Private Guy

He says he wants to “keep it private.” But what does that really mean?

elham_cre smells a rat. “The guy I'm dating (3 months now) insists on keeping our relationship private. His friends don’t know we've been dating and he prefers that I don’t mention anything about our relationship to anybody either…I do not want him to discuss the details of our relationship with others but not to keep it so hidden either. Is it normal for guys not to tell their friends about a girl they're into & dating?”

charite_99 writes, “There's a difference between keeping a relationship private and keeping it a secret. Keeping it private means not sharing intimate details about the relationship and not airing dirty laundry with people outside the relationship. Keeping it secret is not sharing the fact of the relationship to anyone. It sounds like your guy wants to keep your relationship a secret, and that would concern me. Are you sure he isn't married or in a relationship with another woman?”

Youch.

nikitakolata: “I'm afraid I'd have to agree with the other poster... keeping a relationship a secret is not normal. Most guys (I think) are proud of their girlfriends and want their friends and family to know that a woman is with them.”

It’s possible that this is one of those cases of love being blind. Really, really blind. Is this poster willfully not picking up on her boyfriend’s suspicious signals? I’m going to go ahead and say, gee, it sure seems that way. Perhaps there’s a part of the story we’re not getting -- maybe he's been burned before, or wants to keep her all to himself?

But as whole9yards puts it, “if he was attracted to you enough to start a relationship then I would think that he would want to brag about you to his friends!”