I brought a toothbrush for nothing?!
A little story about giving someone too many chances
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I have been non monogamous for about four years and dated a number of men. I thought I had experienced my fair share of dating mishaps over the years, but I never thought I would experience the triple-whammy of being catfished, disregarded and booted out of a bed as soon as sex was over all by the same man. But it happened to me and I did not like it. What happened you ask? Let’s go back a couple of months…
I met Mike (this is obviously a pseudonym, as much as I am not happy with him I do feel like I can’t be quite so vindictive as to use his real name) on an online dating app that touts itself as being “for the open-minded to meet the like-minded”. His bio stood out from the usual unicorn-seekers with its sensitivity and openness. He described himself as a 52 year old non monogamous, polyamorous, body-worker and therapist who was looking for tantric, ongoing and deep connections. I was smitten from the start. We matched and started to chat.
To my dismay, after a couple of messages back and forth over the next few days, I noticed that our distance from each other, which was shown on the app, had gone from 5 miles to 300 miles. As it turned out, we had matched when we were both visiting a big city, but our respective homes were 150 miles + in opposite directions. We discussed whether there was any point in continuing to get to know each other, but the connection seemed unusually good and a return to the city in the near future for both of us… so we proceeded in getting to know each other.
After about a month of texts, emails and a few phones calls, the big day finally arrived. We were both back in the city and would meet for the first time in real life. The nerves were high! It felt like we already knew so much about each other and had grown such an attachment already and yet, we had never met.
He got to the bar first and was standing by the entrance, so I had a chance to see him before he saw me. He was taller than I expected and was, for some reason, wearing rubber boots… I was a bit mystified by the first-date look, but nevertheless trusted that the person I knew online was worth the bizarre first-date fashion faux-pas. As I got closer, I noticed something else. He was……