I was so fed up with what I thought was the double life my ex was leading that I created a whole fake social media account to try to catch him in the act of slipping. Desperate times, right? While any relationship takes work, dating should never get to this level of difficulty. The surprising part is I went in hoping to catch him red-handed, but instead came to these 8 realizations.
- It wasn’t worth it. What started off as seeming like a genius plan left me feeling deflated and desperate. Clearly, the trust was just not there. If a relationship gets to the point of such drastic measures, is it even worth continuing? I should’ve taken the red flags as enough evidence and left it at that. I obviously knew things were shady before I decided to take it a step further with my own suspect behavior. It only ended up making me feel bad about myself for going through with this.
- The cyber-world is not a safe place. OK, so don’t turn me into Internet Crime or anything, but it was really easy to impersonate someone else. I had a fully functioning page and active posts within days. I even had people messaging me saying they may have seen me out in town. Knowing what it takes to lie online seriously makes me question anyone I meet on dating apps and social media now. Please do your homework and protect yourself against creeps. I was harmless of course, but others likely are not. Verify all your facts and proceed with caution.
- It said more about me than him. I wanted to find out if he was being dishonest, but the way I went about it made me guilty, too. The entire page was a whole lie and so was everything “I” said to him to try to weasel out a confession. And what if he had turned out to be innocent? Then between the two of us, I would be the only one at fault for going behind the other’s back. It wasn’t a good look for me.
- Trust is important. I wasn’t experiencing a good vibe after the initial excitement of being crafty went down. I didn’t feel good about what I was doing anymore at all. What kind of relationship was this? We were only violence short of being a full-blown Mr. & Mrs. Smith replica couple. I learned that this was not what I wanted from a partnership and resolved to be more discerning in the future with who I chose to be with. A stable relationship would never get to this point. This was just not cool.
- Communication is equally critical. Apparently, I had enough doubts about my man and his activity to warrant deciding to go undercover was necessary. But is this really a sustainable course of action long-term? Was I prepared to concoct a devious plan every time something went wrong between us? This was definitely a call to action to find a more constructive way of handling relationship conflict. The underhanded route wasn’t the way to go. We should’ve been able to address our issues openly.
- Guilt is worse than suspicion. Tit-for-tat tactics in relationships are doomed to not end well. I was so convinced he was wrong, I made my mind up to retaliate by making the catfish account. I didn’t consider what would happen after my investigation was over. The results of taking matters into my own hands were inconclusive, but I still had to face knowing that not only did I initially doubt him, but I also violated his privacy and was keeping a secret from him. It only made everything worse.
- You get from a relationship what you put into it. Evidently, I had a lot of free time on my hands to be able to pull off this stunt. To make the page believable, I had to give the fake persona a job, cyber friends, photos, and activity. I tagged this person at random places and everything. This forged person ended up having a better social life than the real me on my legitimate page. Had I invested all that time into strengthening my relationship, building together, and being assertive and direct about my concerns, we could’ve either parted ways with dignity or moved forward together in a healthy manner. Being passive-aggressive just turned out to be weird.
- The truth isn’t always revealed. In the end, I didn’t accomplish the task I had set out to complete. I was successful in getting him to talk to “me,” but found out nothing. I never got a confession from my man directly or through the imposter account. The jury is still out on his questioned innocence. This scheme was a fail. There has to be better ways to get through dating struggles.
