Online relationship hell.

Let me explain my situation, it’s going to be kind of lengthy, so sorry in advance!

I know this might sound really stupid and ignorant to those of you who have never been in an online relationship. But let me tell you.... you can fall HARD for someone that way. Very, obliviously hard.

I had met this guy, who I’ll call C, that I thought was my soulmate at the age of 14... he said he was 16 at the time. We would online chat every single day and send each other cute messages. I fell in love hard and fast. I looked forward to his messages in the morning before school, and getting to chat with him right after school right up until I was forced to go to sleep at around midnight. We eventually talked about marriage, he knew every detail of my life, I knew every detail about his. We started sending pictures to each other (me more than him) every day, just little things we’d be doing during the day even.

This went on for years. 11 years, to be exact. There was a point a few years back where I couldn’t handle the relationship anymore because he would make excuses about not coming, make weird remarks when I’d mention the show catfish, and also would not Skype me or talk in the phone. I told him I wanted to be done and that is when I got pregnant with my first child, with my now husband. Fast forward a little bit, my now husband was a jerk back then and we weren’t together for quite a while (I was still obsessed with knowing who my internet love was, in all honesty). I started talking to “C” again, and things seemed to be progressing much better than previously. Mind you, at this point we were about 10 years into the relationship. He was showing plane tickets to come see me, talking about visas to live here, he was calling me so I could finally hear his voice on the phone. BUT, I started gradually pushing away because he kept backing out of coming to me, making excuses that “his family needs him” every time it’d be about a week or two that he’d be flying out. I eventually got back with my now husband, and I’m so glad that I did.

“C” moved on and was dating this girl...we’ll call her “B”. “B” messages me one day, telling me that “C” was fake, that he was stealing someone else’s pictures and identity. She showed me everything that she had found, determined to bring him down. Let me tell you.... my heart sank and I felt incredibly sick, knowing that ELEVEN YEARS of my life and pictures was shared with a fake. We talked about it for a couple days, and I tried to support her and get to the bottom of things with her. But after a couple days I felt like I shouldn’t consume myself... I mean I have a husband and family, it didn’t seem right to delve too far into this. I didn’t want to make my husband feel weird. So I told “B” and she agreed that I was probably right. I have kept in contact with her, just with the usual “hey how are you doing” conversations.

Well fast forward to now. I think about it constantly. It’s eating me alive that I don’t know who this person is, or what their motive was to drag out a fake relationship for so long. I feel violated. I ended up messaging “B” trying to get the outcome of everything, and she just said things along the lines of how this person wasn’t creepy, just lost. But she kept referencing them as “person” and making it all seem so shady. She won’t tell me much more, but I feel I deserve to know. I’ve had nightmares about this situation since that message a couple days ago. I don’t know what to do to get more answers so I can feel better about the situation. I don’t want to be offensive to her. 🙁 I’m so sorry for how lengthy it is... I just don’t have anyone to talk with this about. No one understands how sick it all makes me and how much I just want to know the truth.