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As told to Ann DeGrey
I was still getting over a really bad breakup when I decided it was time to focus on myself again.
The relationship had ended badly, he was a cheater, and it left me drained and honestly not sure who I even was anymore.
For about five months I hardly socialised at all, just cooked nice meals at home and only caught up with my family and a few close girlfriends.
I definitely wasn’t keen to start dating again yet.
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Then one morning I woke up and thought: enough.
I wanted to feel strong again, so I joined a local gym and hired a personal trainer to get me started.
His name was Andy*. From the very first session he was patient, walking me through each exercise without ever making me feel stupid.
We started as friends. He’d ask about my day while I lifted, and I’d tell him about the slow work of putting my life back together. And he actually listened.
Week by week, the conversations got longer. He’d share bits about his own past, and the sessions stopped feeling like work and started feeling like something I looked forward to.
Then it turned flirty.
A smile that lasted a few seconds too long after a good set.
A comment about how much stronger I looked.
One evening after a hard workout, he walked me to my car and asked if I wanted to grab coffee the next day. I said yes.
Coffee became dinner, dinner became long walks, and before I could really see what was happening, we were a couple.
I should also add that he was incredibly cute.
Andy made me feel good about myself, he sent me good morning texts every day, told me I was beautiful, said he was falling for me. It was amazing.
We had a lot of fun, weekend hikes in the mountains, days at the beach, lots of fantastic sex.
He was a very sexual person, that was for sure! He really treated me like a princess and after everything my last relationship put me through, this felt like a real fresh start.
I honestly thought I’d found my person.
Then six months went by and we spent most evenings together.
I still trained with him twice a week and was really proud of how far I’d come in my fitness journey.
All my family and friends noticed that I looked so much better and Andy had healed me.
But then I was hit with the awful truth, which seemed to come out of nowhere.
I was at the reception area of the gym, waiting for Andy to finish his shift when a woman I recognised from group classes came up to me, looking really uncomfortable.
She said she needed to talk to me and told me I should know that Andy had been seeing her for the past three months, and she’d only just found out about me.
I couldn’t believe it. In fact, I refused to believe her.
She walked off and when I told Andy he just laughed and said, “Oh, that’s Mel* the psycho, just ignore her.”
The next day, another woman from the gym, Beth*, messaged me on social media.
She and Andy had been together for a few weeks now.
She said she’d heard about Melissa* and then heard about me.
That’s when the penny dropped, and I thought, surely both of these women can’t be lying?
Both of them trained at the same gym.
Both of them thought they were the only woman of Andy’s.
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I sat in my car outside that building for a long time after the second message.
And then everything just clicked into place, one horrifying piece at a time.
The sessions that always ran late, and the phone calls he’d step outside to take.
The evenings he said he was “helping another client at her home gym.”
He’d been juggling at least two other women from the same gym the whole time we were together. It hit me slowly at first, then all at once.
Every meal, every late-night talk, every plan we made, suddenly all of it felt fake.
I confronted Beth, and she confirmed a lot of things that made sense, for example, she was the one he was helping at her home gym, only it wasn’t the gym, it was the bedroom.
He apparently even told her that he was “falling for her”.
Then it was time to confront Andy, and he admitted the two other relationships, then swore none of them meant what I meant to him.
But his words didn’t do anything to stop the sick feeling going through me.
I left the apartment we’d just started sharing and stayed with a friend.
I quit the gym, blocked him from my phone, and then I posted on the gym’s Facebook page that Andy was a serial cheater.
It got taken down but not for a couple of hours, so hopefully I was able to warn other women.
I’m still devastated and don’t think I’ll ever trust another man again.
I’d rather be single forever.
*Names have been changed.
Feature Image: Getty. (Stock image used for illustrative purposes only).
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