How to catch a cat-fisher!

Def: Catfish: lure (someone) into a relationship by means of a fictional online persona.

In both my professional and personal life, I keep details – for my own personal use – of the people I meet.

I have now extended this to the people I ‘meet’ on line, particularly when our exchanges go from the dating site to another medium such as email or What’s App.

The purpose of this is 2-fold; there is no guarantee that a person you have found through an app/site will still be a subscriber in weeks or days to come. And with their departure from the app goes all the information you have exchanged to date. Secondly, you will meet a lot of people called Michael, Christina, and after a while it can get quite confusing as to who is Christina from Balham and or Christina from Chelsea.

Nothing could be more true of a man I met only a few days ago; we will call him by his initial ‘M’. During our e-messages, he told me he had lost both his wife and son in a car crash. This resonated with me as I recalled another dater telling me exactly the same thing on a sister site, several months ago.

A quick search on my address book revealed that the original ‘M’ had contacted me via Our Time. His story was identical to the ‘M’ I met through Match, Our Time’s mother company. But… their photos were poles apart. The original ‘M’ was dark; the Match ‘M’ was blond…

Here is the info I store in my address book: 

◂Name of dater

◂Moniker used (if different to the former)

◂Name of site 

◂Month and year met

◂Divorced? Widowed?

◂Lives in…

◂Children?

◂Occupation

◂Other info.

◂Email address

◂Phone number.

Sometimes, I can be a bit of scientist: I like to check my assumptions and see how they check out with real situations.

So, I enter ‘M’ into my database – carry on talking with him, but always staying wary of his responses….

After about 5 days of What’s App exchanges, I call him on a whim at 2000 as I await a friend in a local restaurant. He betrays himself on 2 points:

◂Firstly, his voice is not that of an American citizen

◂Secondly, he enquires – “how come you are up so late?” Well, I do not know about you but 8pm is not exactly the middle of the night. 

Note to self: he is not in the UK as he claims, he is somewhere else.

I am being cat-fished but feeling somewhat like a cat playing with a mouse before killing it, I carry on the dialogue and suggest a meeting for Monday at 3pm; having agreed on the venue, and also that he would phone me when he entered the brasserie.

In my consultancy as a Dating Guru, I offer clients the possibility to give us the details of their on-line as well as the venue, and then call us to confirm they get home safe. Practising what I preach, I do so with one of my trusted associates and set off for the date at a place where I am well known.

3pm arrives and goes and guess what: no show! 

Some 5 hours later, ‘M’ gets round to texting me that he had been called away for work reasons (on a Sunday!?!?) and could not text me…

All my suspicions were proved correct.

Are you dating on line and unsure about the authenticity of the dater? For as little as £50.00, we will read through their profile and e-messages and give you our assessment. We are rarely wrong…