Catfish Confessionals

[catfish--confessions-blog]

There was this guy I met on a website called Tagged back in 2009. Around this time I was 15 going on 16. He was decent looking had an amazing personality at first, but then turned into a nightmare. We’d text each other from the morning to night, even fall asleep on the phone together. Before I knew it we were in a relationship. At this time I had a crappy phone so I never asked for pictures and didn’t have a webcam so video chatting was out of the question. Eventually things just went wrong we were arguing breaking up and getting back together. He would come up with every excuse in the book to want to end the relationship. For instance, serious things were always happening to him that would involve going to the hospital ect. He would send pictures of his arm hooked up to an IV etc. However, thinking about it now they looked like pictures you would just google lol. Eventually I had gotten tired of the lies and I ended it but throughout the years I always kept him in the back of my mind. When it was good he was amazing like the perfect bf. I was young and I thought he was my first love, so that’s basically what I held on to. So, fast forward to Nov 2014 to 2016.. When Catfish the tv show first came out he automatically popped up in my head and it was bugging me to find out whether or not this guy was real. I got in contact with him and began talking again with the only intention of being friends with him. Since some time had passed it seemed like he was a different person. Had his life together and had a son everything just going good for him. Finally, I had a good quality phone. So I’d ask him for pictures but towards the end they were ones that I’d already seen but he would make it like he just took them. When he sent me pictures it would show that the number he was using was from a textfree app. As for the video chatting supposedly his kid cracked his phone so the camera didn’t work. It was whatever I just enjoyed the “company” or should I say the companionship. It was good having someone that already knew me that well to talk to again. Eventually I decided to get back together. I added him as a friend on Facebook and it seemed legit lol or so I thought. Again the arguing began for no reason and the dramatic events in his life began up. One time to avoid sending me a picture he suddenly said his son got sick and had to take him to the hospital. Another time he supposedly got arrested and spent a weekend in jail, which gave his “cousin” an excuse to call me and let me know everything that was going on. I ended up getting fed up with the made up problems and broke up with him. That day I broke up with him, he kept texting me telling me he wanted me back blah blah blah. I finally just call him out on his catfishery telling him I don’t think you’re who you say you are and sure enough this person came clean. Turns out this whole damn time I was talking to a female. She deepen her voice to sound like a male. Obviously everything was a lie her age, her job, the child was not hers, the cousin I would talk to was really her, but admitted to having “real” feelings for me shit was like a straight episode of catfish. I felt so stupid because in the back of mind I had a feeling something wasn’t right. I was a REAL person with REAL feelings and this female thinks that just because she says “sorry” We were going to be best friends. I didn’t know how I was going to be able to be friends with someone who lied to me for so long not only lied and took on a whole different persona and gender. However, I thought about it and because she was such a huge part of my life I decided to at least try getting to know the “real” her, but the lies never ended. She ended up having a fiancé the whole time she was talking to me! It was like she was leading two lives and this is after the fact that she came out as a catfish and still kept acting like she loved me. I cut her off blocked her on everything. Until this day though she still has her Facebook catfish profile up and it’s disheartening because she’s probably still dragging girls along. Not only could she be leading other girls on but she’s stealing photos of this man and his child! There’s not much I can do about but spread the word to not always believe everything people say on the internet. Do your research! Lol

[catfish--confessions-blog]

Catching the catfish

Hey! My name is Steph. I am a 46 year old, single mom of 3 girls, ages 21, 19, and 14.  I have been on dating sites on and off for past few year. I've paid to use a few of them but never met guys worth even meeting. I know I'm very particular but having daughters, I feel I need to be. 

Recently, I decided to join a site that doesn't really require a subscription to chat with guys. I have met more potential man here than I thought I would! My self confidence is up so that's good. I started "flirting" with men I thought were out of my league. I am even getting replies back from them. Of course, there guys I ca tell aren't right for me and vise versa, so you move on.

Than came the guy I thought was "the one". Very handsome, in the army, romantic, compliments galore.We began emailing then chatting on Hangouts. Apparently, he is currently overseas in Afghanistan so the time difference makes it hard to chat. But we would as much as possible, leaving notes or song videos to each other.

Then I started feeling paranoid, red flags were flying. In his first ever email, he sent 3 pictures of himself. I decided to do Google image searches on them. One was totally a photo crop. Me as an amateur could even figure that out! So I sent it to a good army fried of mine and asked if he could get some info on the guy for me. Another photo came back with saying "fake", "scammer" along with names used with the picture! My heart dropped! I couldn't believe what I was seeing. This guy told me so much, believed in God, told me everything I also agreed with. The third photo really could have been anyone and seems to be somewhat of a famous picture.

With this information, I decided to try to ask this guy more about his past and plans for the future. His future plans included marrying me. He had started telling me he loved me, God connected us for a reason, we are soulmates! I still wanted to believe him and tryst him. Then came the biggest no no ever! Yep, he asked for money!! It actually was a $100 iTunes gift card. I told him no, I couldn't do that. The next day, he asked me to help him get a new cell phone account, what?! Really??? When I said no to that, he asked if he could send me money, put some in my account for me to take care of business for him til he gets home. I told him I would give him my accountants name and number, he can work it out with her. He claims we don't have to do that. I again told him I couldn't . 

This last part just happened this morning! I am so upset, I want to catch this guy, beat him at his own game! I am not sure what to do next.

Thanks for reading this!

 Steph

[catfish--confessions-blog]

My catfish story

My name is ceaira , and when I was 15 I dated a guy all summer . It was getting pretty serious like a little love teenage fling I was young so I didn’t know. We dated for about 4-5 months . He was a really good looking guy !! We talked on the phone just about every night, sometimes he would be with his friend and we’d all clown on the phone . I knew what his friend looked like as well . He wasn’t that attractive at all by the slightest joy being rude or anything . And he wasn’t like Scott , that had a nice body and was gorgeous in the face . Even though me and Scott talked on the phone all the time , he didn’t want to hang out and never wanted to FaceTime with me I found that very odd . We broke up because I couldn’t take not hanging out or meeting him in person anymore so I ended things . I couple years later , I found him again on fb but it was a different account I asked how he was doing and he had NO IDEA who I was . He said he had never dated me or never even seen me before ... I was shocked at this point because I know that I hated dated this young man for 4 months . Well come to find out it was his friend the WHOLE time . And he was pretending to be Scott and Scott was the “friend” in the background on the phone . I was so mad when I found out , but I was 15 & young and didn’t know better now I don’t even give people a chance if they don’t FaceTime me . But I’m happily in a relationship with someone I see in person EVERYDAY lol. And there you have it my young teen age life of being CATFISHED

[catfish--confessions-blog]

Psycho Ex

My psycho ex-boyfriend anonymously messaged me on Tumblr on a post where I was talking about coming to terms with being bisexual. He messaged me as a woman and then kept up the charade-turned relationship for two and a half years. In that time, he made up stories about an ex who hung herself, a repressed memory of molestation, a drinking problem, and eventually stopped talking to me because "she" was being forced into rehab by the family. I mustered up the courage to message him to ask if it was him a few months ago and he admitted to it. Same manipulation and psychotic behavior from when we were together, and I fell for it a second time. I'm pissed but can't do anything about it. What an absolute narcissistic, messed-up psychopath.

[catfish--confessions-blog]

Almost A Decade Later...

This might be all over the place so bear with me.

When I was in my second(?) year in middle school, I was on Facebook a lot. It was the most popular platform at the time in my school, and I probably had more "friends" on Facebook than a kid my age should've.

One day, I saw one of my friends talking to this guy that was apparently from a school they had previously gone to. His profile picture looked cute, so me being young and naive, I decided to add him. I don't remember what his name was so we'll just call him Levi.

Almost immediately, Levi and I started talking to each other. I noticed a lot of other girls from my school were adding him soon after me, but he was only talking to me and my small group of friends. It made me feel pretty important since I didn't have a lot of friends and typically got made fun of at school.

We quickly got into a relationship since we had a lot in common, and had a mutual friend. Because my friend (we'll call them Sam) was friends with Levi at their old school, I figured he must be real. Why would my best friend make someone up out of the blue, right?

Everything was fine for a while. Levi and I would talk every day online. He always made me laugh, and never failed to turn a bad day into a good one. He even started writing me notes that he would send to my Sam to give to me at school. The only reason he gave them to Sam and not me was because I was in middle school, and if my mom caught a random boy pulling up to my house, she would get upset. Our relationship was a secret from my family, as my mom didn't have Facebook. My sister, however, knew about my online relationship and told me that she'd seen his picture before and didn't think this was real. I ignored her because I trusted Sam.

People at school began asking if my relationship was even real. Since I wasn't very popular, and I was on the chubbier side, a lot of people thought it was something that I had made up. He was clearly much more attractive and way out of my league, so I understood why people would think I made Levi up myself. However, I assured them he was real and that Sam knew him personally.

I don't remember how long we were together, but he ended up doing something that got him in a lot of trouble at school, so he was grounded and had to give up social media for a while. He asked me before he left if I would go visit him at his house so he could at least see me, but the day he told me he was free, I was busy and I told him no.

He was furious with me. He told me that he had to beg his mom for a week to get her to allow me over. I told him I had prior family plans that I couldn't cancel, so he ended it. It sounds stupid, I know, and it was.

After that, Levi completely disappeared. I never heard from him again, and Sam never spoke of him. The only time anyone brought him up over the years was to say "remember that one guy from Facebook" or to say "y'know, I think he was a catfish". One day after I had graduated high school, my sister and I were watching Catfish together. She turned to me and went, "you should contact them and find out about that Levi guy. I bet Sam was the one who catfished you". I considered it, but in the end, decided it wasn't worth it. It happened almost ten years ago and it didn't bother me anymore.

But then Levi was brought up again. I was talking with Sam one day, and out of nowhere, they confess that they have something to tell me. We weren't even talking about Levi, so I was concerned about what it could be. I was scared I did something wrong.

"Do you remember Levi from middle school?" they asked me.

"Yeah, why?"

"I was Levi."

And that was it. Sam apologized but never explained why they did it. Part of me still wants to know, but another part of me figured it was in the past; we were in middle school and did dumb things. I didn't have any hard feelings toward Sam, and I figured it was better to leave the past in the past.

However, it reminded me of another boy I had met on Facebook somewhere between the end of middle school and the beginning of high school. Again, I don't remember his name, so we'll just call him Mark. Mark was another close friend of Sam, but Mark seemed slightly more convincing to me. Mark had a girlfriend who also had a Facebook, and I had heard Mark's voice over the phone before. Mark had also asked me to hang out at the mall before, saying his mom could pick me up, but I declined since I had a lot of homework to do.

Like Levi, Mark eventually disappeared out of nowhere and I never really found out who he really was. As years went by, I slowly realized he probably wasn't real either, and I started to suspect Sam. I still do suspect Sam but I don't want to dig up the past again. I guess I'll never know.