When Sarah dated a man who wasn’t always available to answer her calls, she never imagined there would be a reason, other than that he was simply busy at work.

“The excuses he gave for not answering his phone, I was very trusting of because it made sense for the type of job he had,” the Melbourne single mum tells Kidspot.

Sarah and the man were together for three months last year, and at the time, she didn’t realize the type of relationship they had was completely for his benefit.

“I never met any of his friends,” the 38-year-old remembers.

“I actually didn’t see him interact with another person. We always met up privately and I thought it was a nice, comfortable thing to hang out at my home but I didn’t realise he was wanting that because he was hiding. I didn’t read into what should have been very big red flags.”

Sarah ended the relationship after her now ex told her he was going “interstate” due to “family trauma,” and left no indication as to when he was returning.

“I was worried about him, but after a while, I didn’t want to keep waiting and told him we should call things off,” the mum-of-one says.

Shockingly, Sarah soon discovered through a little social media sleuthing that her former partner was not interstate at all.

“He was actually busy with another relationship, which he had been in for five years,” she says incredulously. 

“We never went to his house while we were dating because he said he had an obnoxious roommate, but that was really his girlfriend.” 

That girlfriend had actually messaged Sarah during the relationship, and when she approached her then-boyfriend about it, he fabricated yet another tall story. 

“She asked me, ‘How do you know this person?’” Sarah says.

“He told me she was a stalker ex and not to respond to her messages, so I didn’t.”

When Sarah confronted her ex about her discovery post-relationship, he deflected once again and denied all wrongdoing.

“He gaslighted me, saying I was as crazy as she was, and blocked me,” she says.

“I just thought, ‘Good riddance!’” 

A few months later, as she dipped back into the dating pool, Sarah was told by two male friends that she should do something she’d never done before.

“They told me to ask for a reference before meeting up with someone in person to keep myself safe and if I was planning on dating them,” she says.

Instantly, she thought the idea had merit.

“It’s not that I was going to focus on what that referee would say, or the questions I would ask them, but the biggest part of it is how the person (that she intends to meet/date) responds when I ask them for a reference,” she explains.

“Do they completely shut down or tell me it’s stupid? Do they ghost me? That response will tell me a lot about them.”

The first person Sarah used this technique on was Mike, a man she met via a dating app earlier this year.

After chatting via text for a few days, the pair decided they would meet up in person – with one condition.

“Before I agreed to it, I said I wanted to chat to a female reference,” she recalls.

“He thought it was a little weird because he’d never heard of it before, but he didn’t push back. Then by the end of the day, he got back to me with his sister’s phone number.”

Sarah ended up having a pleasant text exchange with Mike’s sister.

“We had a little chat and offered to answer any questions I had,” Sarah says.

“She was so encouraging of this and told me she wished she had done it in the past, too. Mike was so open with me that I didn’t actually ask any personal questions to his sister, I just wanted to see if he would give me a reference.”    

Sarah felt so comfortable after the referee experience, that she and Mike met up the following day, and soon became an exclusive relationship.

“Early on, we had lots of open conversations about what we wanted and didn’t want, and talked about our past relationships and how we would have done things better,” Sarah says.

Now four months later, the couple are still happily together, and Mike has met Sarah’s five-year-old daughter with great success.

“He’s willing to have uncomfortable conversations in the name of having a healthy relationship and he encourages me to be open about what I’m feeling,” Sarah says, smiling. “He’s a very beautiful person who doesn’t want me to be hurt like I have been in the past. So I don’t see myself needing to ask for another reference for a long time.”