Catfish and Gaslighting

Catfish. slang. A person who assumes a false identity or personality on the Internet, especially on social media websites, so as to deceive, manipulate, or swindle others (Random House Dictionary, 2016)

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This is not going to be a funny post. This post is for all the women who have found themselves in dubious relationships.

Before I met Gigi, my experience with “catfish” was limited to convincing my students that the ones inside the hippopotamus exhibit at the zoo were not, in fact, the central attraction, nor were they there for us to imagine eating.

But then the 2000’s happened, internet dating exploded onto the scene and “catfish” became a verb. This happened after Nev Schulman told his story to the world through a documentary entitled "Catfish." Schulman chronicled the horrors of falling in love with a woman who wasn't even real. After 1,500 messages and several months, Nev and his brother unearth the truth. They discover that "Megan" is actually a middle aged married woman (with 15 fake profiles) pretending to be people that she isn't in order to escape the depressing reality of her own life. 

People found Nev's story so captivating that he got his own show on MTV, and now he gets to catch all sorts of catfish for others.

I didn't know anything about this until Gigi came along and explained it during our adventures in online dating a few years ago. But then I started seeing catfish everywhere. They have certain "tells," you see. Here are some of the common ones:

1.) They seem too good to be true -- too attractive, to altruistic, too wealthy, too talented... just too. Why? Because creating an online persona allows someone to be as much anything as they want to be. It's a world without limits.

2.) They restrict communication -- according to one social media blog, "If someone can only talk to you through chat or email and things ‘keep coming up’ that prevent them from using a phone or from you seeing them in person, there is probably something funny going on." 

According to Gigi's research, the most common excuses for why catfish don't "surface" in person include -- a car that breaks down, a house fire, a death in the family, or a hospital stay. They may keep recycling those excuses indefinitely.

3.) They have a job that requires frequent travel -- Often, a catfish will use the travel demands of his or her job to explain away lapses in communication or continued inability to surface in person.

4.) There is very little on their social media site - a lack of pictures, check-ins, posts, or updates isn't weird if someone doesn't have social media. But if they do have a Facebook page and it only includes a few pics from several years ago? Cause for concern.

5.) Their stories are outlandish - they seem made up because they are made up.

This was supposed to be a really funny post. Stratski told me that my experiences were hilarious. But nothing about what I've experienced in the last decade feels funny. On the contrary, I feel...bruised.

It all started in 2007, after I had broken up with Max, a man I was really serious about. I reneged on the contract for a house we had picked out together because I couldn't imagine living there without him. I put myself back on the market and met someone new on a Christian dating website. He had only a few pictures. In one, his face was obscured by a hat. In the other, by sunglasses. Nonetheless, he was really cute -- although he lived several hours away -- and we started emailing.

Only, he never wanted to meet. Or talk on the phone, although he texted and sent copious emails. Eventually, I met Nick on the same website and I focused on him because he asked me out in real life. 

But George never entirely disappeared. He'd go for months or a year, perhaps, without talking, and then he'd resurface. If you know my relationship with Nick, you know it went in fits and spurts, and in between times, George would contact me again, and then we'd talk...always via text, never voice-to-voice.

This went on for years, and I'm not sure why I let it. I guess I wanted to believe that this guy really was someone I could know one day. He seemed so respectful and like a person of character in his messages. He had lots of siblings. He had been a coach for many years. He went to church on Sundays and loved his mom.

George created a Facebook page, so we could keep up there. Looking back, I see that it is alarmingly sparse, but at the time, I reasoned that he hadn't even wanted to be on social media to start with, he'd just done it for me. In retrospect, I recognize that his name on Facebook wasn't even his real name. It was a pseudonym that had nothing to do with his actual name. He explained this by saying that a woman he'd dated 20 years ago had had a stalker and that taught him that you can just never be too careful. 

You probably think this story is going to take a dark turn, but in reality, after 8 years of random texts, George happened to come to town and asked if I would like to meet in person. And -- wonder of wonders -- he actually was a celebrity doppelganger. We really hit it off, and he asked if I wanted to meet up halfway between our two cities in a few weeks. I said yes. 

We had an amazing time, but there was an oddity: George wanted to continue texting. I could never reach him via phone. He explained this by listing a host of reasons for his reticence: he traveled a lot for work, he was always making sales calls in the car, he hated talking on the phone... It got to the point where I would try to reach him, and he'd list excuse after excuse: I'm meeting clients for drinks, I'm at the hospital with a brother-in-law, I'm hosting people from church... 

For ten years, George couldn't talk on the phone.

I guess a part of me eventually wondered what was going on. I was hesitant. Wouldn't you be?

* Too good to be true? This is a really attractive guy, is in his late 40's, has never been married, has no children, loves kids. Check.

* Restricts communication to non-verbal messages? Even one time when I became dangerously depressed and told him I was afraid I was drowning in my own life, he wouldn't talk to me via phone, he suggested I call a friend. Check.

* Has a job that requires frequent travel?  He often used his travels as a reason for not wanting to talk on the phone. He said he talked on the phone so often in the car that he got tired of it. Check.

* Very sparse and impersonal social media page? No part of his real name is even referenced on Facebook. The few pictures he has are mostly of scenery. And he hasn't posted anything in six years, despite logging on pretty regularly. Check.

* Outlandish stories? His reasons for being single at this juncture include cancer and a stalker. Check.

Is it possible to be catfished by a real person? I am forced to consider that it is. When George invited me to his home 8 hours away for our fourth date, I was unsure, blog-world. There was something inside me that hesitated. He was mortally offended by my hesitation, even after I explained that I wasn't ready to take that step yet and would rather meet once again midway first. Call me crazy, but I was afraid to be alone in someone's home after 3 dates, 10 years, and almost zero phone contact.

He never forgave me for hesitating. He continued to send text after text after text, but declined to ever meet in person again.

Gaslighting -- 

verb (used with object), gaslighted or gaslit,gaslighting.

4.

to cause (a person) to doubt his or her sanity through the use of psychological manipulation (Random House Dictionary, 2017)

"Gaslighting" is a term that has come into recent prominence lately. It is a word used to describe the actions of a person who is seeking to control the reality of another person. For example -- a woman notices her husband comes home later and later and he seems quite distant. When she asks him about it, he blames her for being on his case all the time. Then he comes home smelling like perfume and he tells her she's crazy, that he accidentally walked too close to the "spritzer" at the mall when he was buying her a birthday gift. Then his wife notices lipstick on his collar and when she confronts him he tears up, telling her he thinks she's under too much stress, always suspecting him of cheating when God knows the long hours he puts in at work to take care of their family and is it his fault if some lady accidentally bumped into him on the subway??!

That's gaslighting. The man undermines his wife's instincts and experiences by making her believe her judgment is lacking.

It's easy to overlook a sparse social media page, a reticence for phone conversation, an unwillingness to meet in person when those things happen over the course of years. And it's easy to accept someone's reasons for why they want to continue texting but can't see you again... until you realize you've suggested it SEVEN times recently and their excuses have ranged from "I have a big thing for work" to "there's a lot going on" to "a friend just died." You don't notice it until you count up the suggestions you've made and see all 7 of them staring you in the face.

And when they turn it around on you and say, "Well, I don't think you really want to see me" -- despite the 7 invitations -- you blame yourself, you blame your initial hesitation, and you believe that things are really your fault. You believe that you didn't have a right to be uncertain about that date 8 hours away, in someone else's home. 

If somewhere along the way, you wake up and realize that you don't actually know this person at all; if somehow you recall that several women you know have unwittingly entered into long-term relationships with married men leading a double-life; if somehow through all of this a little glimmer of the concern from your friends ekes through to you... then you stop responding to texts from your catfishing gaslighter. And it's okay. Until months later, when he pops back up to check in on you -- via text of course -- and ask how your job is going and tell you all about the wonderful things God is doing at his church, and send you a picture of a new bookstore that reminded him of you.

This was meant to be a funny, wistful post about how I spent 10 years of my life being catfished by a non-catfish. But it's not funny at all. It's just fishy.

I didn't write this post for a very long time because I believed George was who he said he was, and that it was my fault for demanding too much. It was my fault for wanting to hear his voice and my fault for hesitating after the 3rd date. But I am now forced to face facts: this is a person who has maintained the facade of a relationship with me for 10 years, while simultaneously refusing to actually talk to me and declining to see me on many occasions. I still believe George is who he claims to be; but unfortunately, I can no longer risk the off-chance that he's not.