Dating in the modern world is an absolute extreme sport. You never really know who is sitting across the table from you at a coffee shop. Because we all consume way too much true crime media, doing a light background check on a new romantic prospect is basically a survival reflex at this point. One woman on Reddit recently shared her experience of doing just that, and her casual romantic partner threw a massive temper tantrum when he found out she knew his dark secrets.
The Original Poster is a twenty seven year old woman who relocated to a brand new city for her career. She did not know a single soul in town, so she leaned on a mutual friend to make a local connection. This friend introduced her to a local guy. But there is a massive catch to this supposed introduction. The mutual friend is actually just the guy’s out of state tax accountant. They had never even met in person.
Having a tax accountant vouch for a guy means absolutely nothing when it comes to personal safety. It just means he probably filed a return at some point. Still, the Original Poster decided to give the guy a chance. He helped her troubleshoot some car issues, and the two of them ended up clicking. They fell into that weird modern dating gray area where they act like a couple but refuse to put an official label on it because they both have commitment issues.
As they started hanging out more frequently, the activities escalated. They were going on long hikes in secluded areas and taking overnight road trips together. Being a woman in a completely new city with a man she barely knew, she decided to do the smart thing. She hopped online and did a little digging into public court records just to make sure she was safe. What she found was definitely not a clean slate.
Let us just say the guy had a pretty colorful legal history. He was actually honest about a few of his minor infractions, which is a nice start. But the Original Poster discovered one very serious charge that he completely hid from her. He even went out of his way to tell little white lies, specifically claiming he had never been arrested, despite public records proving otherwise.
Instead of confronting him and ruining a perfectly good weekend, she kept her mouth shut. She figured he would eventually open up and tell the truth when he felt comfortable. She continued to date him, hike with him, and hang out with him for years, completely unbothered by his past mistakes. She accepted him for who he was in the present and never used his secrets against him.
Fast forward to recently. The two of them were in the middle of a random argument when the topic of his past suddenly came up. He looked at her and asked out of the blue if she knew about his criminal records. Because she is an honest person, she casually admitted that she knew about absolutely all of them and had known the truth for a very long time.
The guy completely lost his mind. He took the news incredibly hard and accused her of going behind his back to invade his privacy. He was furious that she took away his choice to tell his story on his own terms. He was also deeply offended that she spent years pretending she did not know about his secret arrests. He essentially tried to turn his own criminal record into a valid reason to be mad at the woman he was actively lying to.
The internet collectively rolled its eyes at this guy. You do not get to claim an invasion of privacy over literal public court documents. If the county clerk knows about it, the girl you are taking into the woods on an overnight hiking trip has every right to know about it too. Women have to prioritize their physical safety over a man’s fragile ego every single time.
The most ridiculous part of this entire saga is that she actually stayed with him. She looked at his serious rap sheet, shrugged, and decided to keep dating him anyway. Instead of throwing a massive pity party about his lost agency, he should be buying her dinner for not running for the hills three years ago. She is definitely not the villain in this story, and he needs a serious reality check.