The Human Side of “Catfishing”
“Sometimes the thing we assume we want turns out to be something entirely different”…..Seeing the “real” man in the images I had been looking at for the last 7 months simply confirmed what I had known in my head. The person I had been talking to, sharing myself deeply mentally and emotionally with was not the same person whose Instagram account I had just spent hours looking through.
You may wonder if I am ashamed. I am not. You may wonder how and why an intelligent woman developed deep feelings for a man that is not real. By that I mean that I did not know his real identity, at the time. He was real to me, in some ways more real to me than many of the men or women I have had real life relationships with. I felt deep love, connection as well as compassion for and with this man.
I believe that we, humans are a combination of life experiences, good and bad, our zodiac sign, the astrological placements on the day of our birth, our birth order, our DNA, our generational baggage and I am sure a hundred other effects I have not even thought about yet.
And as much as I hate labels. I am going to have to use them to make you understand who I am. I am a 13-year veteran/survivor of early childhood sexual trauma. I can assure you that after 40 some odd years of shadow work, neural reprogramming, and a shit ton of therapy, I believe deeply all of what I just said. I am an eldest child; I am a Pisces who has two rising signs. I am a deeply philosophical, intuitive, sensual person. I am also a deep thinker, over thinker, introvert, empathic, hypersensitive and hyper-aware. For me it is about the deeper connection. I see souls rather than color, culture, sexual orientation or whatever other box you would like to assign to yourself. I see humans as a race.
It is also why at 56, I consider myself a bit of a unicorn. I am truly open-minded; I work daily at being non-judgmental. I work daily at accepting you where you are at, but at the same time knowing when to walk away and close a door. I work at generous listening. I see the political climate we are currently in, not just in the states but all over the world as a chance to start correcting all the wrong we, humans have done. It may be a day late and a dollar short as my friend E tells me every time, we have dinner together, but I would like to believe that change occurs with the intent of each action of every single human being. Like the starfish story, it matters to the one I touched.
I love technology. I grew up before Social media was ever created. Before computers and smart everything’s took over our lives. I had to date and have conversation and put myself out there and take rejection in person rather than being ghosted. I truly see where it can be a blessing as far as connection goes but I also see the damage it is doing. How social interaction between us is becoming non-existent, how it is destroying how we interact with each other on a personal level. Dating? I mean why bother when you can just ghost and swipe right 200 times more. Having an honest, in person relationship means being accountable and taking responsibility for your actions. It involves learning how to have a conversation and learning how to communicate and read body language and be vulnerable.
Yet technology is how and why this story started. I was out there on a couple of dating apps and I had reached my breaking point. I was tired of telling my story to some new match. The same old question and answer games that ended very quickly in the “let’s hook up” and then the dick pic.
It was my last day on Bumble. I had just been called stupid by a man. I had a few hours left on the option of looking at my matches for the day. “John” was the last one on the list. He was attractive, ripped, and not white, which grabbed my attention, but I hesitated as I have an inherent distrust of good-looking men. In my experience they are usually narcissistic pricks or at least the center of their own world. I hesitated, really looking at the images and I could see there was a kindness in his eyes and his smile was gentle. So, I swiped right, and we immediately began chatting.
One of the very first things he asked me was “Are you here for a hookup, because if you are, I am not interested. I am here for a long-term relationship.” I had to stop for a moment and really think about my answer and that is when it dawned on me, that yes, I really was looking for something long term as well and I said so. Our conversation on Bumble chat lasted for 4 or 5 hours. I was really charmed. Here was someone that seemed to be a person of depth, character and honor. We laughed, he seemed to get my odd sense of humor and for the first time in months I felt…hopeful.
Within a day we were on text. He began calling and we shared deep truths about each other to each other. Over the course of our time together I came to know him as a romantic man. Deeply supportive of me, never critical or judgmental. Not once did he ever ask to or send me a dick pic. Even when we got flirty, me more than him, he was deeply respectful and considerate. It was never nasty, or rude and I never felt objectified. He did or said nothing that hurt me. Even when the red flags began to pop up and I became rude and aggressive in verbal format he always came back in a pleasant and considerate way. We then talked and worked through it. Nothing narcissistic there.
But there were red flags everywhere, some of it was that drama was always taking place in his life. Then it was the money, at any time, I could have said no. But I never did. And it never really seemed to be about the money. He always thanked me, and I began to feel like he was becoming as bonded to me as I was to him. Daily texts grew to be daily calls that lasted an hour or more. He never did anything to hurt me and truly even now at the end of all of this I still feel like he would never do anything to harm me. He told me repeatedly that I had made a huge change in his life, and I know that he made huge changes in mine.
I hate the word “catfish”. I hate labels in general. We forget that by assigning and using labels, we have then placed that person, or ourselves or that experience in a box. The truth is we are not labels and boxes, and life experiences cannot always be assigned a specific box or labels. But I did my research and I read all the articles of why people do this. I watched the little blurbs from the MTV Catfish show. I came to understand that for the most part, most of the people who do this feel lost, alone, unable to connect or feel accepted.
I finally reached a point of John avoiding answering direct question and finding one excuse after another not to meet that I needed to know the truth.
I started with trying to use legal methods to find out the identity of who I was talking. John had an accent; I could never really place. I wanted to know if the man I was talking to was the same man as the images. I started my quest to find out who he was with research. I started with the consistencies in the images. I knew that the guy in the images was Brazilian. Things that led me to that conclusion were small things. Like identifying the brand of a fitness clothing logo out of Brazil. A T-shirt that had a Brazilian Hotel logo on it. The gym shots appeared to belong to a well-known gym in Brazil. The apartment interior location was consistent, but the interior did not look US. The materials used were something I would expect to see in Europe or another non-US country and when I looked at ads for apartments in Brazil, it became obvious that the apartment was probably located there as well.
I learned that the numbers being used that were in my area code were Voice Over Internet Phone Numbers (VOIP’s). That the one number that “John” had used once was a real cell number and out of Colorado and came up on my Caller ID as a woman out of Colorado. I did reverse image searches on the images that “John” had shared as his and that turned up nothing. When I reached the limit of what I could find on my own, I reached out for legal help.
A law enforcement officer wanted to know if I was a stalker?? Why? Because I wanted to know the identity of who I was talking to and had become emotionally connected to? I suppose I could have filed a police report for fraud with the local police as well as the FBI, as money had crossed state lines and “scamming” for money is considered fraud at this point. But I did not want to get “John” in trouble.
Various private investigators told me that they could do the research but not reveal the results because that person was entitled to their privacy? My feeling on that by the way is that once a person has done this, they have lost their right to privacy.
Social Catfish who charged a large amount of money and to whom I supplied pages of information to, told me:
• You are being scammed by Nigerian scam artists
• The agent even commented that with such a beautiful man obviously he was a scammer and should have thousands of followers…all said without ever seeing who I was. Making me feel as if I was not worthy of the attentions of a nice-looking man
They never could find who the images belonged to nor the person I was talking to EVEN though I told them exactly where to look…I asked for my money back and received it.
I then began to research illegal methods of finding my information and unfortunately the first three attempts at that ended up costing me money.
Then I stumbled upon someone that said she could find any “catfish” and I asked her to locate identity of image and person I had been talking to. In 30 minutes, she had located the Instagram and Facebook Accounts of the person in the images. She was unable to locate any other information for me.
Where does that leave me almost 8 months later? I know now that yes, I was part of an online “perpetration” of an online boyfriend who is in Nigeria. Am I hurt, yes but I have a lot to be grateful for. John appeared at a time when I was feeling disconnected from everyone around me. He showed up for me in ways that even “real life” friends and partners never did. He called me daily, he shared his life in segments. We bonded and the feelings were real.
In the end. He came clean, he shared his image, he shared his story and we are still communicating. Why? He is a human, he has a story and I know how lucky I am that I live where I do. He is much younger that I suspected, and I am not physically attracted to him, though he claims he is in love with me. I know that we have made a huge difference in each other’s lives, even 7000 miles apart. Will it last? I doubt it.
The past 7 months have also left me with an intense curiosity about the man whose images I have been looking at. In his Instagram he appears to be a lovely caring, kind, compassionate man. He is from Brazil and does good work in his career. He is an inspiration in many ways, and I would really love to meet him and see if he is who he appears to be. I can only hope that if he were to read my story that he would be generous enough to meet me and allow the possibility of developing a new friendship. I know that he is the reason I have chosen to learn Portuguese and make Ciuada Brazil the first stamp on my passport this December and am taking my life to Instagram in a new way. Another level of gratitude to add to the story.
Few women would walk away from this story feeling the level of compassion, kindness and empathy that I feel for “John”. Especially when it saddled them with another layer of debt to offload. But I keep coming back to perspective and silver linings…. we are all fighting a battle others may not know about and while I caution to be safe and have boundaries…understand there is a real live human at the other end….and I chose this perspective to end the last 8 months of an emotional affair.
More info: Instagram
I found the Silver Lining in my Catfish Relationship
