Disconcerting, to say the least.

Things have been going well lately. I've met a lot of interesting guys through gaydar. My social and dating life has been too busy rather than not busy enough. I'm getting as much hot sex as I want thanks to The Virtuoso. However my feeling that things are finally coming together for me has been dealt a fairly hard blow.

It all started with a date on Monday night. He was a nice guy, professional, intelligent and easy to talk to. He mentioned that he'd broken up with his partner a couple of months ago, but that they were still living in the same house before the partner moved to another city. Over the course of the conversation he mentioned the partner's first name, ethnic background and profession. It rang a bell, so I asked what his surname was. And that clinched it. His partner was none other than my first lover, BN2.

This sort of thing doesn't happen in normal heterosexual relationships. A straight man doesn't go out with a straight woman only to discover that they share the same ex. It certainly makes things a little awkward, and you just need to put it aside and keep concentrating on what's happening here and now.

However there was an added complication in this instance. My date mentioned that he and BN2 had been together for three and a half years. But BN2 and I were deep in the throes of our short relationship just a little under three years ago.

Cue record scratch sound effect.

Now I never had even an inkling that BN2 was so much as seeing anyone else when we were together, never mind being in another relationship. But my date mentioned the figure of three and half years a couple of times, so the overlap is undeniable. Fortunately my only mention of my relationship with BN2 was that I'd been seeing him "a few years ago", so my date evidently assumed that it was more than three and a half years. Frankly, revealing that your date's ex cheated on him is not something you want to do on a first date.

Of course it's possible that my date misspoke. Maybe he meant two and half years, which would place the begining of his relationship about three months after BN2 and I parted ways. But that's still bad news for me. Back then BN2 told me that he was taking a job overseas. He'd even bought a house. He was leaving within a month. But even if I assume that my date's relationship was two and half years rather than three and a half, that means that the whole overseas job/house/life thing was a barefaced lie.

Of course if my date didn't misspeak, and it really was three and a half years, then BN2 was lying to us both, which is even worse.

There may be some innocent explanation for everything. Maybe it really was only two and half years. And maybe they were only friends initially and my date counts that as part of the relationship. And maybe BN2's overseas job fell through at the last minute or after a very brief time.

But Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest answer is usually the right one. Most likely he was just a dirty dog, chewing on two bones at once.

Of course that hurts, just as you'd expect, but it actually goes a lot deeper than that. I'd always recalled my relationship with BN2 with fondness. I occassionally had a vague little fantasy that he might pop up out of the blue, and we could try again and, with the benefit of a little more maturity on my part, see where our relationship might take us.

But now I discover that he's been around this city for years, he may have had a boyfriend for all of the time that I knew him, and basically he lied to me about his life, his job, his plans and his relationships. In even the best scenario, he wasn't the nice guy I thought he was. He was, in this best case scenario, a manipulative liar.

Have you any idea how devastating it is to be confronted with the fact that the closest thing you've had to a boyfriend was really just a dishonest dude enjoying a bit of fun on the side?