing on why your ex was on tinder. I am not excusing that, but I think your roommate is blameless as you described the circumstances. How do you know she even saw his profile?

@zenvelo Because she told me she was talking to him on a dating app. I then tried to ask her more questions about it and she stayed quiet. No it wasn’t on Tinder. She isn’t blameless because she did admit to seeing his profile and talking to him. I am focusing on why he was on the dating site, which is why I’m not with him anymore. I also had an intuition something was going on or about to happen. If she’s a friend she wouldn’t have acted that way and in certain ways. I might be overthinking it, but I don’t think they’re both not to blame…. and I’m to blame also, for being too blind to see what was unfolding.

I think the dating site in question is relevant.

I have an OKcupid account. It’s free, and it’s about 15 years old, and I used it in high school for those fun personality quizzes, not for actual dating. Since I still have the same email address, I still get messages from time to time, which all get deleted. I made a Tinder account once with a burner email address just to see if I could find anyone I knew on there (yay, stalking). It was a move born out of sheer boredom and insomnia.

However, if the dating site in question requires a fee, I think that says a lot more about what a person’s motivation is.

@Seek Yeah, true… No it didn’t require a fee, I think it was the “Happn” app, like a free website like POF or Tinder or something.