My girlfriend (23F) and I (28M) have been dating about a month. It’s long distance but we recently spent time together traveling.
Something happened at a hotel lounge that has been bothering me and I want to know if my expectations are unreasonable.
We were sitting together at a hotel lounge and I stepped away for about five minutes to talk to the concierge. When I came back, a guy had approached her and they were talking. From what I saw, she was in the middle of giving him her Instagram.
When she noticed me coming back, the guy left.
A few minutes later he actually came back because she hadn’t typed in her full Instagram handle. I stayed quiet for a few seconds because I wanted to see how she would handle it.
At that point she told him something like “this is my boyfriend” and said she didn’t want to give her contact after all. I then stepped in and told the guy not to speak to her again and he left immediately with his friend.
Later she told me she had been caught off guard earlier and didn’t think much of it in the moment. She also said she thought maybe connecting could be useful in some way. She later apologized and said it was a mistake and that she wouldn’t do it again.
What’s bothering me is that if the roles were reversed, my instinct would have been to shut that down immediately and say I was there with my girlfriend. Instead it felt like the boundary only appeared once I came back.
We’ve only been dating a month so I’m trying to figure out whether this is just an awkward social moment or if it’s a sign we have very different expectations about boundaries in a relationship.
TL;DR: I stepped away from a hotel lounge for five minutes and came back to my girlfriend giving a guy her Instagram. When he returned because she hadn’t typed it fully, she told him I was her boyfriend and refused. She later apologized. I’m unsure if this is a small mistake or a bigger red flag.