I’m sharing this because I need to finally kill the illusion I lived in for an entire year.
I want closure. I want to put a final period at the end of this nightmare. And maybe I want to hear from people who have experienced online abuse, catfishing, manipulation, or trauma bonds.
I know how this looks from the outside. I know how many red flags I ignored. I know there will be people wondering why I stayed.
I ask you to be kind.
I was isolated, struggling with serious family problems, and I became severely trauma-bonded to someone who knew exactly how to keep me emotionally dependent on him.
About a year ago, a guy from another country randomly followed me and messaged me.
Within the first week, he was already telling me he loved me.
Not casually.
He had a whole future planned.
He gave me a specific date when he would supposedly travel to my country, meet my father, and propose to me. He sent me huge paragraphs describing imaginary conversations with his family about me, as if I had already become part of their lives.
I believed him.
Then, slowly, the relationship changed.
He introduced sexual conversations and began pushing boundaries I had never allowed anyone to cross before. He gained my trust gradually, pressured me into sending explicit photos, and then flooded me with affection whenever I gave him what he wanted.
Love. Tears. Reassurance. Obsession.
He would make me feel incredibly wanted, and then I would spend the rest of my time terrified of losing that feeling.
I didn't understand it then, but the highs were becoming part of the trap.
He almost never showed his face.
There was always an excuse.
At the same time, he became obsessed with looksmaxing communities and started telling me that he knew secret medical, anatomical, and biochemical techniques that could supposedly change his face and body.
He positioned himself as an expert. Someone who knew things I didn't. Someone I could rely on.
Later, he admitted that some of the explicit photos he had sent me were stolen from other people.
Even that came with bizarre explanations designed to make me question what I was hearing.
I should have left.
Instead, I became more attached.
Then came the day he had promised to come.
He got my father's number.
My father welcomed him.
He was ready to meet him.
And the instant my father replied, this man disappeared.
His numbers were deactivated.
His accounts were deleted.
Everything vanished.
There was no meeting.
No explanation.
Nothing.
Just me, sitting there knowing that I had told my family about someone who had apparently never intended to show up.
I was humiliated.
And somehow, I still wanted him back.
Weeks later, he returned through different numbers and fake accounts.
He started monitoring my social media. He questioned me about male friends. He contacted people behind my back.
He was controlling and invasive.
But I was lonely enough that his attention still felt like love.
He cried. He apologized. He told me he had only run away because he was broke, insecure, and wasn't “perfect enough” yet.
Then he promised me a future again.
He said he would take care of me financially. He offered me credit cards and money.
And I let him back in.
The cycle restarted.
Nightly calls.
Love bombing.
Sexual pressure.
Photos.
Emotional dependency.
Then April came.
Once again, he said he was ready.
This time, he claimed he had actually arrived in my city.
He gave me precise details about the airport.
He told me which hotel he was staying at.
He made it sound completely real.
But there was one problem.
I couldn't verify any of it.
Every time I asked for a photo, a live video, or anything that would prove he was physically there, there was another excuse.
Then he introduced something even stranger.
A fantasy about a threesome.
He created a group chat with a supposed third person.
Except the third person wasn't real either.
It was him.
Another fake identity. Another number. Another character he had created.
He was literally pretending to be someone else while talking to me as himself.
For days, there were excuses about why they couldn't meet me.
And then both numbers disappeared.
Again.
By our final reunion, I was already so conditioned to believe him that even the impossible started feeling possible.
He told me he was finally driving to meet my father.
He sent me a short video of the road ahead of him.
For a moment, I believed it.
He was finally coming.
Minutes later, he blocked me.
And disappeared.
When I eventually managed to reach him again, he gave me the same explanation.
He was weak.
He was insecure.
He wasn't ready.
He cried.
Then he asked me for 49 days.
Then up to three months.
He said he needed time to “fix himself.”
And this is probably the most humiliating thing I ever said to him:
“Take all the time you need. Stay behind the screen forever if you want. Just please don't leave me.”
I wasn't asking him to come anymore.
I wasn't asking him to prove himself.
I was begging a person who had repeatedly disappeared to simply continue existing.
Even behind a screen.
That was how deep the trauma bond had become.
The cycle continued.
More manipulation.
More love bombing.
More photos.
More broken boundaries.
More promises.
Until I finally brought another adult into the situation.
I told a family member about him so that, if he was genuinely serious about helping me financially, the money could be sent through them instead.
There was now another adult involved.
Someone who could ask questions.
Someone who could request account details.
Someone who could verify things.
And that was apparently the point where the fantasy could no longer survive contact with reality.
The day before he disappeared, he promised he would send me a gift, ship me the things he had supposedly bought for me, and transfer money to a family member I had told him about, claiming that everything would arrive the next day.
I had a feeling he was lying.
That night, he stayed on the phone with me until I fell asleep, i was scared i begged him to not leave me again and he promised that he would never. He stayed connected through the night and only disappeared at dawn, after making sure I was asleep.
He sent one final dramatic message:
“Thank God.
I love you, i love you so much.”
Then he deactivated everything.
Every account.
Every number.
Gone.
And this time, he never came back.
Looking back, the terrifying part isn't just that he lied.
It's how much he built.
The romantic future.
The family conversations.
The alternate accounts.
The fake person.
The fake hotel stay.
The fake journey.
The road video.
The stolen photos.
The medical and anatomical “techniques.”
The different numbers.
The different identities.
The endless explanations.
It wasn't one lie.
It was an entire reality constructed behind a screen.
And I was living inside it.
I don't know who he actually was.
I don't know what his real name was, what he really looked like, where he actually lived, or how much of anything he ever told me was true.
And strangely, I don't think I need those answers anymore.
Because whatever the truth about him is, the person I loved the person I was waiting for, the person I imagined meeting, marrying, building a life with was not real in the way I believed he was.
That's what I'm grieving.
Not just a person.
A person who never arrived.
A future that never existed.
A relationship that existed almost entirely through a screen.
And a version of myself who kept believing that if I loved him hard enough, waited long enough, forgave him enough times, or gave him enough chances, eventually the person behind the promises would finally appear.
He never did.
Maybe that's the closure.
There was never anyone coming.
So, was I being manipulated from the beginning?
And how do you finally grieve someone who was, in the end, a ghost?