When it comes to dating, couples can spend months getting to know each other's personality, but their looks should come as no surprise, providing they've met in person. However, one woman has revealed how she discovered her then-boyfriend hid a personal secret from her throughout the first three months of their relationship - and it made her question everything.
Tiffany, from America, explained how she started dating a "tall, gorgeous" boy when she was 17-years-old after meeting at a rodeo show. She said: "I saw him from across the way and I said 'That's a tall, tall gorgeous man and I need to have him', so we exchanged numbers and by three weeks later, we were in love.
"We saw each other every day. We spent every waking moment together. We were young lovers."
However, she claims "weird things started to happen" when he would show up to her sports games wearing tracksuit bottoms despite it being blazing hot outside.
On another occasion, she noticed he was limping while they were out on a walk - but he brushed this off as a "knee injury" saying it was nothing to worry about.
He denied her request to come to one of his basketball games to support him while he played, saying: "You're absolutely not allowed to come to my basketball games."
Tiffany added on TikTok: "I was like, "Even if you're the worst on the team, you're like 6'6, you can't be the worst on the team. You stand there and you're better than half the other guys."
But he responded: "No, I just don't want you to come."
It wasn't until the couple posed for a picture together that she started to realise why her boyfriend had been acting so strangely around her.
She added: "Three months we dated - we were in love, spoke to each other every day.
"We went to dinner one night and I took this picture - this picture is haunting.
"The next day I post this picture to Facebook and the more I stared at it, the more I thought, 'I think I'm being bamboozled'.
"So I took this picture to my friends and I said 'Guys I think my boyfriend might only have one leg."
"They were like, 'Why would he hide that from you?' and I was like, 'I don't know. But I don't know how to ask him if he has one leg because like... How do you bring that up?'."
Tiffany gave her boyfriend every opportunity to share his secret for weeks - but it wasn't until they were about to go to a swimming party when he decided to tell her the truth.
She said: "We had an after-prom house where we'd go to a lake so he was going to have to wear a bathing suit. He took me to a park and was like, 'I need to talk to you about something'."
He explained how he had polio, a life-threatening disease that can infect a person's spinal cord, causing paralysis.
"I was like, 'Listen, I suspected this for a couple of weeks now and you made it real weird by not telling me'," she told him. "I asked, 'What did you think I was going to do?'
In response, he said: "I don't know, you met me and you didn't know so I just ran with it'."
While she understood his reservations to tell her, she still questioned why he thought hiding it for three months was a wise decision.
She said: "I was like, 'I guess but three months? You hid it for three months'. I'm that dumb and unaware."
The couple stayed together for nine months in total before Tiffany moved away to college and their relationship came to an end due to the miles between them.
She ended her TikTok by giving her ex-boyfriend a "shout out" for "proving her dumb".
Commenting on her video, one user said: "It's sad that he actually felt he had to hide that."
Another user added: "I feel like I’m more curious on how you were intimate and never found out."
A third user said: "Awww that makes me so sad he was self conscious about it."
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