Having a Fake Dating Profile Online

WOW! You've got a new follower. That was amazing. You went straight to the gut and I love your heart wrenching honesty in what is not right about his situation. I look forward to reading many more of your hubs. As I read it, I thought, what would I want to know if I were the man he deceived. I think I would want to know the truth and yeah, it would suck, but again, another lesson about online predators and how they work. Bravo, this really is a must read! Rated up.

An older relative used various pictures of me to represent himself to a woman for some ten years in an online relationship. When that person died, I found out (long story). The woman was hurt, angry, and confused. I felt really bad for her.

Vanity, mostly, I suspect. Or maybe it was a hunger for something he could no longer have, due to his age. She apparently tried to visit him (she was from a different part of the world than he), but he was conveniently out of town on emergency business. I suppose I could have let the whole thing go, and let her think he just went away. Maybe that was the humane thing to do, I don't know. I'm sure there are many thousands of similar stories involving internet relationships.

I'm so glad I was reminded to come back here and comment directly. :)

Yes, I think we are seeing more and more of this on the internet. I think it's possible some of it can be entirely innocent-ish the whole time, some can start innocent and become malignant (like in this case, given the benefit of the doubt), and some few case are true malignancies all along.

I think in future being able to tell the difference is going to be very important as cyberstalking now claims over 500,000 victims a year and growing. It's an important subject and one this Hub touches to tangently. I actually stumbled into it on Google I think when researching my set (so you have good Google ranking on this one!).

This is truly an excellent Hub. I upthumbed it when I read it and I'll do so again, but I don't think it counts twice for the same IP, lol. If it does, I can say your Hub more than deserves the double thumb up. :D

I was re-reading this and I wanted to note this. You said this:

"R. A., you may not realize how much you took from this man. It wasn't just some money and gifts, and a big block of his time. It was his trust. Not just his trust of others but also his ability to trust himself. You took something intangible and personal. Something that may never heal. You violated him. I truly hope you've learned from this and that you'll never repeat it."

You speak so well for the victims. Listening to you say that to this man is validating for me too and for the experiences I have gone through. The extent of damage is grossly underestimated by others unless/until they have gone through it. I may have trouble trusting online others forever. Violated is exactly the word for it.

The problem is that you are speaking to the choir. Anyone who understands what you're talking about (integrity) already did understand that and would never have done what this man did. And the people who choose these kinds of actions are never going to hear you; they are sociopaths who are too ill or have such horrible character that it's like water off a duck's back.

But I want to say, as a member of the listening choir, keep preaching. As but one victim of many, thank you. Thank you so much for being wise, kind, sane, brave and REAL.

Hope is a scary thing, my friend. But even burned over and over on it, I still wish it for us. Without hope, there is nothing. ((Veronica))

A piece of my story and I want to tell it here, because you are safe enough to tell it to you, because you won't let that creature comment in here to rip me to shreds after.

I went through therapy from 16 until my mid-forties off and on because I came out of an extremely abusive childhood with a permanent and disabling dissociative condition. I didn't work clubs because I was "showing off". I worked clubs because they were the only place I could manage to take care of my three children.

Clubs are very forgiving. All the women there are walking wounded. If you mess up, if you have a bad period of time, well at least you make enough when you're weller to cover for that, and clubs are oddly empowering too. I might Hub to it someday, my thoughts on clubs are complicated and personal.

Clubs have plusses and minuses but I will love them forever because they saved my life. The Club is my home. The only home I had then, until I made one with myself, my children and my closest friends.

The woman who stalks me isn't a stranger. She was one of my best friends from 2 until 18. We never had a major row and we parted friends (or so I thought). She always knew about my childhood because she was there too. She knows I have a dissociative condition, DID and you'll see her in multiple aliases making fun of it on Hubs and the forum and making it come off as 'evil' as possible to reading others when in fact, it's nothing like that.

In my life, I have the most wonderful supportive real life friends for decades. All my children love and respect me. I am satisfied with that and in the time of crisis both before and including being stalked now, I have always had that.

After twenty years of therapy, the last ten years with a wonderful woman who saw me pro-bono, I was finally (mostly) happy and self-assured posting to pol on my little debate board as one of a group. Belonging to a healthy group was such an important thing to me - to be just like everybody else, after a lifetime of being a scared sad loner.

This woman arrived out of nowhere, I had no idea she had stalked me TO the internet. I just thought it was cool that she showed up (an old friend!) until I realized what she was doing to me behind the scenes and it took me two years to even notice that because I came and went there anyway.

This woman attacked me through people I knew and liked and trusted at that time. She didn't attack me beause I had a good life and I certainly have never had money or healthy m/f relationships or any kind of stability until that period that she found me. Basically, my life really sucked for decades because of damage from child abuse and she knew that even then.

She attacked me because I was the most vulnerable person she could find. Still fragmented, barely safe from being suicidal, just in process of building self-esteem. She stole 20 years of therapy from me, created a need for me to take anxiety meds although I managed twenty years of dissociation without them. I still have panic attacks. She ruined my board friendships, took my safe online place, took all safety on the net from me. And she's still stalking me. It will never end.

But, yes, I hope. I still hope.

Delete if you need to. I haven't said anything I'm afraid to be seen. Truth isn't relative. Maybe this is my time to share some of my personal emotional demons. I think I'm getting better again.

Thanks for listening.

Thank you, V. Usually I'm not around at all when I'm sad or odd.

If you want to know about dissociatives, this is the main thing. We go in tangents. We don't make alter egos for our "personalities". We just come and go. I'm usually only online at all when I'm in a certain mode.

There may be some shift, but it's what you see under my own name, different moods... love, politics, fun fads, it's all me in moods, there's the dissociation.

Sometimes I have to read myself or others over and over because I can't remember what I or another Hubber has said. Yet you will see an amazing consistency to my underlying principles. My therapist told me that, that she saw me a whole and not just a whole, a really good and compassionate person. I so love her. I miss her now that she doesn't pracice anymore.

Time is a funny thing. Dissociatives have particular trouble trusting themselves. All my work in therapy was about trusting myself, in one way or another. Being stalked made me doubt myself again for several years because of the betrayals and trust issues. I'm just now finally improving.

Dissociatives would never hurt anyone on purpose because we know what it feels like. We might react to being attacked and I've sure done that on whatever rare occasion, but basically I'm going to credit myself for having remarkable grace over the entire situation and I deserve that credit. Go me!

I trust myself again and maybe eventually others nomatter how hard I have to work at it. What is, is. I can't do anything about her stalking me, I live on less than half of poverty line so I can't get any legal help. But I can get back to where I was when she arrived in my life, I believe, and get even better and I'm willing to work on it.

Thanks again, more than you can know.

Excellent hub Veronica ! Really really first class article!

I also think Idunn is very brave to have shared her experience, strength & hope with us.

This was a great article, from the explanation of the issue and examples to the solutions.

Very objective but complete. Well done.