Being in my late twenties, I never thought I’d have to deal with cyberbullying—surely I was past that point in my life, right?—but when I started dating my boyfriend, I quickly learned how wrong I was. Somehow, his ex found out about me and with nothing more than my name and phone number, she launched a full-blown cyber attack on me.
- She told me she was his girlfriend. The ex (who was 30 years old, keep in mind) told me she was my boyfriend’s girlfriend and that they lived together. She told me that he lied to her and told her he was with me. What she was saying didn’t even line up. She was asking about nights he and I weren’t even together, trying to trick me.
- She came up with crazy stories that made no sense. As a last-ditch effort for any crazy ex, she said she was pregnant. Obviously, this turned out not to be true, but this was the story she pedaled around and around. She even told my boyfriend she was pregnant. When he asked for proof, she showed him a faked sonogram picture of a baby whose size didn’t match up with the timeline. Did I mention they’d only been dating for two months?
- I tried to ignore her for the longest time. Being a grown woman, I obviously ignored every message she sent. I never once gave into her lies or fed into what she was saying. In my mind, this would be enough to get her to go away. If I never gave her the satisfaction of responding, she would give up, right? If only!
- She found apps that faked different numbers so she could contact me. Every time I received a text or a call from her, I’d block the number, but that didn’t stop her. Apparently, there are apps you can download that create fake numbers for you to use and that’s exactly what she did—at least three dozen times. I even went as far as to purchase a feature on my cell phone plan that automatically blocked all calls that came from numbers that weren’t in my contact list to try and put a stop to the harassment.
- She took it to social media soon after. When she couldn’t get through to me via phone, she harassed me online. She’d message me through Facebook and I’d block her so then she’d create fake profiles to get through to me. She was relentless. She found me on every social media channel she could find; she even found my old blog that I hadn’t used in three years.
- She made a Twitter profile just for me. My Twitter is private and one day, I received a notification for a request to follow. However, when I went to check out who wanted to be friends, the request was suddenly gone. She did this at least a dozen times because she wanted me to see this fake profile. All of her tweets were her talking about her relationship with my boyfriend. She would say she was with him when I knew for a fact that she wasn’t… because I was. She also talked about their “baby” endlessly.
- It got much worse really quickly. My boyfriend and I made it official about a month after we started dating. We took a picture together, I posted it on Facebook, and I changed my relationship status. All hell broke loose immediately after. I was at work the next day when I got a call from a former coworker. She told me that she’d received a message from a girl (one of the ex’s fake profiles) pedaling her story about being pregnant and calling me a homewrecker. My former coworker sent me all of these messages so I could see. Turns out, my colleague wasn’t the only person his crazy ex contacted.
- She messaged my family. This is the part that really gets to me. My mom, my dad, my sister, my brothers—she got in touch with all of them. She messaged my friends, coworkers, anyone she could find. I don’t know whether she accessed my friends list and how considering I wasn’t friends with her. Either way, she took it way too far.
- I went to the police. I gathered up all the evidence I had against her harassing me and took it to the police. You know what they did? Nothing. They said because there was no way to actually prove who she was since anyone can create a fake profile, they couldn’t do anything until she physically harmed me. Great. I felt so much better.
- I deleted my Facebook. I hated to do it but I had to. Once I did, she’d still contact me in other places but at least she left my family and friends alone. Just when I was thinking it might be safe to reactivate and decided to go for it, she immediately proved me wrong when she started reaching out to all of my friends again. I had to come away from the site for several months to finally get her to stop.
- I’m still with my boyfriend today. What can I say—he’s an amazing guy.
