He did, and he tried to keep it secret for the entirety of their relationship (2013-2015). She was first brought to light thanks to one of his former Twitch mods, who posted the story below:
Also here:
Currently, she has a Youtube channel, Saucy Cosplays, that has achieved a rapid sub boost thanks to his admission yesterday of their prior relationship and subsequent promotion of her channel below:
Why do you care if he was dating anyone?
I'll copy others who explained it better than me.
kei wrote:[...] But if it's mainly about his relationship with Jess, everyone (well, everyone who saw the quadzillion photos of him using her pillows/stuffed animals/shirt) already knew they were living together at one point, and saw from her tweets in January exactly when they broke up. It's not really a surprise to anyone here. And then Jess herself came here to supposedly "clear the air" about things, but given the fact she wasn't allowed to outright say if they'd been together once, it didn't help all that much. Still, she did make it pretty clear that she had been his gf once without ever using the word "girlfriend".
The primary issue people had with the whole issue is that he went out of his way to hide the fact he was taken, back during a period in his career where that unusual level of secrecy was unnecessary and almost disturbing. And when evidence presented itself, people were hoping for him to say anything, even a simple "fuck off leave me alone", rather than the carefully crafted wall of silence around him. That's when folks started feeling uneasy. He pretends to be so open about his life, yet acted like a bachelor his entire time on Youtube when he was taken for 2/3 of that time. And when his fans put 2 and 2 together, he stayed totally silent.
Mark has built much of his Markiplier persona on an aura of transparency and availability. When people began to see it wasn't the case, he shut down and withdrew from the questions, allowing the tumblr bullies to take over and protect their "precious cinnamon roll". That is the exact moment this perfect storm started brewing. It was compounded when Mark finally did say something, because he sent over 6000 people to Jess' Youtube channel to subscribe for no legit reason except "hey we used to date, and I still like her". That rubbed people the wrong way, especially since Jess has quite specifically stated she wanted to be known for her own efforts instead of just being Markiplier's ex.
A lot of people were driven here from tumblr when his more oblivious fans and "white knights" bullied them out of the Markiplier tag for asking the forbidden gf question. (Or, like me, when he broke down in the 8 million video and no one one tumblr seemed to get that it wasn't normal, even for him.)
[...] that's the gist of why some people are hurt over it. Unfortunately tumblr is only seeing the topmost surface layer of the issue and are shooting their collective mouth off without getting the actual facts. And in this case, that's almost entirely Mark's fault.
Here's the Disneyland vlog of Dodger's. She's the girl next to Mark at the beginning:M0nkeeButt2590 wrote:Jess was originally a fangirl and ended up becoming one of Mark's moderators on Twitch. They met in person at SDCC 2013 and talked some time online before that. Eventually they started dating mid 2013 and moved in together around August 2014. They broke up at the beginning of 2015 for whatever reason, in which she became suicidal over it and ended up in the hospital. But they seem to have reconciled and are friends, though considering this sudden promotion, we get the feeling they are back together or thinking of getting back together.
For the sake of privacy (supposedly) the relationship was kept a secret even though she apparently helped him with his sketches and video editing during the time they were together. But from her behavior on social media, it's obvious she wanted the relationship to be known and he didn't.
Then there was a post on Tumblr by a head moderator calling the two out and claimed Jess hated the mods and hated the fandom as a whole, in particular because around the time they were together in Dodger's Disneyland vlog Mark suddenly and without warning cut off all ties to his Twitch mods other than Wade, Bob, and Molly. Whether that's true or not has yet to be determined, but he did cut off ties with his mods for no explained reason. [...]
[youtube][/youtube]
NOTE: this is not a discussion thread. Feel free to add any other frequent questions and answers before this thread gets locked.