Editor’s note: Lovefraud received this e-mail from a reader whom we’ll call “Lara.”
About three months ago, I met a 34-year-old German banker from Munich online (he added me on Facebook), after being very hesitant to speak to him, I gave into his persistence and we started a whirlwind romance over the phone for two months. He asked me to meet him in Paris and I did a few weeks ago, only to be dumped the day after we had sex together. I have been asking myself for answers but it was only recently that my friend brought to my attention that Y (German banker) exhibited the key traits of a sociopath.
Y added me randomly on Facebook and we had one mutual friend (A fellow Korean Uni student at my university in New York). I messaged him asking if we had met, only for him to say that he “met another Lara in NY who looks like me.” I believed him but then later found out he also added my friend and a few other girls (some of them my friends) randomly on Facebook. I thought this was very weird behaviour as I do not understand why a grown man would add random younger girls on his Facebook all of whom he does not know.
After further investigation, I found out he was messaging a few of these girls too asking to “speak on the phone as he was curious about their voice,” which is exactly what he said to me. I found this very unnerving—a grown man messaging a plethora of younger girls on the Internet asking to “hear their voice on the phone.” I confronted him about this and he got incredibly defensive and sent me an incredibly long and eloquent email explaining why he added us on Facebook as a “social experiment.” He also called me paranoid and asked me how I could be concerned about Internet predators when I had more than a 1000 friends on my Facebook.
Talked on the phone
After saying no many times to a phone conversation, my curiosity took over me and one day I agreed to a brief conversation. I thought that if he turned out to be a creep, I would just block his number on my phone. Our phone conversation turned out to be alright—he was a decent and pleasant guy. However, he continued to call me every single day from then on, along with numerous text messaging.
Soon, he told me he had grown incredibly fond of me and was using affectionate terms like “baby.” I asked him why he was interested in me, as I am a 21-year-old university student in New York, who he has never met before. He told me I underestimated myself and that he liked me because I am “well traveled, educated and down to earth.” I just could not grasp how a 30+ year old banker from Munich with good looks would stoop so low as to find a romantic interest with much younger women on the Internet.
Intimate questions
Soon after we started talking on the phone, he started to be very inappropriate with me, asking personal and intimate questions. He knew I was very uncomfortable with this but he still persisted. He would tell me to “think of falling asleep in his arms,” “our kiss,” and then he would ask me to “fantasize having sex with him.”
I don’t know how he found the confidence to talk to me in this manner, as I never reciprocated his affection or romantic interest. I was uncomfortable, so I messaged a friend of his, which I found through his Facebook list, and asked her whether I should trust him. She responded immediately with glowing reviews about Y, saying she was good friends with him when he lived in London and that he was incredibly charming, successful, social and that a lot of women fancied him. However, despite all his inappropriate behaviour, I was so completely charmed by his looks, intelligence and wit that my judgment was practically impaired.
Fly to meet him
A few weeks after this, Y asked me when my next university break was, as he wanted to see me. I had one coming up in a month, in middle March. He insisted that I fly to Munich to see him. I told him “absolutely not.” I would never stoop so low as to fly to Munich to stay with a stranger I have never met before (as a girl I need to maintain a level of dignity and self-respect). He was very persistent and said I could stay with him and that we would drive to the mountains and the outskirts of Munich to ski. I told him I would not do that, and if he really wanted to see me, he could come to New York. He told me he could not take time off work to fly to New York and so I had to go to Munich.
Anyway, I ended up deciding to go to London to visit my friends during my university break. I told him he could come to London to see me but he was not satisfied with that as “London is not a romantic city and I would be around all my friends and not spend time with him.” He said he was willing to compromise and that we should spend a “romantic weekend in paris—just him and I.”
I was very hesitant and all my close girlfriends told me not to do it, as they felt he was trying to isolate me to a place where I do not know people or speak the language. However at this point I had already fallen for him so I agreed to it. I told him I wanted to have my separate room from him but he was completely and utterly adamant that we share a hotel room together. During this point of our phone conversations, he was already telling me that he felt like he could fall in love with me, that he had told his mother about me and that I should move to Munich next year after I graduate from Uni. I couldn’t help but believe and fall for his words.
Going to Paris
Two weeks before Paris, Y and I had started talking considerably less as his company was working on a major buy-out and I was occupied with exams. He said it was good for our relationship, as it would make us miss each other more. However, as days went by, he completely stopped texting me or calling me. Before Paris, we spoke once on the phone and it was a very brief conversation ”¦ he asked me about my week and I told him “it was very stressful along with hormonal problems due to my period.” He responded by saying, “Wow perfect timing that your period is over in time for Paris.” I was very disturbed by his comment—out of everything I told him about my stressful week, he was only concerned and delighted to know that I had just ended my period in time for Paris. I started to question what exactly he wants from me. All our phone conversations were heavily intimate where he would try dig hard to get intimate information about me, and he would force me to say things to him that I was not comfortable with.
I flew to London three Thursdays ago on a red eye and then took the Eurostar to Paris. Cut to the chase, when I first saw Y opening the hotel door for him, I thought he was incredibly good looking and tall in person. Three minutes into our meeting, he pretty much threw me on the bed and tried to undress me. I told him to stop it as I was uncomfortable and that I wanted to spend time talking to him first. He seemed visibly annoyed and agreed to go have a drink with me near the Trocodero. During our drink he was very cold, distant and aloof. He was NOT affectionate with me at all.
We went back to the hotel room and I did sleep with him and then the next day at brunch in Paris, he told me “it was over and that he could not see a future with me as I was too young for him.” I was so stunned and confused. Where did this sudden realisation come about? Months after telling me he was completely “obsessed” with me? He said that he became “rational and decided it would never work for him.”
Kicked me out
I started acting irrationally and even told him that it was unfair that he did not give us a chance and that he made me feel so vulnerable by coming all the way to Paris only to sleep with him and get dumped. He became incredibly defensive and angry and told me to go back to London that same night. I was resistant as I was so confused but he pretty much kicked me out and booked me a train ticket.
During the painful last few hours with him, he acted like a complete chauvinist—making me feel bad that he wasted his weekend coming to Paris and that he could have been so many other things in Munich. He started calling his Paris friends on his mobile phone while I was next to him asking if they would have “dinner with him that night,” and while we were walking back to the hotel, he even used his knuckles and pushed me from behind as he complained that “I was walking too slowly.” He even said I should be grateful as he has so many “women on Facebook who are interested in connecting with him.” It is almost like he forgot that HE was the one who connected with me on Facebook and pursued me RELENTLESSLY.
Y did not even send me off to the train station—he asked me to drop him off at Gallerie Lafayette (a shopping mall) because it was on the way to Gare Du Nord (the train station). During this whole time, I was still so numb and confused about the situation that I did not even act disappointed or hurt by him. I even suggested we try to stay friends.
Numb and confused
I went back to London that Saturday night completely numb, confused and shocked by the situation. I gave my heart to this stranger I met on Facebook who convinced me that he was obsessed and was falling in love with me—only to fly to Paris and be used for sex and dumped the next day.
It has been a few weeks since the situation occurred and I have become more rational and objective. My friends are all very disgusted by Y’s behaviour and have been trying to let me realise that what he did was “unkind and unacceptable” and that he was basically an “Internet predator casting a wide net for young girls on Facebook.” I still have trouble seeing it that way, as I keep remembering the person I spoke to on the phone for months. I want to believe that everything he said to me was real.
However, the anger now has set in a little and I cannot believe he did that to me. We have not spoken since. Many times I feel like talking to him as I want answers—but I know this is wrong. I recently found out that Y asked another girl out on a date (one that he also added randomly on Facebook). Initially I was enraged and jealous that he moved on so fast. However, my friends try to tell me that as a sociopath, he has basically found his “next victim.”
There’s still a part of me that believes I was not good enough for him and did not meet his standards, which is why he discarded me. I also feel that perhaps I “deceived” him on Facebook, because he felt I was not as pretty in real life as I was online. I am trying to rid myself of those thoughts that are only self-destructive. I am taking it day by day ”¦ seeing a counselor. I cannot let this situation make me crumble in despair for it will be letting him win. I need to become stronger from this and move on with my life knowing that I learnt an invaluable lesson.
“The eyes may have it! Both Jamie and I have blue eyes, yet there was a difference. His, by his own admission, were “gray-blue and cold,” whereas mine were “real blue and warm.” His flattery regarding my eyes (and some other things) actually made me uncomfortable, as did the deep fashion he always looked into my eyes. Funny, I thought my discomfort with his stare was indicative of an intimacy issue on my side!”
Blue eyes: Wowwwwww…this is EXACTLY how I felt..Y always said his eyes were blue/green when really they were like a gray-blue cold.. When he stared at me intensely and I felt uncomfortable, I also thought I had intimacy issues. I thought I was being too shy and that I was supposed to reciprocate that intense gaze (even though humanly impossible for me). It’s so funny how physical characteristics are a huge part in the profile of a sociopath/toxic person..you think when this is a seemingly mental disorder, it would be completely independent of their physical features..
The funny thing about Y is..I did have gut instincts, there were so many red flags when we first started talking on the phone. He was persistent (called me until I answered), he was very quick to become personal and intimate..it was our 3rd phone conversation where he told me had grown fond of me and missed hearing my voice..He asked me so many intimate questions even when he knew I was uncomfortable. He knew when to push and he knew when to back off. I ALWAYS had a gut feeling he was bad news but I was able to do a thorough background check on him: googled him and read every finance article that mentioned him, I asked my cousin’s gf who works for the same bank that he worked for for 10 years to do a background check on him, and I even messaged one of his facebook friends with the same network as him to make sure he was legitimate, to which she replied that he was “Great..fantastic! Incredibly social! Many international friends! Driven, a great friend and that many women FANCY him”. So with all this information..I felt compelled to give him the benefit of the doubt (even with all the redflags and that deep-seated gut feeling that there was something terribly sketchy with this man)
Thanks, OxDrover. I am living in hell right now. Everything would be so different if I could delete his presence, but, as I said, he is my boss and this makes me feel very uncomfortable. I know, I shouldn’t have trusted him like that, but it all seemed so real, we used to write long intimate e-mails many times a day, and last November this sharing suddenly became nothing (under his excuse that he had too much work and blablabla). He simply ignores everything we shared, and total strangers gave me emotional support when I arrived in US, when my only reference here was him. In his visit to my place last year (I was living in Chile by then) I opened my heart, my home, took him everywhere, since he had crossed thousands of miles to see me.. here he does not even talk to me. And he lied the only time I looked for him to talk, saying that he did not know if the relationship he was having – another surprise for me, since he had told me he was not ready for a relationship – was serious. Then I learned he was already talking about getting married to this woman to others.
Dear GG, LIE—it is what they DO. It is what they ARE. I hope that you are able to get yourself in such a way that you can find another job. It must be hell to have to work for this creep after he did you this way. Great “recruiting” policy! NOT! I suggest that keeping away from him as much as possible is the best tactic for YOU. In the meantime, look for another job. (((hugs))) and welcome to LF and the US, this place will be a great place for you, all the people here at LF “get it” about what you are going through.
Thanks again, Oxdrover. I am just re-reading Lara’s story, and that’s horrible. I wonder how some people can be so cruel. And I feel that I have some similarities with her personality, for being too open and honest (an easy target for jerks). I also question myself if this wedding I mentioned is going to be real, since this guy was married for many years and got divorced (this is true), and his future wife is an old friend (or acquaintance) of him. But I am 99% sure she doesn’t know he works with a recent ex-affair.. and what is the point of building a relationship based on lies or omitted information? It would be less hurtful to think that he is insane. I tend to say to myself: “I am overweight, and maybe that’s what made him dislike me.. but physical appearance is something fixable, a bad character is not”. If that was the reason (my weight), he is really shallow. I wouldn’t have come to US if I knew the truth.
Dear GG,
I recommend that you gto back through the archives of articles here on LF and read all of them. There are so many but there is such great information there. EAch of us had something that made us vulnerable to them, whether it was being overweight or older etc. whatever it was, they played on that to hook us. My “problem” was I was a widow age 57, and I felt old, alone, unloved, needy, sad, grieving, etc. and I fell for the psychopath’s attentions.
Others have different issues, but they pretend to be whatever it is that we want, that we treasure or need, and then they snatch it away or take advantage of that to rob us. Rob of love, of respect and anything else they can take from us. It hurts, but in the end, we have the capacity to love and they do NOT. We are real and they are NOT. Keep on learning. Knowledge is power! But it would not have made any difference if you had looked like a movie star, it was all about control. You are fine, he is the one without a conscience or a heart! IT IS YOU WHO ARE GOOD,, NOT HIM.
Like you said, you can lose weight, but he cannot transplant a conscience —or as soul.
lara;
I got the “voice” thing from Jamie as well. On the phone he told me how he liked my eyes, liked hearing my voice…
I wish I had recorded that conversation when one week later he was playing the blame shifting game. I met 3 of Jamie’s friends but I was very focused on him and they seemed more interested in getting drunk and carrying on.
But I do remember something now. They were seated in a booth and I felt like I was a bit under an inquisition. They did two things that seemed in jest but something I was never comfortable with.
First, they were kidding Jamie to own up to his age. Remember, while I was older than him, Jamie and his friends thought I was younger than him. The other thing they kidded him about was his “Gaydar.com” profile…
Seemed to me at the time they were trying to undermine him and to be quite honest, I quickly got him 1-1 because I did not like them teasing him.
Thinking back, maybe they were warning me.
The one thing about sociopaths is that they move FAST. I never ever understood how Y became so quickly obsessed with me, especially when he had not met before. He told me he would think about me all the time and that at work he would go through my facebook pictures… I know he was saying all of this as a compliment but I knew it was incredibly creepy.
Well if there was any doubt my stbx is a sociopath, it is now gone.
Night before last, I got this message:
“I know that we are nearing the end now and I just wanted to reach out for one more chance at us and the family we created together. We have had some rough times in the past 15 years , but we also had some darn great ones too. My marriage vows to you were true and my love NEVER went to any other woman but you. I at least want to know that I reached out one last time to stop all this. If we get help for the things we need then we can make it. Like we were supposed to. You know we are soul mates. I was a great father to A and Z. Please lets at least talk one last time about this.”
I ignored him – 3 months NC so far…and yesterday he starts emailing my friends, twisting things I said to him into mean and ugly things he says I said about them…
I ignore him. This morning, Mother’s Day, I get an email from someone who saw my profile pasted on a “don’t date” website, and sure enough, there is my name, my phone number, my business phone number, my fax number, my email…everything with an accompanying message that is not flattering at all.
I have sent the info to my attorney, who already had to warn his attorney about harassing me, and now this…and this is a clear violation of the temp orders as included in my divorce petition and the restrictions I was granted in the default judgment…
ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH
{{{Myboysmattermost}}} hugs to you, my dear. They keep trying to pull that “I tried everything to save the marriage” bullshit, don’t they? Did he also promise to attend marriage counseling? How about this one: “Just come back and whatever was in the past will stay in the past.” ROTFLMAOTMNR!!! That was the one that actually caused me to laugh in the ex spath’s face – as if he’d ever let anything die down, before? LOLOLOLOL
Attagirl, myboysmattermost! Let your attorney do the talking!!!
GG: Start looking for a new job now, and save up money to make your move. If the “boss” really does get married, he may find it inconvenient to have somebody who knows his secrets in a position to tell all to his new bride, and you may be fired without notice, and with trumped up allegations against you.
Lara: How do you know that this guy is 34, or that he has never been married? He may be in his 40s and divorced three times, with kids by all three wives. Are you even sure that you know his real name?
First he told you that he “friended” you on Facebook because he mistook you for someone else. How many girls does he know in the USA? Then he told you that he was conducting an experiment. This would be creepy if he were still at the university. It is super-creepy for an adult male. It is an admission that he plays games with people. He is the scientist, the girls are the guinea pigs.
In your first posting, you state several times that he made you feel UNCOMFORTABLE on repeated occasions when he talked to you on the phone. This is classic abusive behavior. He sees how far he can go, and if he offends, he offers a cheesy apology and is a good boy for a little while, and then he is back to seeing how far he can go. Your feelings don’t really matter, he just needs to wear you down so that you will accept his standards, and his behavior.
Imagine that 10 years from now you reconnect with a girl you knew in high school or college, and agree that you will each drive three hours to a town halfway between your homes, and spend a fun weekend getting reacquainted. Within an hour of meeting her, you realize that your lives have drifted apart completely, and she is incapable of talking about anything except her new baby. Probably you would try to make the best of the situation for the weekend, and then let the relationship fizzle out after the weekend was over. That is what I would do, and that is what most well-brought-up people would do. When your internet pal from Munich started treating you like dirt after you had traveled to Europe especially to meet him, he revealed himself as a complete jerk with no manners. No matter how disappointed or tired or confused or unhappy he may have been, he should have risen to the occasion and made the best of the situation for two lousy days. Maybe he had a happy childhood as he claims, and maybe you didn’t, but he could not even be kind to you for a weekend. Maybe he was charming to you over the phone, except when he was making you feel uncomfortable, but he was incredibly RUDE to you in Paris, both BEFORE and AFTER you had sex with him. And now he wants you to agree with him that everything that happened was half your fault, and that neither of you can claim the moral high ground in this situation, since nobody’s perfect, and “gee, I’m sorry if your feelings are hurt, but you are too sensitive and overreact to everything, etc. It must be because you had an unhappy childhood that made you abnormal. Lucky for me I had a great childhood, so I don’t have your mental health issues . . . . ”
As to his statement that if he just wanted sex, he could do that with Munich girls, remember two things: (1) as somebody already mentioned, having you fly to Europe at his request to satisfy his sexual needs could be well worth however many hours he had to devote to setting you up, because he has a bigger need for power and control than he does for sex; (2) if he treats girls in Munich the way he treated you, his car is going to be vandalized, angry girls are going to show up at his office and embarrass the H*** out of him, the girls are going to know where he lives and cause problems for him at his apartment building, etc. Men who are complete jerks but have professional careers OFTEN choose to lead respectable lives in their home city, while behaving badly elsewhere. Assuming you don’t speak any German, he can treat you and a whole string of other American girls very badly, and no one in his social circle in Munich need ever know about it. Maybe that is the result he hopes to achieve with his social experiment.
By the way, a man who realizes that life is more than just making money, and who wants to get married and have children, would not be trolling Facebook looking for pretty Asian girls and then pretending that he thought that he knew them already in order to get them to chat with him on the phone. By age 34, people who want to get married are usually married, and if they ARE still looking, they generally look closer to home. It is one thing to fall in love with someone you meet and have to work out the fact that you are both from different cities or even countries, but someone who is deliberately seeking out relationships with foreigners instead of girls in his own hometown is unlikely to be looking for a wife.
His empathy, etc., on the phone is all fake. He does NOT want you killing his action by telling other people on the internet what he is really like, and he is disturbed that somebody is already doing this, so he is being sweet to you and pretending to be sorry to get you to give him some information that he needs. He probably enjoys knowing that he has broken your heart, and your admission to him that you aren’t dating anybody since he dumped you undoubtedly gave him a thrill.
Your therapist is probably a decent person, but lacks experience with people who are total users/sociopaths, etc. If she is starting from the mindset that it takes two to tango, and everybody has good qualities and bad qualities, then you will never be able to get her to understand how this guy has played with your mind. I don’t think it is worth your time and money to try to educate her. Find a therapist with experience in this area, because nobody else is going to be able to understand your obsession with this guy.
Finally, accept that you will never know the truth about the Russian girl in London — maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t, maybe the Russian girl was having sex with him in order to have free rent in a very expensive city. My ex-husband used to tell his new girlfriends that he had been married to me for over 10 years, which was true. He wanted them to see him as mature and stable. But our marriage only lasted 10 plus years because my religious beliefs made me stick with a horrible marriage, and because we were always so deeply in debt that I never had the financial ability to leave.
The way Y treated you in Paris is the way he treats everybody sooner or later. If you HAD married this guy, or had a child with him, it would have wrecked years of your life. Instead, you have the chance to step back from this relationship and try to figure out how you were pulled into a sexual relationship with somebody whose behavior was frequently creepy, and frequently made you feel uncomfortable.
Do not talk to this guy ever again, and kiss the jacket goodbye no matter how much you paid for it. At this point the jacket would just remind you of a humiliating event in your life.