My Personal Story - How I was Catfished

We matched on Tinder. The first call was an hour-long. Then we texted inside the app for about a week before we moved to Snapchat. Over time our calls grew in length and very soon we were talking for almost four hours at a time. She had called me from an unknown number the first few times but then as we warmed up to one another, she finally gave me her cell number.

Her name was Hayley Miller, at least that is what I was told. I learned that she was studying chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon and was planning on transferring to Stanford in the Fall. At the time, I was living in Los Angeles, 360 miles south of the elite university. Hayley and I really clicked after spending hours together on the phone. We logged hundreds of hours where we shared personal stories and funny memes, talked about recent news in the media and discussed what was trending on Netflix. Before long we were texting every day, eventually reaching a point where we would greet each other every morning and say good night before going to sleep. She was smart, funny and pretty; I thought I had hit the jackpot.

Within two weeks, I asked to FaceTime with her. She told me she was really insecure about her image. I thought this was odd considering how beautiful she looked in the photos. Nevertheless, I respected her feelings and put it off. This happened multiple times, but I knew eventually I’d go to see her in person, so I tried not to let it bother me. Early on she was also very hesitant about sharing any personal information. It made perfect sense at the time as I would probably be the same way. She told a very intricate example of a time when someone she stopped talking to online actually tracked her down in real life. This guy used an image she sent him and went to every gas station in the area after he knew the chain where she worked. After hearing this story, I understood why she would be nervous about telling me any specifics. I respected her feelings.

As we grew closer to one another we became comfortable discussing more personal matters such as challenges we faced as kids, insecurities we had with ourselves, and all the good and bad about our families. She seemed to have more struggles in her past and present life than I did but that didn’t matter to me. It gave me great satisfaction to be able to emotionally support her and be that companion she really needed. We continued to discuss everything including donating lots of money to charities (if we ever made it rich!), athletics, and our love for dogs. She was very athletic and involved in Volleyball; I was a runner and an active athlete. We connected on some of the most random things. She mentioned to me first that her mom had a major surgery a while ago on her leg and I couldn’t believe it – my mom did too.

While we never face-timed or video chatted, she sent me pictures of herself in the car, with her mom, with her dog, with some friends, in the bathroom before leaving the house to go to a concert, over Halloween with her costume, and at her high school graduation. The pictures were all of the same person over many years. The only major inconsistency was that her hair changed color at one point from brunette to blonde. It was still clearly the same girl. Some days she would send me five different pictures of her all with different people and in different environments but with the same set of clothes on. The thought never crossed my mind that she wasn’t who she said she was. I received a video of her singing in front of a small crowd at a bar, numerous boomerangs of her and pictures that I could see were from Hershey Park.

It was July of 2018 and things weren’t going great at the startup job I had in LA. Some of my colleagues were going to move back home which was to the Silicon Valley area. I told Hayley that this would be a great opportunity for me. I could go with them and be close to Stanford where she was set to start in the Fall. She agreed but made sure it was something I was comfortable doing regardless of her attending Stanford (she already told me she accepted so I knew chances she wouldn’t attend such a prestigious school were slim to none). I didn’t think much of it at the time because I believed any good partner in a relationship would want to make sure you were making the best possible decision for yourself. I really did want to move to Silicon Valley, but I made it clear to her that she was a large part of my decision.

After moving to Silicon Valley, I lived with a friend for a few weeks while I looked for jobs. Five interviews later I had four offers and it was a tough choice. I ended up going with a company that was less than two miles away from Stanford University. It was so exciting to know that I could bike to her dorm after work once she moved. It took about three weeks bouncing around in various Airbnbs before I found a place to settle into. Not long after that I received devastating news – Hayley decided not to transfer to Stanford. She was going to remain at Carnegie Mellon because she didn’t want to move so far away from her family. That led to a three-hour call where I begged her to reconsider, if not for me but for her future. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity and she had already been accepted. She told me her family helped her through tough times when she was a kid and she didn’t have the strength to leave them. I was furious.

Thanksgiving rolled around and I would be back in New Jersey to visit with my family. I told her I wanted to come to visit her but she ended up going to Florida that week with her mom to tidy up some things with her grandmother’s will (she had passed a few years prior). I was upset but that was remedied when she agreed to meet with me when I came home over Christmas break. She struggled to send exact dates to me and pinned it on not knowing her exact work schedule. Eventually, I told her I was just going to leave my house and come see her. Shortly after, she dumped me over text for no good reason. The worst part was that she said how much of a great guy I was but then left me with a note that she was “sorry my heart got caught in the crossfires of her internal demons.”

After telling my friends and family what had just transpired, we came upon new information that led to a number of chilling discoveries. She lied to me about her last name, the school she attended and her physical appearance among many other things. She was, in fact, a 21-year-old girl from Pittsburgh, PA but she had sent me photos of someone else. The 80+ videos and photos I was sent were of a different 21-year old girl who I found out lived only ten minutes from Hayley. I was Catfished. This left me in complete disbelief. I had trouble processing what just happened, and my life would never be the same.