Five Month Online Love Affair
by Cathy
(Canada)
Boy do i have a good one! I met a man on a 3d chat, we spoke briefly the first day and I was intrigued by him.
He told me he was 43 and that he lives in Florida (I verified this by DNS search of emails he send me, so this part is true). I was not “looking” for someone per say, I was on this site to kill a bit of time, and I have other friends both RL and online who go there as well… so I spent a bit of time with him, but not much, he was not online too often due to his busy schedule.
By about the 3rd week we’d been talking, he sent me an email saying that he was starting to really like me, but that he thought I was a “player” (due to all my friends) and that he didn’t want to get deeper because he was scared due to having his wife cheat on him before his divorce. I was really beginning to like this man and decided to tone down my flirting and reduced my time with my friends, and I told him so.
By the first month, I pretty much had decided I’d give this relationship a try, and started to tell friends about him, and made it exclusive. I was falling hard and fast for this man who told me stuff about himself that just made me love him more and more each day.
By the time two months rolled around, I told him I loved him and he a few days later reciprocated. He seemed ecstatic about it and we started to get really heavy into the “love talk” as in being mushy and what we called “smoochies.” We had talked daily and kept in touch via sms throughout our days.
He revealed to me (or so I thought), that he was a very rich man… and would randomly go on trips to different places ie. London, New York, Detroit, etc.. He always kept in touch with me, but it was a lower frequency of sms messages when he was “away.”
We talked often about meeting, how he was feeling that he would marry me and that when we finally broke the ice and met, that he would then take care of me. I was in heaven.
Shortly after about our 3 months of our online love affair, I finally decided it was time to meet him. Seeing as he was rich (so i thought), i figured he’d just fly himself out here and the rest would be history. I was soooo wrong!!! We spend about a month arguing about him coming here, he said he wasn’t ready, said he was scared he would run (yah. he sure did), but that he loved me deeply and wanted to do this the right way… I conceded and let him be for a bit.
In the 3 1/2 month mark, I went on medical leave from work because of a herniated disk in my neck, and things got really tight for me, I complained to him one night about how tough it was with a limited income and that I might have to take some drastic measures to reduce my monthly expenses, he said to me “I need to come I guess.” I took that as a he was going to come and rescue me, but didn’t say so.
We talked about this scenario for a while, over a weekend, and he told me he was going to come soon, and then finally it was going to be after the weekend.
On Sunday of the weekend before he was planning to come, he complained of having a serious headache. I was worried because he said he had been in a car accident one night, he also had supposedly had a blood clot removed from his brain a week or so after the accident. I told him to get to the hospital. He didn’t, but I didn’t hear from him at all on monday morning as planned.
At about 3 p.m. my time i get an email from HIS email addy, saying it’s his daughter… she took her dad to hospital, he was in a drug induced sleep while they try to dissolve a blood clot in the frontal lobe.
He was kept asleep for about 5 days, with his daughter giving me updates every day. After he was supposedly woken up, I was informed by his “daughter” that he couldn’t talk, and that he was having a hard time typing, but that she would “encourage” him to send me a message later in the day. I got a message from him. The typing was very basic, lots of mistakes and was 1 or two words at a shot. We managed to stay in contact through the week while he was recovering in hospital, and then he went home the following weekend.
Our conversations where getting better and I bugged him about letting me go there to help and just to be with him (i was completely madly in love with this man).
On the sunday of that weekend, he started to get worse in his typing again, he complained about a few headaches, mild ones. I was worried. He said he was going to fly to Detroit and be with his parents, his mom can help him and it would take a lot of stress off. The doctor said he was stressed and that’s why he was going backwards in his communication skills. I accepted that, although I was worried about him and was getting scared that something serious was going to happen.
On Monday morning he flew to Detroit…I spoke to him early in the a.m. before he got on the plane (private charter btw – RIGHT!). Then he messaged me when he had landed, and we spoke a bit, and he said he would get online that evening after he visited his own dad in the hospital. He didn’t show up that evening, but messaged me again in the morning to apologize, that he’d “fallen asleep”… OK, I understood (after all the man had a brain injury, right? RIGHT!).
So, the day progressed on the tuesday and I was talking to him at around 11:30 a.m. where he said he would be back at his mom’s in 2 hours and we could talk on yahoo. I was happy about this. We were talking a bit more, then he just went completely silent… there were no more text messages. Our 2 hour time meeting came and passed. I was not too worried yet as he had fallen asleep and missed a meeting before.
Then he didn’t message me in the a.m.. Then it turned into days. I was frantic, worried, calling hospitals etc… he was nowhere to be found. I started to try and find out information about his family, searching ancestry.com, google, email reverse lookups… everything and anything I could think of.
At about a week, I started to delve deeper. I had a good friend show me how to look up IP addresses and trace them to the source. I did this and found out that indeed he lived in Florida and all the things he had been telling me coincided with what he’d told me. I’d been doing extensive research for about 10 days when finally… I found an email from him that was supposedly sent when he was supposedly in London. He was NOT in London. The IP address traced back to his FL location. My friend also pointed out to me that he looked way older than 43, of which I agree (although his looks didn’t bother me, I was in love).
I’m now pretty positive that this man for whatever strange twisted reason, decided to prey on me in some complete mind game. I’m not sure what he was trying to do, but I am devastated. I still Love him too! I’m angry, and all the hopes and dreams of a wonderful future that I had while we talked for hours about marriage and where we’d live etc, are gone. I never gave him money, just love and only actually expected just love in return… All I got was a huge heartache and a lesson that will carry with my the rest of my life, to not trust men online.
Our Online Dating Advice to You
2 week rule
I love online dating. There is no other way to meet guys all over the place and really get to crawl into their heads before you let your instincts kick in.
But I do have one rule: If we don’t meet in 2 weeks, it’s over. I let them know that when they are getting close to their expiration date. Guys will chatty chat online for months without making a move. Having an online love affair might seem exciting, but you never know who you’re really talking to or how many other women he’s talking to also.
I know in this case, you just chose a flat-out scumbag, but you should NEVER fall in love with anyone you haven’t held in your arms.
No one is who they say they are online. We’re all smarter, taller, better looking and more social until that very first meeting. Protect your heart until your instincts (your in-person instincts) tell you otherwise.