Posted by Ria, 18 Jan

What if you discovered that the person you married wasn’t the person you always thought he or she was? Think it’s impossible? Well it happens to people.

“I suppose I was naïve to think I could find true love on the internet, but I was lonely and desperate, and I was looking for someone to love. What I found instead was the start of my worst nightmare᾿ went Nancy.

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Ok first of all, I have to make a point of correction to the above statement: people do find true love on the internet and online dating is not for the desperate and lonely!!!

Anyway this lady met a dude named Thorne in an online chat room and was immediately intrigued by his ‘exotic’ name and a connection was made immediately. He was 24 at the time, owning his own company. And Nancy was flattered by how Thorne was interested in her: Every time she mentioned another detail about herself, he’d ask her more. Now who wouldn’t be addicted to such flattery?

After about 6 weeks, they were in a relationship, calling each other and having very long conversations. But sadly, Thorne revealed to Nancy that he had some form of cancer (soft tissue sarcoma) and didn’t know what toll it would take on him. So with that kind of nudge, Nancy flew to New Mexico to meet him in person and of course he sent her a photo of himself – blond hair, with no facial hair and no glasses. Cute…she thought.

Then the weird stuff began. Half an hour before leaving for the airport, Thorne called Nancy saying, “You can’t come! I just came back from the doctor … and I’m HIV positive!᾿ Well this news shocked Nancy. But since she cared about him, she wasn’t about to let this stop her. In fact it made her feel even more sorry for him so she boarded the plane anyway.

So they met and it was amazing. “Now that you know about this AIDS thing, I know you’re going to leave me, and the memory of you having been in my home would just be too painful᾿ he went. (Ok. Later she learnt all this was a lie. The loser didn’t want her to know he was still living with his parents. So she stayed at a hotel and they talked at length about the HIV situation.

So they kissed… kisses she had never had with other men. And it never occurred to her that Thorne was anything but male. And he would shave his hairless face every day. (Which she later found out there was no blade in the razor.)

Though the HIV gave Thorne a reason for not having sexual relations, they bonded on another level … emotionally and verbally. Then he proposed after some months. So they got married and he moved in with her. And though it would be a marriage without normal sexual relations, Nancy hoped that having her in his life could help him face his life-threatening conditions.

At first all seemed fine. They kissed but never saw each other naked … and because he was HIV positive, it didn’t make sense to tempt one another. However, after a few weeks Nancy began to worry. Thorne didn’t seem very sick – there were no doctor’s appointments or visible doctor’s bills.

One weekend while packing their bags in a suitcase they were sharing, Nancy discovered some hidden dildo. And when confronted, he said it was a prosthetic that a psychiatrist had given him a long time ago and concocted some hermaphrodite story claiming that he has been born mostly male and needed some corrective surgery and hormones early in life and that the doc had given it to him as a self confidence tool. Bizarre? Yes. But Nancy thought it best to push it out of her mind.

Anyway she had better things to think about. Having given Thorne her ATM card, her money was rapidly being drained away from her bank account. Checks bouncing … she was broke. Her paycheck wasn’t enough to support them and he wasn’t making any efforts to get a job.

So she did what any suspicious person does – ganged up with mummy dearest and called government agencies trying to verify his passport number and ID number. No one they called had any record of Thorne. So it became clear he was leading a double life. He pretended to go for job interviews and when she called to confirm, they inevitably told her they had never heard of him. But she couldn’t confront him. With HIV and some cancer, she wasn’t sure how fragile he was.

Much as she was concerned about Thorne, she was more worried about her own safety. So she decided to get Thorne packing with “You have to go back to Albuquerque or find your own place. I don’t care because you’re obviously not getting any sicker, and yet you’re not trying to get a job. You have lied to me about job interviews and I don’t trust you anymore. And I will no live with you in this house.᾿ He was livid! So he left four months after the wedding date after agreeing to a separation.

Then came the shocking truth!

Four days after he left, an envelope addressed to him arrived and peeky Nancy opened it. Inside were a passport and a birth cert for someone named Holly except the picture on Holly’s passport was clearly a picture of Thorne. Then it all started falling into place. The photo had been taken before Thorne and Nancy met. And it wasn’t his twin sister or him in drag. It all came down on her like “Oh, my God!!᾿

She called him her “Explain to me why I am looking at a woman’s ID with your picture on it!᾿ All he could say was “Well, because I’m really Holly᾿ She cried and cried and since same sex marriages were illegal in Virginia at the time, the marriage was null and void. And when her massive phone bill came, Thorne had started calling other women already.

What would you do when this happens and you start questioning your judgement? We love the internet but just like in the real world not everyone has good intentions. Exercise caution.

Tags: online dating fraud