A Hidden Threat of Online Dating Sites

Source: Anna Akbari, used with permission

Anna Akbari logged onto OkCupid, looking for someone who matched her energy and curiosity. An accomplished professional with a PhD in sociology and a teaching position at New York University, she got more than she’d been looking for. According to his bio, Ethan Shuman was a tall, attractive 35-year-old New Yorker with a PhD in applied math. He worked for Morgan Stanley and the U.S. government, had apartments in New York and Washington, DC, a BMW, and a dog named Harvey. From their first text conversation, Anna was swept up in what she called “a communication tidal wave” (Akbari, 2024a).

She’d met other men online, but Ethan was different. “He wanted to go deep and communicated with a level of sophistication not easily found in the average person.” With escalating excitement, they chatted on Gmail late at night, discussing their lives, past relationships, hopes for the future, and dreaming of a life together. Ethan was serious, looking for “real connection and companionship.”

They wanted to meet in person, but she was leaving for a trip to California and he was working in Washington. Major East Coast snowstorms disrupted their plans. They continued to meet virtually, in what Anna later called “a little time out of time bubble, just the two of us, as the world melted away.”

They flirted, argued, fought, and made up, and the emotional intensity increased. They made plans to meet in New York. Ethan promised to meet her at the airport when she flew back from California, but a crisis at work kept him in Washington. They planned to meet again for dinners and an opera, but there were more last-minute cancellations.

Finally, Anna grew suspicious. Ethan said he’d gone to Stuyvesant High School and Columbia but Anna’s friend who’d gone to these schools during that time hadn’t heard of him and Ethan wasn’t in their yearbooks. Conflicted and confused, she says she “really cared about this person,” and then “basically split myself in two.”

Using her research skills to investigate, she found that “Ethan” was a serial online manipulator who’d deceived other women and, as she describes in her book, There Is No Ethan (2024b), his real identity was a shock.

Source: Anna Akbari, used with permission

Experiences like Anna’s are not unusual. In the United States, as more than 49.7 million Americans have tried online dating, and nearly 30 percent of young adults currently use it, identity deception has become increasingly common (Mosley, Lancaster, Parker, and Campbell, 2020; Sharma, 2024). A law review article defines what “Ethan” was doing as “catfishing,” using “the cloak of technology to fabricate online personas and lure victims into romantic relationships” (Derzakarian, 2017, p. 741).

Catfishing predators create false identities. They use other people’s photographs on dating sites and emotionally abuse their unsuspecting victims, often luring them into sending money.

Currently, there are few legal remedies. In 2016, Oklahoma became the first American state to have a law providing a remedy for people whose photographs are used to create a false identity, including monetary damages and a legal injunction against the perpetrator (Derzakarian, 2017).

But there are no legal remedies for people caught up in the catfisher’s romantic deception, which can be emotionally traumatic and pose significant mental health risks (Mosley et al, 2020).

Catfishing has likely become so prevalent because many people live lonely isolated lives. In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a health advisory warning that loneliness and isolation pose a significant threat to our emotional and physical health. “We are social creatures,” Akbari says, “We need connection” which motivates many catfishers, as well as people who spend lots of time scrolling through social media.

For Akbari, another reason for catfishing is power. Catfishers, she explains, get a “sadistic thrill” from being able to manipulate other people. People with narcissistic personalities have a dangerous need for attention and power over others. They use emotionally abusive techniques such as love bombing and gaslighting to manipulate their victims and keep them off balance, leading them to doubt themselves. “Ethan,” she says, was a master at this. But this kind of emotional manipulation can happen in any toxic relationship, Akbari explains, whether in person or online and she warns us to watch out for the signs.

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Healthy relationships don’t put us on an emotional roller coaster. Are you caught in a relationship of constant melodrama, manipulative love-bombing, pain, and uncertainty? You may want to talk to someone you trust or seek the support of a therapist.

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This post is for informational purposes and should not substitute for psychotherapy with a qualified professional.

© 2024 Diane Dreher, All Rights Reserved.