Love Lives - ‘I was in quarantine with the man who catfished me’

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

Sometimes, you hear a story that sounds so far fetched, you can't imagine it being real. That was what happened when Olivia read Karina Mazur's first-person article in The Independent about her experience of being catfished by her boyfriend while they were isolating together.Karina explains how she found out her boyfriend was not who he said he was, was stealing people's identities on multiple dating apps, and what the impact of all of this was on her.She also discusses how she got in touch with some other women her boyfriend had catfished, including one of his best friends. It's an unbelievable story.You can read her article here: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/lockdown-catfish-hinge-dating-online-quarantine-love-relationship-a9537421.htmlYou can follow everything to do with the show on Instagram at @millennial_love.If you're a new listener please remember to subscribe and leave us a comment, preferably a nice one!If you enjoyed the show you can support us with a contribution here.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, a podcast from The Independent on everything to do with love, sexuality, identity and more. This week we have a special episode for you, which is why we are releasing it outside of our regular schedule. Now you might have a special episode for you which is why we are releasing it outside of our regular schedule. Now you might have seen a story that we recently published on The Independent about a woman who found out she was being catfished by her boyfriend while they were in quarantine together. That woman was Karina Mazur and she joined me to talk a little bit more about her experience and how it impacted her. If you haven't read her piece already, you can click the link in the description in our show notes so you can check it out before listening to this episode. Enjoy the show!

Hi Karina! Hi Olivia, how are you? I'm okay, thank you. I'm a bit sad because the weather has turned in the UK, but otherwise I'm fine. How are you? I'm good, thanks. I'm okay, thank you. I'm a bit sad because the weather has turned in the UK, but otherwise, I'm fine. How are you? I'm good, thanks. I'm actually in Canada at the moment, and it's nice and sunny, so it looks like we've done a switch. Oh, lovely. Yeah, I was going to ask where you're living now. That must be so nice. So I want to start off by thanking you for writing such an honest and powerful account of what happened to you. you for writing such an honest and powerful account of what happened to you. For those of you who haven't read the article, Karina, would you mind just starting us off by explaining how you met Sam? Sure. So I met Sam in January of this year and we started dating and it was a whirlwind romance, if a cliche way of saying it, but we went on a couple of dates and hit it

off really well and things were going very smooth. And then obviously everything escalated with the COVID-19 situation. So we decided to be spending time in quarantine together. And did you move into his place or did he move into yours? So we split time between our flats because my place had more outdoor space and we kind of utilised that when the weather got better. But we were going in between his and mine throughout. Okay. And so how long were you guys living together until you found his passport? long were you guys living together until you found his passport? So it was about a month into living together that I had been putting away my belongings in one of his drawers and I stumbled upon his passport which yeah I mean I found it in his drawer and realized that he had lied about his age. By how many years had he lied about his age? So just by two years,

it wasn't anything crazy significant. I'm 25 and I saw that he'd said he was 28, but he was actually 30, which definitely set alarm bells off in my mind. But not enough to, you know, think that he could be lying about anything else that was significant. Yeah, I know what you mean, because you find out that someone lies about their age and it's strange, particularly, I think, if it's just two years. It's almost like, what's the point of lying about a two year difference? And so that's interesting. So then from there, that was obviously the first red flag, I'm guessing. So what happened next? When did you start getting more signs that Sam might not be who he said he was?

So I think it's important to say that when you first start dating someone, you obviously, there are sometimes things that they say or do that might come across as red flags as well. And because I was more susceptible to closing myself off emotionally from someone, I gave myself the, you know, permission essentially to trust what he would say and what the stories he would tell me. But there were moments when things didn't really line up. It was in living together that I noticed he was incredibly skittish around me and when he would be on his phone he would always hide it from me as well and those were things I started to pick up on and a lot of the time he blamed it on his previous relationships saying that you know his ex-girlfriend was psychotic which I always view as a red flag myself, because I think when men start to speak poorly of their exes, it usually indicates there's two

sides to every story. So particularly the word psychotic as well. I mean, you know, when people say, oh, yeah, my ex is such a psycho, that's such a gendered phrase isn't it I feel like it's only to women exactly it's a pretty bad sign all right continue well I mean I guess that yeah I thought that you know there there had to be some reason why she had also felt the need to be quote-unquote psychotic um anyway and there were other things as well like he would tell me these elaborate stories or tell me that when he had initially started to date me he was also still you know considering dating another person but he essentially chose me over the other individual. I think that he meant he wanted me to be flattered but for my for me I just didn't really see the kind of significance of making that sort of statement anyway um it's a bit unnecessary for you to know that information really because obviously he's

whether he's trying to flatter you or not it's it's almost like it's quite entitled isn't it because it's like the implication is oh lucky you I chose you I'm such a catch right and you know because on the surface level, he was so incredibly charming and funny and witty that I didn't really, you know, I thought that he was just joking around. But now that I've looked back, I think he seriously viewed himself on such a pedestal, which is ironic because, you know, as the story unfolded, in my opinion, he's actually an incredibly insecure individual for what he ended up doing to myself and other women. But there was just that kind of nagging feeling in

my gut that something wasn't right. And I couldn't place it. And I spoke to so many of my friends, and they said to me, oh, it's trust issues, and you've had some previous bad dating experiences, said to me, oh, you know, it's trust issues and you've had some previous bad dating experiences, like, you know, like everyone, and just go with the flow sort of thing. But it was when I was on his iPad, which we used for, you know, watching Netflix and kind of streaming services, that I saw he had a window open, which was to a fake burner number. And what that is, just to kind of sum it up, because this gets a little bit complicated, is it's a telephone number that people use as a form of verification for different apps, whether that's, you know, a food delivery app or a car service. app or a car service um it's just a second telephone number that anyone can access online and that number was linked to um a dating app called hinge and that how did you how did you

find out that the number was linked to his hinge account yeah so on the website, which is where the number is located, it's literally like a website of telephone numbers. It says the most recent verification codes for the different applications. And I guess that these numbers aren't used by, you know, an incredible amount of people because there was verification codes over the course of a month and there weren't that many. But the one that stood out the most to me uh was the hinge one because obviously it just i don't know i just looked at it and i was thinking to myself why does my boyfriend have a fake telephone number on a web browser saved and a lot of the verification codes linked to that number are to do with a dating app

so god so he left he left this open he left this burner phone page which I've never even heard of I did not know this was a thing he left this open on his iPad and that's how you came across it that's exactly what happened yeah it was on his web browser and I was using it for something else and then when I saw the tab um I went to it and I mean I know it's not right to snoop through someone's things but we were living together I genuinely could have never predicted that going on my boyfriend's web browser would set off a string of events that would culminate to this moment um but yeah it was it was really it was really strange especially because we also didn't meet through Hinge.

We actually met in a very strange twist of events where he had followed me on Instagram and he had reached out because he used to work at a competitor of my employer and he noticed that I worked at the company that was my previous employer and he wanted to go for coffee and discuss my experience working at the company so that is how we had actually initially met and then you know I saw him on dating apps a couple of times like it just London is actually really small when you um narrow it down to where you live and yeah it was it was it was weird um but he had always said to me that you know he wasn't a fan of dating apps so I found it strange and I used that number to log into hinge because you don't need anything apart from a telephone number and a verification

code really I didn't know that but wait a minute how do you if you don't have the physical phone i'm still very new to this burner phone thing so you don't have this phone you use the phone number to log into hinge how do you get access to the verification code so the verification code pops up on the web browser oh my god that's so sneaky is that legal you know I don't know I probably probably isn't I think it doesn't sound very legal oh I mean I felt like Sherlock Holmes when I was discovering all of this but you know the kind of the strangest moment was logging into this account using this telephone number and seeing photos of a man I had never seen before in my life. So you found his account on Hinge, but they were photographs of a different person?

Completely different person, different name, different age. It wasn't Sam. It was a man named Alexander. He looked like he led a really nice lifestyle, was allegedly an art gallery owner living in Mayfair with a passion for Ferraris. So very strange. And I genuinely thought that it was a mistake because a lot of people have access to this um like burner number online so I thought maybe someone else was using this account with this number but then I saw that there had been conversations on this account with a couple of people that really popped out to me and one of those people was um sam's best friend best female friend and that's when i thought to myself this is very odd um i mean it could be a coincidence but it's just very strange and when i was looking through the messages uh alexander's tone of voice really sounded like Sam as well. So I then saw that there was an email account linked to the profile. And this was the ultimate eureka moment because I went and I logged

into this email account and I'd used Sam's Netflix password, which he said that he in a joke joking way once he told me I use this password for everything classic so many men do that but worked in my favor this time um and I logged in and I was on an email account of this Alexander and he had all of these accounts linked back to the email from Facebook Twitter Instagram um Snapchat all of these social media profiles and photos of another man with another man's life um living his best life and that's when I knew that it was Sam that had done this. I have a few more questions um so so the photographs that you found on Alex's hinge profile were they the same photographs that Sam was using for his this fake Instagram and Twitter account or were they each different people as well? They were the it was the same photographs across the different accounts, but then it came out

that there were actually several identities that Alexander and sorry, that Sam had stolen. Wow. Okay. This is, this is pretty, pretty overwhelming for you, I'm guessing at the time. So what did you do next? At what point did you confront him? So this was obviously when we were in quarantine together, but I went on my little detective expedition when he had returned home back to his flat for the night just to pick up some more things. It was starting to get warmer outside, so he needed to get some summer clothing. And this is when I kind of did the deep dive into what was this account. And then when I logged into the email, I immediately, well, called my best friend. And we were both in a state of disbelief. And then I called him and I just said, look, I know everything. I know who you really are. Should I call you Sam or should I call you Alexander? And his reaction, his initial reaction was to say that he had an addiction to flirting,

which I found as an interesting kind of excuse, but it was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the kind of excuses that he would feed me later on as well. And, you know, he begged that I don't get in touch with his best female friend, He begged that I don't get in touch with his best female friend because I had seen that Alexander had been corresponding with Sam's best female friend in real life. So this is a woman who you have met, this woman? I hadn't met her yet. I'd heard a lot about her and she had heard a lot about me we both knew of each other but because of quarantine because of all of the ongoing situation um and just the nature of Sam's and my relationship really we kind of hit the ground running very quickly but

we never had a chance to meet each other's friendship groups um and I'd heard of her and I was looking forward to meeting her but I hadn't met her in real life yet my god so he was he was catfishing someone who he's friends with posing as Alexander to what send flirty messages were they quite suggestive messages that you read yeah they were they were very uh they were messages of like an incredibly sexual nature and, you know, kind of trying to figure out what Sam's best friend, what kind of things she was into that sort of stuff. And there was one instance where Alexander sent a photo of his penis to his of his penis to his best female friend.

And we discovered that it wasn't his penis that was sent across. So that was fun. Oh my God. So can you tell me a bit about how you started speaking to this woman then, the best friend? I presume you got in touch with her on, did you use Alex's account to speak

so I messaged her on my own Instagram account and I said to her hey look like you need to call me we need to talk um there's no really way of describing this situation in a succinct message to someone and we proceeded to have uh you know like almost like a three-hour conversation where everything came out into the open about both Sam and Alexander um we really fit the puzzle pieces so to speak on Sam's even the lies that he had told me um as well as the things that Alexander had told um the the woman that was also a victim of Sam's catfishing and how long had she been friends with Sam for two years two years and coinciding with their friendship he started messaging her um and he would encourage her to meet up with Alexander in real life

yeah oh my god okay um so okay I'm so blown away by all of this I know it's like a Netflix TV series honestly it's just it was and being in the middle of it as well was just And being in the middle of it as well was just very, very chaotic and insane because on one hand, I was mourning my relationship with someone. And on the other hand, I was also informing literally hundreds of women about who Alexander slash Sam really was. Hey, it's Mitch from SideNote Podcast, and I'm here to tell you about the new Google Pixel 9 powered by Gemini. Anyone who knows me knows the Pixel has always been my favorite out of all the phones I've ever had. Now, with Gemini built in, it's basically my personal AI assistant. Since I'm truly terrible at keeping up with emails, I use Gemini to give me summaries of my inbox, which is a lifesaver. And if I'm feeling stuck creatively, I just ask Gemini for help and bam, instant inspiration. You can learn more about Google

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So tell me a bit about the other women you spoke to. Were these women that you found on the Hinge account or other social media accounts as well? So a lot of these were on Hinge and then a lot of these I had seen on Sam's Instagram account. A lot of the women had corresponded with the Hinge as well, if that makes sense. So the woman he was matching on hinge as alexander he would then go on to follow them as sam as well on his instagram account so he was using two identities one being himself one being alexander to speak to these women on instagram as well as messaging them on hinge through through Alexander. So almost like creating a

healthy dose or maybe an unhealthy dose of competition with himself. So I had a chance to message all of these women on Hinge and just to let them know that, you know, who they were really speaking to was Sam. And I, you know, I gave them Sam's Instagram account as well and I told the woman to follow my Instagram account um which is kind of like I have a page where I document the trials and tribulations of dating in London um usually it's more funny content than this but these women reached out to me followed the the page and sent me messages and their own experiences. Some of them had actually gone on dates with Sam in real life whilst still messaging Alexander. It was speaking to these women that we also discovered that Sam had created a second and a third page, like Instagram accounts. One of the

accounts that Sam had created as another identity as well was an account named James with photos of yet another man that wasn't Alexander. And this James account had actually reached out to me before Sam and I had started dating. So that was another kind of shock revelation that I had been catfished by my boyfriend before I had even started dating him. chat to the same woman from all three or four of those accounts to see which to like widen his chances or to see which one you know the woman was more attracted to I think it was a mixture of the two you know I don't really to be completely honest I can't rationalize this behavior I've tried um and I've spoken to him as well at great length about why he did what he did um but again he never really was able to give me a direct answer

um that was going to be my next question is how did how did you guys then cut ties and what was your kind of resolution because you know I mean you said he wasn't able to really clearly explain why he did it which I can imagine must have been incredibly frustrating for you so what was his kind of main argument as to this is why I did it and then yeah when's the last time you guys spoke you know what Olivia honestly he has never really given a reason as to why he did it. I asked him so many times. We kind of reached a conclusion together where, you know, I just begged him to get help because I think that he needed to speak to someone more professional. And the last time I spoke to him was a three hour conversation about why and

what, you know, what is his thought process when he's doing this and he painted a picture that you know actually did really make me feel a little bit sympathetic because he said that um he has a good side and a bad side and sometimes his bad side dominates his good side and he can't control his impulse to listen to the bad side of himself which you know to hear that especially because I had never seen that bad side I had only discovered it after the fact it was a it was a real shock because I never really had any kind of indication that he had impulses to act in such a malicious and hurtful manner. Did you ever have any contact with his family at all? So actually throughout posting about my experience on my Instagram page. One of the people that follows that account

has a mutual friend with Sam's ex-girlfriend, the quote unquote psychotic one. Right, okay. So yes, so he asked if he could put us in touch and I had a very long conversation with Sam's ex-girlfriend and we still speak to this day um now it's more politically these conversations rather than about our dating lives

but um she revealed to me her own story which I don't want to go into detail because it's not my mine um but again it was it's something that she was also a victim to being messaged by all of these fake identities. She actually had an inkling that it was Sam that was behind those accounts, just based on, I guess, her own kind of adding up certain situations. certain situations. But, you know, she also had a very difficult and toxic relationship with Sam. And she was the one that reached out to his family to say, you know, just to kind of give them a heads up that Sam was doing something that wasn't very kind to other people. Since I never met his family, I felt like, you know, I did everything that I could in my power to make sure that other women wouldn't get hurt. But involving his family was kind of a step that I wasn't willing to take. Of course. Can I ask if you ever considered reporting his behavior or if any of the women you spoke to considered it so I reported his behavior to all of the dating apps that he was on um and also because I was in quarantine subsequently alone afterwards I did feel slightly worried about you know my safety

since he knew where I lived so I did file a police report. It's more just like an antisocial behavior report. I'm not sure what the legalities and the consequences of his actions would be. But again, I think, you know, after everything kind of happened and the dust had settled, he immediately went to delete these accounts. So in order to report him, it would have to involve a lot of the different social networks and dating apps that he was using. So I kind of tried to go my own way and just inform as many women as possible that who Sam was and who Alexander was or wasn't. And, you know, if they needed to speak to me, they could. The creating a community of women who have been through this, I think is obviously an incredibly

important thing, because then you have that support network. I mean, I can't imagine the impact that going through something like this has had on you. I mean, it hasn't even been that long, has it? It must have been April or something that you found out? that long has it I mean it must have been April or something that you found out yeah it was mid to end of April um I mean yeah it was very difficult um to go to go through this experience but hearing other women telling me that they had either met Sam in real life or that you know they had also been essentially duped by these fake accounts it was comforting to know that you know, they had also been essentially duped by these fake accounts. It was comforting to know that, you know, whilst, of course, everyone makes mistakes in every relationship, we're all, you know, we're all human. That's part of our nature.

At the same time, I didn't deserve this to happen to me. And I didn't see it coming at all. There was no way that, you know, I could have see it coming at all um there was no way that you know I could have seen it coming uh he was very very good at what he did and very good at making you think that he was you know head over heels for you as well I guess um but you know yeah sorry to interrupt you but I just wanted to ask about um you know again like like again, like you're talking about the red flags and it's easy to miss the signs. And I know that a few of the women you spoke to who had been duped by Sam blamed themselves. And I imagine that's quite common.

Why do you think that is? And, you know, obviously it's incredibly important to avoid that victim blaming narrative. But why do you think it is and and you know obviously it's incredibly important to avoid that victim blaming narrative but why do you think it is that the inclination is to blame yourself when this happens to you yeah that's a good question I think that you know we dating as well like right now and you know being a millennial and having all of these dating experiences, there are still residual stereotypes that occasionally we think that we don't want to adhere to. So whether or not that's being the crazy psychotic ex-girlfriend or, you know, having such trust issues that you can't trust someone to just be speaking to you or dating you. And I think that sometimes, you know, we want to just be able to give people the benefit of the doubt and to let our guard down and be vulnerable.

And then when we allow ourselves to become vulnerable and to let somebody in, and then they hurt us in such a way, it's almost like we blame ourselves for letting down that wall. People who have been subjected to catfishing, do you think they are more likely to be women than men? Because there is a lot of conflicting research on catfishing. Some studies say that it's more common for men to be the perpetrators. Others say it's more likely for women to actually dupe men. There's not really a clear information on it

so what what do you think I mean obviously from your experiences I'm presuming you think this is more common for men to do to women I think that you know there's an element of exaggeration that we all do on dating apps whether it's about the way that we look or our height we want to reveal the best parts of ourselves because that's's what, you know, essentially, dating, the dating mentality has kind of forced us to do. But whether or not it's men or women, I think that, you know, men can kind of manipulate women sometimes on these apps, because perhaps they have a different goal. And, you know, different outcome that they're looking to get out of the situation. But I think anyone can be a victim of being catfished. It's not even necessarily just in the dating world. It can happen at any given moment. You know,

you hear so many horror stories on the internet of people who buy into some form of a scheme or want to help somebody out. Again, I think it goes back to that mentality of we're all human and we all are capable of being vulnerable. And sometimes that vulnerability is just manipulated by people that have malicious intent. Whether it's men or women, I don't think that it can line one camp or the other. There are bad people and there are good people that's just my thinking so and touching on what you said before because you made a really good point about how you know the dating world at the moment is is sort of colored by this artifice anyway because people are using

dating apps and dating websites and you're creating a profile on which it is very easy to lie and whether you're lying about everything or just one or two things you know it's it's incredibly easy to curate a persona and I think we're actually almost conditioned to do that because not to create an entirely different identity but to curate the most attractive version of yourself yeah what i mean so you know if you look at the studies that have gone into it there was a survey from 2015 that found that 42 percent of people on tinder already have a partner and wow and of them were already married so obviously it's easy to be on a dating app when you're already in a relationship. But then equally on a smaller scale, you know, you get people lying about their age, people lying about their age.

Using old photos, perhaps, that's also a kind of form of lying, isn't it? So why do you think people lie on dating apps and websites? Well, yeah, I mean, again, again Olivia I think it's just because you know everyone has different intentions but with dating apps as well there's this instant gratification right when someone swipes right on you when they say like oh you look great in a photo that maybe was taken 10 years ago you still have this like surge of serotonin I guess in a way where you feel like someone admires you or likes you or is attracted to you and I think that we're all on some level and I don't want to generalize so I shouldn't say that we are all trying to do that but I think on some

level people want that you know gratification to be admired but it's the fact that there's a second layer beneath that that we have our own you know nuances and the good and the bad that makes us who we are but we try to portray ourselves in a different way so that we appeal to a wider demographic because we want to you know have a chance with every person that comes our way like even my dating profile is so different from the reality of who I am and I've had people say before to me that you know they thought that I was my personality was of something else before they met me um the thing is you know how can I have to how can a dating app profile ever truly reflect your authentic personality because you know it's like a

condensed version the filter photographs are probably filtered because why wouldn't they be they make you look hotter of course you're going to use filtered photos of course you're going to cherry pick the bits of information that you choose to share and the anecdotes that you choose to put on there on an app like hinge for example you know I mean is it ever possible to actually be completely yourself on an app but is it ever possible to actually be completely yourself on an app? But is it ever possible to be completely yourself on the internet anyway you know like you're looking at so many different like websites and social media profiles that are just an extension of a version of ourselves that is how we want to appear in maybe in real life or online but it's not the reality um i think there's elements of our

personality that do come through in online but it's not always the case right so people they will make their assumptions but it's the same way that people do still make assumptions about who you are in real life as well right and it's just like unfortunate kind of biases that we live with um but have been massively multiplied and just blown out of proportion when it comes to dating apps but yeah it's really disheartening yeah as a young woman um online uh finally i just want to ask you a bit about how this whole experience has impacted your view about relationships moving forward. Are you looking to be with someone else or has the experience kind of put you off entirely? You know, it's funny because before I met Sam, I was so happy being single and I didn't even think that I was going to get into a relationship.

And it just kind of happened like these things do. think that I was going to get into a relationship. And it just kind of happened like these things do. At the moment, I can't say that I'm super opposed to, you know, meeting someone, whether it's online, whether it's in real life, maybe I'm an optimist, maybe I'm gullible. But I like to think that, you know, people, there are good people out there. And even if you have had a bad experience, or several bad experiences, it shouldn't define your entire outlook on what you could eventually or who you could eventually meet. So yes, I'm apprehensive and cautious about the future of my love life. But at the same time, I'm also, you know, open to meeting someone and taking them at face value I mean I have learned

from this experience and I have and I will apply kind of my learnings to when I next meet someone and perhaps do some things differently myself as well but I'm not necessarily you know ruling someone out just because I'm at them on hinge or tinder orumble or whatever. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you're a new listener to this show, you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast or anywhere else. You can comment and leave us a rating too

so that more people can find us. Keep up with everything to do with the show on Instagram. Just search Millennial Love. See you soon. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts

that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are.

So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca.