{"id":931239,"date":"2026-10-17T08:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T08:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/931239\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T08:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T08:08:10","slug":"i-fell-for-my-personal-trainer-then-the-gym-rumours-began","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/931239\/","title":{"rendered":"I fell for my personal trainer. Then the gym rumours began."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Want to support independent women’s media? Become a Mamamia subscriber<\/a> and get an all-access pass to everything we make, including exclusive podcasts, articles, videos and our exercise app, MOVE. <\/p>\n

As told to Ann DeGrey<\/p>\n

I was still getting over a really bad breakup<\/a> when I decided it was time to focus on myself<\/a> again. <\/p>\n

The relationship had ended badly, he was a cheater<\/a>, and it left me drained and honestly not sure who I even was anymore. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I definitely wasn’t keen to start dating again yet. <\/p>\n

Watch: Is having a ‘lil crush the secret to a happy relationship? Post continues below.<\/p>\n

\"Is <\/p>\n

Is having a \u2018lil crush the secret to a happy relationship?<\/p>\n

Then one morning I woke up and thought: enough.<\/p>\n

I wanted to feel strong again, so I joined a local gym and hired a personal trainer to get me started.<\/p>\n

His name was Andy*. From the very first session he was patient, walking me through each exercise without ever making me feel stupid. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Then it turned flirty. <\/p>\n

A smile that lasted a few seconds too long after a good set. <\/p>\n

A comment about how much stronger I looked.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Coffee became dinner, dinner became long walks, and before I could really see what was happening, we were a couple. <\/p>\n

I should also add that he was incredibly cute.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

We had a lot of fun, weekend hikes in the mountains, days at the beach, lots of fantastic sex. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I honestly thought I’d found my person.<\/p>\n

Then six months went by and we spent most evenings together.<\/p>\n

I still trained with him twice a week and was really proud of how far I’d come in my fitness journey.<\/p>\n

All my family and friends noticed that I looked so much better and Andy had healed me.<\/p>\n

But then I was hit with the awful truth, which seemed to come out of nowhere. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

I couldn’t believe it. In fact, I refused to believe her. <\/p>\n

She walked off and when I told Andy he just laughed and said, “Oh, that’s Mel* the psycho, just ignore her.”<\/p>\n

The next day, another woman from the gym, Beth*, messaged me on social media.<\/p>\n

She and Andy had been together for a few weeks now.<\/p>\n

She said she’d heard about Melissa* and then heard about me. <\/p>\n

That’s when the penny dropped, and I thought, surely both of these women can’t be lying? <\/p>\n

Both of them trained at the same gym.<\/p>\n

Both of them thought they were the only woman of Andy’s.<\/p>\n

Listen: Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift never fight. An aspirational relationship goal? Or a flashing red flag? Post continues below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I sat in my car outside that building for a long time after the second message.<\/p>\n

And then everything just clicked into place, one horrifying piece at a time. <\/p>\n

The sessions that always ran late, and the phone calls he’d step outside to take.<\/p>\n

The evenings he said he was “helping another client at her home gym.” <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Every meal, every late-night talk, every plan we made, suddenly all of it felt fake.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

He apparently even told her that he was “falling for her”.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But his words didn’t do anything to stop the sick feeling going through me. <\/p>\n

I left the apartment we’d just started sharing and stayed with a friend.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

It got taken down but not for a couple of hours, so hopefully I was able to warn other women. <\/p>\n

I’m still devastated and don’t think I’ll ever trust another man again. <\/p>\n

I’d rather be single forever.<\/p>\n

*Names have been changed.<\/p>\n

Feature Image: Getty. (Stock image used for illustrative purposes only).<\/p>\n

\n Win a $1000 voucher!\n <\/p>\n

\n We want to ask you a few questions about your gut healthComplete our quick survey for your chance to win a gift voucher in our quarterly draw.\n <\/p>\n


\n Take survey \u2192
\n <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Want to support independent women’s media? Become a Mamamia subscriber and get an all-access pass to everything we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":931240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[64,63,538,137],"class_list":["post-931239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fitness","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/931240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}