my boyfriend wants to use hinge to make female friends

[u/Specific_Broccoli]

hi girls. tonight we're having drunken udon noodles with a dirty martini because my original dinner was a single olive in said martini and the mods quite reasonably informed me that this does not constitute food 💛 humiliating. anyway, i've acquired noodles. sadly they have done nothing for the boyfriend situation.

i've been with my boyfriend for about a year. a while ago he told me he was going out for drinks with a female friend i'd never heard of before. slightly odd, but fine. women are allowed to exist and i'm not asking for a register of every woman he's ever met.

then completely randomly i found out they'd actually met on hinge before we got together.

this was information he'd somehow neglected to include when describing her as “a friend”.

when i asked him about it, he insisted they'd never dated and had simply become friends. personally i'd consider “we originally matched on a dating app” fairly relevant supporting documentation when telling your girlfriend you're off for drinks with a woman she's never heard of, but perhaps i'm overly committed to administrative transparency.

also: HE arranged the drinks. and she apparently didn't properly know he had a girlfriend either. he'd vaguely mentioned seeing someone but somehow never managed the enormous linguistic undertaking of saying “i have a girlfriend”.

so: former hinge match, drinks he initiated, girlfriend doesn't know their history, hinge woman doesn't really know about girlfriend. extremely efficient system. nobody has the full information except him.

we obviously had a massive row.

and somehow his takeaway from this was to ask whether i'd be okay with him using hinge to find more female friends in the future.

hinge. for female friends.

apparently we're treating the dating app like a local knitting circle now.

he thinks i'm being controlling because he wouldn't be “looking for dates”. i think if you're opening hinge specifically to meet women, we may simply have reached the limits of the english language.

anyway, we're currently barely speaking and he's annoyed that i'm struggling to move past something he insists was completely innocent.

perhaps tomorrow i'll download deliveroo and use it to find a dentist.

am i being unreasonable or has this entire situation gone completely off the rails?

edit: for context, there was actually a whole period before the “hinge for female friends” suggestion where i just felt completely insane for being upset that he'd gone for drinks with a woman, told me basically nothing about her, and i only found out by accident later that they'd originally met on a dating app. i've had jealousy issues before, so i kept telling myself i was being insecure and needed to trust the man who'd always made me feel incredibly loved and secure. then he suggested using hinge to find more female friends and my remaining brain cell finally clocked in for work. apparently i'd overcorrected from “jealous girlfriend” all the way to unpaid defence counsel 💀

[u/HWBINCHARGE]

My ex claimed to be using dating apps to "make friends" as well. He was a sociopath who seemed to enjoy just how much he could get away with. I was trauma bonded so it was a lot.

[u/DisastrousBook957 → u/HWBINCHARGE]

I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m glad that he’s an ex ❤️ power to you.

[u/Specific_Broccoli → u/HWBINCHARGE]

this is eye-opening, thank you

[u/OnlyAnotherEmily → u/HWBINCHARGE]

You can't just rebrand cheating and get the green light. "Yes, it's a dating app, but I'm looking for friends. The fact that they don't know I have a girlfriend and think it's a date is irrelevant. "

[u/HWBINCHARGE → u/OnlyAnotherEmily]

He was also divorced and the profile said that he had never been married. He then said he didn't want to be "defined" by his divorce. Also it is a waste of time for the women on the dating apps who are looking for a relationship if these guys are really just looking for friends, which we all know is a lie in the first place. I mean I did end up becoming friends with some guys who I met on dating apps, but that was after meeting and realizing that there was no chemistry. But I wouldn't be looking for new guy friends on apps if I was in a relationship.