He had a girlfriend the entire time and never told me did I completely misread our friendship?

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I need some outside perspective because I genuinely can't tell if I completely misread this situation or if his behavior was actually a little questionable.

I met this guy online about two years ago. We became friends and talked for quite a while, but eventually stopped talking because of some unrelated XYZ reasons. Recently, we reconnected and started talking again, and we've been talking pretty consistently for about a month.

The problem is… I've had a crush on him for a long time. After reconnecting, that crush definitely came back stronger. I wasn't confessing my feelings or anything, but I was definitely dropping what I thought were subtle hints. I'd start conversations about random things, tell him things about my day, ask his opinion on stuff, etc. And whenever I started a conversation, he would usually engage and continue it rather than giving short/dry responses. We'd sometimes end up having really long conversations about social issues, life, random things, etc.

Important clarification though: he wasn't really initiating conversations himself. I was usually the one who started talking. He would sometimes randomly send me a reel or something, but he wasn't the type to suddenly text me out of nowhere with an update. Rather, I'd start a conversation about X topic, and then he'd continue it and we'd end up talking for ages.

Sometimes, though, once we were already talking, he'd send me pictures or updates about things happening in his life — like telling me about an interview he'd gone to or showing me a new spot he'd found near his hospital. So I felt like he was comfortable enough with me to share things about his life, even though he wasn't really initiating the conversations.

And here's where everything gets weird.

I didn't know he had a girlfriend.

Apparently, he's been dating her for about a year.

And he never mentioned her once during the entire month we'd been talking after reconnecting.

Then the other day, completely randomly, he tells me something along the lines of:

> “Would you please talk to my girlfriend? She doesn't understand. There's been a misunderstanding and this friendship has gotten the wrong message to her. She's very upset with me.”

And that's how I found out he had a girlfriend.

Apparently, from her perspective, our friendship had started looking too close/flirty, and honestly… I can understand why she thought that. I was being overly friendly because I genuinely didn't know he was in a relationship.

I had a crush on him, so obviously I wasn't interacting with him exactly like I would with some random platonic friend. I thought there was a possibility there, and I was kind of testing the waters with jokes and subtle flirting.

But what bothers me is that there were multiple opportunities where he could have casually mentioned his girlfriend.

For example, we were joking about a situation involving a woman/landlord being paranoid about him bringing a girl over. I literally said something along the lines of:

> “Just tell her, ‘Yeah, as long as it's not your daughter, I wouldn't mind dating your daughter.’”

Obviously we were joking, but that would've been such an easy opportunity for him to say, “Haha, I have a girlfriend.”

He didn't.

And then there were other conversations about dating, marriage, Gujarati aunties, etc., where again, I feel like mentioning a girlfriend would've been completely natural.

Then there's the stuff in the screenshots.

[Screenshot 1 — our conversation about me “yapping” and him saying he always has ears for my yapping.]

This was after I'd told him that sometimes he makes me feel stupid for talking too much. He actually reassured me that he liked our conversations and the “yap” we got into. So I didn't feel like I was annoying him or that he was uncomfortable with how much we talked.

[Screenshot 2 — the Gujarati auntie/marriage/caste conversation.]

We'd have these really random, comfortable conversations about marriage, caste, Gujarati aunties, etc. I know this stuff isn't necessarily romantic on its own, but because I already liked him, I interpreted the overall dynamic differently.

And now I'm sitting here wondering:

Were my hints actually obvious enough that a reasonable person would understand I liked him?

Or did he genuinely just see me as a friend and interpret everything as harmless joking?

Because there's a huge difference between those two possibilities.

If he genuinely saw me as completely platonic, then maybe I just embarrassingly read too much into a comfortable friendship. 😭

But if he realized I liked him and intentionally didn't mention his girlfriend, then that's a little different to me.

At the same time, I don't want to unfairly villainize him. Technically, I never directly asked him if he was single, and he wasn't actually initiating these conversations or actively pursuing me. I was the one starting most of them. He mostly just continued the conversations once I started them.

So maybe from his perspective, I was just a friend who jokes/flirts casually, and he genuinely didn't think I was interested in him romantically.

But then I'm confused by the fact that his girlfriend apparently did see something in our interactions that made her uncomfortable.

So now I'm trying to figure out what I actually got wrong here.

Maybe he was completely oblivious.

Maybe he knew and enjoyed the attention but never intended anything.

Maybe he just genuinely viewed me as a friend and didn't think his relationship status was relevant to our conversations.

Or maybe he should've mentioned his girlfriend much earlier, especially once he realized the friendship was getting a little flirty.

I don't know.

I also don't want to make the same mistake again, which is why I'm asking Reddit to be brutally honest with me.

Were these hints actually obvious?

Does it seem like he was giving me any reason to think he might be interested, or was I just projecting because I already had a crush on him?

And is it weird that he went a whole month of reconnecting with me without mentioning a girlfriend he'd already been dating for a year?

Because right now I'm somewhere between:

“Girl, he literally never initiated conversations with you. He obviously just saw you as a friend.”

and

“Okay, but why the hell did he never mention his girlfriend when you were making jokes like THAT?” 😭

What do you guys think?