I made up a mostly fake girlfriend. Now she may become my actual girlfriend. How the hell do I go about this?

(26M) Hey guys, this whole thing is pretty bizarre and it really hit me today that I may find myself in an incredibly difficult situation. Let me explain:

I got truly sick of my family asking me about finding a girlfriend. I know it came from a good place, but I felt so uncomfortable with them trying to set me up with every passing female and bombarding me with questions.

On one particular day, I was at work and the manager from a different department came by introducing a new hire. The new employee instantly caught my eye but she was hired to work in a building a city over and I figured I would never see her again so I just let it go and politely introduced myself and went on with my day and figured I would never really see her again. Let's call her Jessica.

Fast forward a couple of days later and I am out with my family getting dinner. After them doing the typical bombardment and trying to set me up with half of the female staff working, I finally had enough and started telling my family about this amazing girl at work named Jessica that I have gone out with a few times. Obviously a lie, but I just wanted to talk about other things and avoid the awkward situations.

Fast forward another 8 months... I am still "dating" Jessica. As I am telling my family about our dates, all about her and her interests, etc, it hits me... I am acting like an utter psychopath. This whole thing is so insane and I have made up a fake girlfriend and a backstory fir us and everything. I have to get out of this, right? But I am not going to tell my family (and even a few friends) that I am some weirdo that made this whole thing up, so I gotta "break up" with her. I start to tell them about how things are not working out and how we are spending less time together and things are about to fall apart between us. Hell, at this point I am so embarrassed and mortified by the depth of my lies. I should have just been up front with my family and told them they were making me uncomfortable or at least not made up a girlfriend that is based ON A REAL PERSON in my company that I had met one time.

Now, let's make it interesting.

I am in one of my monthly work meetings and I notice Jessica in the corner. Then I start to see her all over the office building. I get into the elevator with her one day and engage in some small talk and find out that she is now working a floor below me. I start to naturally see her more and more and we build a sort of friendship and that friendship quickly moves into some light friendly flirting.

That's where we are now. I like this girl quite a bit and would love to ask her out and see where things go but I truly feel like a fucking weirdo knowing what I did every time I talk with her. And now, even if I can move past the discomfort, there is the problem of addressing things with my family and friends should we enter a relationship that progresses to that level. Sure, the "information" they have is quite limited (They know I am extremely private and do not have social media or take pictures, etc) but I just really see no way to get around this.

What the hell do I do, reddit? Take the L here and learn from my mistakes? Or is there a way around this?

Have a great night!

TLDR: I made up a fake girlfriend based on a girl I work with. Now I actually want to date her but the lies have piled up too deep.

Submitted November 23, 2019 at 07:11PM by faketoreal55 https://ift.tt/35vrm7q