I'm writing this one mostly because I've been too embarrassed to do it before. It's a partially sad, partially depressing part of my life that I wish I could have back.
I once fell in love with a person I met over Tumblr. We both had an interest in a certain Japanese rock band. He sent me a message saying that he wanted to get to know me better because he thought I seemed like an interesting person. We started out talking to each other and discovered that we had a lot more in common than just music taste. He later admitted that he really liked me and I admitted that I had an interest in him too. I assumed at this time that he was single, otherwise why would he even consider it.
We considered ourselves boyfriend and girlfriend for almost an entire year. He lived across the ocean, so I never got the chance to actually visit him, the most I could do was talk to him over Skype chats. He was very handsome in my opinion, and an amazing musician. However, he was unemployed and didn't have much money to go visit me. (Being a student, I also didn't have a whole lot to take such a long distance vacation). He was also burdened by depression and other bad experiences from his past. I imagined he was a genuine person who knew what it felt like to be hurt and wouldn't want to hurt others in the same way.
After we had been "dating" for about a month, he asked me a very odd question (you can probably see where this is going). He told me that there was a close friend of his who was being harassed by a stalker and he wanted to know if it was okay if he were to link to her profile on his Tumblr page with her listed as his girlfriend so that this stalker would leave her alone. I agreed to it because I was naive and trusted that he wouldn't be the kind of person to lie about that sort of thing, especially after only knowing me for a short period of time.
After a few months, we ended up taking a bit of a break because I had doubts about us working out, what with the distance and my plans for the future. However, I ended up contacting him again to resume the relationship for three more months, and after that I felt like our love was stronger than ever. I became used to talking to him almost every day and getting almost instant responses.
However, on Valentines Day, things got very weird. He never spoke to me for the entire day or for the remainder of the weekend. Distraught and confused that of all the days of the year, he would ignore me on this one, I decided to do something that I should have done a long time ago. I clicked on the profile of his "fake girlfriend" and clicked on the link to her Facebook page. The first thing I saw was a post tagged with my boyfriend's name in it, saying he had taken her out to dinner and making her a cake. His name was also in her relationship status. My heart dropped in my chest and I was infuriated. However, with a small naive hope in my heart that there was some kind of misunderstanding, I decided to not confront him with accusations right off the bat. I sent him a frantic message later that day, saying I was worried sick about him suddenly disappearing. I didn't tell him that I saw the Facebook post, but I did give him the chance to give me the truth by asking him if he absolutely promised I was the only person who was his girlfriend. He said this was true and explained his absence was due to the fact he was at a friend's house and both his phone and laptop had died. I decided that I would let him believe that I had regained full trust in him again and decided to wait until the next time something weird happened to push him any further. After that, our communication went somewhat back to normal, although I realized he seemed a bit quieter than usual.
Sure enough, the next month a similar thing happened. He disappeared for several days, maybe sending one or two texts over the course of days. Red flags went up again, so I checked his "fake girlfriend's" Facebook once more and once again there was a status with his name tagged, mentioning them celebrating their one-year anniversary. I decided to contact him again, this time with a longer, more frantic message explaining how I felt deeply upset he had not contacted me in several days and that I wanted to know if I had done something wrong. He told me was just "so tired" and was sleeping a lot more than usual and that was why he wasn't responding as much. I asked him about the Facebook status and he insisted that they meant nothing and that she was only a "close friend" that he hung out with every once in a while. I wasn't convinced, but I didn't pressure the issue any further.
The next day, his communication with me was eerily back to normal. He was responding with his usual frequency, as if he were overcompensating. We even arranged a Skype chat that night, which we hadn't done in a few weeks, due to me being busy with some college course work. Now almost 100% certain that he was lying, I decided I would send a Tumblr message to the "close friend's" account and asking her directly if she knew anything about him. That's when I saw photos she had taken of bite marks and bruises on her bare chest, claiming that (boyfriend's name) had had rough sex with her and had words like "daddy" and "dom" and "sub" in the tags.
I decided instead of contacting her on Tumblr, I would just talk to her on Facebook, as to appear less anonymous and more sincere. I sent her a long message detailing my relationship with my boyfriend and asked her what he really was to her.
It turns out the entire time he dated me, he was cheating on his girlfriend. Some interesting factoids were that 1) the day of their anniversary was only a few weeks before he had first approached me on Tumblr the previous year to instigate a relationship and 2) his girlfriend mentioned in her response that this was not the first time he had received a message like this from other girls on the internet within the same year.
I told him I knew what was going on and demanded to know why he had done it. He just said something about being fucked up in the head and that he thought he could love multiple people at the same time. Needless to say, we were no longer in a relationship.
After some time had passed I decided to forgive him, but there are days that I still feel pissed about the whole experience. I really did love him a lot and it sucked that he never really had the intention of ever seeing me in person or having any kind of life together.
Today, we're both with new people, but I still have feelings of sadness and self-loathing about the experience every once in a while. I feel stupid about it because I knew at any point in time I could have went to that girl's page and looked up her info to immediately confirm she was who he said she was, but I figured at the time he wouldn't have the guts to do something that stupid and expose himself so easily. Of course, if I were to act suspicious, I would be the bad guy for not trusting him. I guess you could say the answers were hiding in plain site. A clever, yet heartless thing that I will never understand.
TL;DR: Was catfished