SHIKOKU (TR) – A 31-year-old woman’s dream of starting a family was shattered at a city hall counter last year after her partner of over five years made a shocking confession: “If I submit this, I’ll be arrested.”
The woman met the man — a prefectural hospital nurse — at a local gym in December 2019. The man, who was 37 at the time, falsely claimed to be a divorced with no children.
The case highlights a disturbing and growing trend of “fake bachelors” (dokushin giso), where married men deceitfully pose as single to lure women into long-term relationships, often resulting in pregnancies and destroyed lives, reports the site for tabloid Josei Jishin.
“Lived alone nearby”
The couple began dating in June 2020. They started living together at her residence about 18 months later.
“At first, it was just a week-long stay as a trial, but gradually it turned into a semi-cohabitation situation at my place,” she tells the magazine. “He said he lived alone in a nearby apartment, but I didn’t know where he lived. He had told me things like, ‘I was stalked by a woman I dated before, and she often showed up at my house,’ so I didn’t want to go to his place.”
About a year after we started living together, she began to think about marrying him.
“When I told him my intentions, he said, ‘I want to start my own business and become independent, so please wait a little’ I have a gynecological condition and it’s difficult for me to get pregnant, so I told him about it and said, ‘I want to have a child by the time I’m 30.’ Even after three years of living together, his plans for independence hadn’t progressed, so I asked him, ‘Isn’t it about time?’ He agreed, and we promised to get married on our fourth anniversary,” she tells the magazine. “I was so happy when we decided to get married.”
At the time, she was 28 years old, and because she wasn’t sure if she could get pregnant right away, she began her own methods of trying to conceive.
However, shortly after the marriage promise, he told her that his father had severe dementia and his symptoms were worsening, and that his mother had been diagnosed with cancer and was scheduled for surgery. Three months before their planned wedding date, in March 2024, he left her house.
“It was sudden, but I thought our marriage promise hadn’t changed, and he often came home and was supportive of our efforts to conceive, so I didn’t have any doubts,” she says. “A month before our planned wedding, I got his permission and told my workplace, where I’d worked for 10 years, that I wanted to quit. I wanted to focus on trying to conceive for a while after we got married.”
“I’ll be arrested”
However, his family situation didn’t improve, and just before the planned wedding, he told her he wanted to postpone it because the caregiving was becoming too difficult. She had quit her job, but having heard about the terrible situation at his family’s home, she felt she had no choice but to wait. “At the time, I was completely preoccupied with trying to conceive,” she recalls.
She then began fertility treatments.
“My self-taught methods for trying to conceive didn’t work, so after quitting my job, I started going to the hospital and began serious infertility treatments like timed intercourse,” she says. “Because the problem was with me, I became mentally distressed, thinking, ‘What if I can’t have a child with the person I care about?’ My boyfriend also started saying things like, ‘If it’s just the two of us, getting married won’t change anything,’ and ‘Wouldn’t it be better to get married after we have a child?’ I started to wonder, ‘Does he dislike me because I can’t have children?'”
In August 2025, she finally became pregnant. Two months later, on October 6, the couple excitedly went to their local city hall to submit their marriage registration. But as they approached the counter to hand over the documents, the man dropped a bombshell.
“If I submit this, I’ll be arrested,” he told her. “I haven’t removed my name from the family register yet.”
It was abruptly revealed that he had been married for over a decade and has two older children, having maintained a deceptive double life throughout their entire five-year romance.
His claim of “living alone in an apartment” was a lie, and his stories about “being stalked by a woman in the past” may have been an excuse to keep her from knowing where he lived.
Now nine months pregnant and waiting to give birth at her parents’ home, the woman is preparing to take legal action. “My life has been completely ruined,” she states, expressing her drive to hold him accountable and prevent others from falling victim to similar deceit.
“Chastity rights”
The incident follows a landmark ruling in December 2025 by the Tokyo District Court, which ordered a male employee of a major advertising agency to pay approximately 1.5 million yen in damages for violating a woman’s “chastity rights” (sexual self-determination) after he used a matching app to fake his single status. That man quietly resigned from his company on March 31 of this year.
However, victims and advocates argue that civil penalties are merely a slap on the wrist for the devastating emotional and social damage caused. The woman who fell victim to the employee at the ad agency is the founder of a support group for victims of fake bachelors. She is actively campaigning for the criminalization of such acts.
“This isn’t just a simple relationship dispute; it is a violation of women’s human rights,” she states, noting that perpetrators’ families often brush off the deception as a mere romantic squabble. “To change society’s awareness, we need to make this a criminal offense.”
As public awareness grows, victims are refusing to suffer in silence, demanding stricter legal consequences for men who weaponize false promises of marriage.
