It was not a picture-perfect relationship.
A California photographer is claiming on TikTok that she unknowingly dated a married man for six weeks last summer — until her mom ran a background check on him and exposed even more secrets.
Christina, who goes by the username @christinainthevalley on the social media app, shared the story in a viral video that has captured 1.6 million views since it was posted this week.
“The evening I found out, I threw my phone across the room, opened a well-deserved bottle of wine and called my best friends over to watch ‘The Other Woman,’” noted Christina, 27, who asked that her last name be withheld for privacy reasons when reached by The Post.
“All I was really looking for was validation. Validation I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’t a home-wrecker, I wasn’t stupid,” her email to The Post continued.
In the video, Christina explained that she connected with a man on the dating app Bumble who seemed like a “cool guy.” She said she started meeting him about once a week. She gushed that he would plan really fun dates, usually in the beginning of the week, on a Monday or a Tuesday.
But she claims she soon realized that he always came to her house to hang out, and his clothes often sported a lot of dog hair — even though he said he didn’t have a dog.
Still, she decided to tell her parents that she was seeing someone, informing them she couldn’t find any “red flags” about him. Then her mom reportedly took matters into her own hands.
“My mom, in typical mom fashion, decides to run a background check on him,” she divulged in the video. “I don’t know what made her decide to do this.”
Christina revealed she got a startling phone call from her mom.
“The next morning she calls me with his wedding website in hand, so what did I do?” Christina said. “I found his wife on Instagram.”
Christina declined to disclose the name of her problematic prior paramour to The Post. She said after watching “The Other Woman” with her best friends, she began to see the signs of love gone wrong.
She told The Post: “We got out the white board, drank the wine and wrote down every single similarity between my situation and the movie. I was suddenly seeing all the red flags from the love bombing we know all too well.”
When it came to next steps, the TikTok creator claimed in a follow-up video that she messaged his wife and explained the situation — with the woman being “really understanding.”
The wife wanted more details about their dates, Christina said, and the two of them put their heads together to figure out that he was actually dating at least three other women.
Christina said when she confronted him, he played dumb and said his wife was his “soon not-to-be wife.” Christina claims the wife had said they weren’t getting divorced. No matter, as Christina said she managed to smoothly exit from the love triangle (or love hexagon).
Some TikTok commenters went negative anyway.
“She can’t find any red flags on this guy when she already said, they only see each other on M or T and has not invited her to his house. 🤦🏻♀️,” one viewer snickered about Christina.
Another emphasized, “There’s already two red flags, not going to his house and clearly having a dog?”
Other viewers related to her story, admitting they experienced similar circumstances.
“Nine months, popped in at his work just as he was kissing wife and baby goodbye,” one user shared. “Never saw him again.”
A second viewer spilled, “Same here. He told me his dog was aggressive so I didn’t ask to come over. Found his wife and let her know. She left him.”
“Same,” a third griped. “Three months, man was available at all times of the day, impromptu sleepovers, acted single as hell. Married with two kids, one was a newborn.”
Christina told The Post her mom and girlfriends empowered her — and she believes her videos are doing the same for others.
“I think that’s what my comment section really became in my TikTok videos,” she wrote to The Post. “A community of women who came together to lean on each other for support and validation. Knowing that I wasn’t alone in going through something like this truly shook me to my core.”
Christina said she’s adjusted her focus since this experience, and now she’s picturing a future with someone new.
“This situation greatly affected my outlook on dating, however I am now happily in a relationship with basically a walking green flag,” she told The Post.