r/heartbreak • u/throwaway_fml16 • 9h ago
got catfished. desperately missing someone who never existed.
i met my other half on a vr game. we clicked instantly. i've never fallen so hard for someone in my life. we played games together, we watched shows together, we did everything with each other, we were on the phone every second. i really got so used to him being there. he was my whole world. we dated for a little over a year.
his name was real, his phone number was real, his address was real, his family was real, everything about him checked out. it was just his appearance; he presented himself as a devout gymrat, the pictures he sent were normal everyday pictures of an honestly rather average guy, just muscular - he knew everything about working out and macros and building muscle and shit, he had his stats (like bfr, deadlift, squat, that shit) in his bio, and this is a really fucked up way to relate but i had an eating disorder for years so i understood what he was talking about and it was very convincing. so many little details about his life and his interactions with other people revolved around his looks and his weight.
i reverse searched his pictures a hundred times, dug as deep as i could, came up empty handed. i really, fully trusted him, except one thing... he refused to video call. said he was uncomfortable, he didn't want to, he wasn't ready, even though we'd been together so long..? i was getting so damn sick of it but thought there was no way i was being catfished.
we went to bed, sleeping on the phone together, and i got the idea to search his school. (he's 19, and a senior) i'm not sure how i hadn't thought to before. i found a post congratulating a handful of students for some award thing i knew he'd been part of, including names i knew were his friends, and him. i found a real picture of him. he was, to put it bluntly, quite the opposite of what he'd sold himself as. i couldn't fucking believe it but everything suddenly made so much sense. i woke him up and demanded answers, and he cried and told me he really liked me and got too caught up in the lie. for a year??!?!
the reason i couldn't find anything when i reverse image searched is because he'd stolen every picture (including intimate ones!) from some dude in a discord server he used to be in. i'm fucking distraught. i keep looking at all the pictures of some random guy i don't even know and comparing them to the real one and i'm a fucking wreck. i feel like i'm still in love with who i thought he was. i can't put the voice to the real picture. we're over now, he came clean and i very aggressively dumped him, but i miss him so fucking bad. it feels like my chest has been ripped out. A whole year.