the catfish paradox

She let me communicate to her through playlists. It was the only way she would “talk” to me directly after the accusation. It’s something my friends asked me to clarify a lot.

Kate: You mean, she refuses your phone calls and texts, but sends songs about how she feels about you?

Me: Sorta, but in real-time. Like we’ll have a conversation just switching songs in Spotify and updating our playlists simultaneously.

Kate: But she still messages you through this other person? This catfish profile which is her too?

Me: Pretty much.

Kate: Uhh… you do realize how fucked up that sounds, right? That doesn’t sound healthy. If she’s catfishing you, then why not just stop talking to her? It’s as simple as that.

And I would have if it was that simple, but nothing was simple about Molly or the situation. In fact, our chance meeting was a result of a series of improbable events, the multiverse at work. But don’t get me wrong, I was always a willing participant in a stressful game that I could leave at any time. It was a game that would make me question my own reality and mental psyche, but in the process ultimately lead to a better version of myself.

However, my participation was not out of a true desire for self-improvement, but for answers… specifically in hopes that one day I would find out not the who, but why of a mystery that left me tossing and turning for many nights. Like a detective who doesn’t know the fate of a curious cat, I explored the depths of the digital world hoping that if something bad did happen, that the satisfaction of knowing the truth would be enough.

I met Molly in the summer, a season that was supposed to be a sharp contrast to the two that came beforehand. The preceding winter and spring had not been kind, to say the least. On the cusp of turning thirty, I lost my job… the one thing that I seemed to be consistently decent at. Soon after, I packed a bag and booked a few flights in a poor attempt to reenact the part of Julia Roberts in some sort of Eat, Pray, Love quest. It didn’t last long.

While traveling, I had a very short, but tumultuous fling with someone I met on Tinder while in San Francisco. It wasn’t my intention to hook up at all, but I liked her… a lot. We spent more time in my hotel room than anywhere else. Not exactly a great love story, but modern romance can be quirky. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for her to see things differently. Besides knowing each other’s mattress preferences, we departed, the same way we met, as complete strangers.

Before I could process the feeling of being rejected by someone I was intimate with, I found out my father had cancer. To say I was wrecked was the understatement of the year. But I didn’t have time for the self-pity party… this was about my dad. He was the one who was about to go through tough times, not me. I got it together. I’m not one to pray often, but that I did, long and hard, until the negative thoughts in my head subsided. With the state of the world today, I never know if prayers are listened to, but the doctors caught it early. I thanked the universe, not knowing if my words were falling on deaf ears, but grateful nonetheless.

A few months later he was cancer-free. As soon as he was back on his feet, he urged me to keep traveling and figure out what made me happy. That’s the type of dad he is, always putting the happiness of others first. He could tell I had been unhappy for a while. I guess some sadness you can’t hide, no matter how hard you try.

After much deliberation and a few last-minute changes, I set my sights on Santa Barbara, California to be my temporary home for the next few months. My new tasks for the summer were to finish that novel that was sitting idly on the backburner for years and to figure out how to live a more meaningful existence. Four years earlier, I wouldn’t have even imagined taking a trip like this. Back then I had a drinking problem and often had to rely on others to take care of me. It was nice being comfortable with the idea of being alone. However, I soon would rest upon a different crutch.

Shortly after arriving in California, I found out my last living grandmother was slowly dying and loneliness struck hard. While I knew I would never touch a drop of alcohol again, I did turn to online dating apps hoping to fill the emotional void I was feeling from being so far away from any real emotional support structure.

It worked… almost too well. I had never been too popular on dating apps before, but now I couldn’t keep up with the messages that were pouring in. I’m not sure if the area just had a lot more single women than men in my age range, but the feeling of being wanted by a lot of people was very intoxicating. Either way, I was appreciative of being on the right side of supply and demand. While I started setting up some dates, the first person I actually planned to meet up was not the type I’d usually pursue. Come to think of it, there wasn’t much initial attraction, but she looked like she was enjoying life in her photos and that’s exactly what the doctor prescribed. Besides, physical attraction usually took me a bit longer than most, and she did have some beautiful traits. In fact, to this day I still think her eyes could give Bambi a run for his money.

Molly started our conversation by negging me. It wasn’t a term I was very familiar with at the time, but I would learn quickly. And it worked. In fact, the first thing she did was comment on my profile picture. 

“Nice pose, so I’m guessing you’re a fan of brain damage?” 

It was a photo of me imitating Cam Newton’s signature touchdown celebration while standing next to some Carolina Panthers memorabilia. I laughed it off and told her I wasn’t, but she doubled down. Before I knew it, we were pretty much arguing. We took a step back. I apologized, she did too. And after a day or two of nonstop banter, we made plans to meet at a coffee shop.

I got there early; she was late. I waited by the front entrance, looking around in an anxious manner that screamed first date. She snuck up behind me and placed her hands over my eyes. 

“Guess who?” 

She had come through the back door. She pulled her hands away… yep, same eyes as in the photos. She playfully teased me about a juvenile joke I made referencing dick size on my profile. I told her that people who don’t take the ten seconds to fill out a profile can’t comment on the profiles of others, even if they did involve phalluses. She chuckled. I smirked. We both joked about how it would have been better if we initially met in real life, perhaps at a bookstore reaching for the same novel. She asked me if I believed in love at first sight and I told her I did, but not anymore. It was a lie, I did, but experience told me that it’s best to keep some things to yourself. By the time we got up, the coffee shop had already been closed for twenty minutes. We apologized but the barista smiled and said it wasn’t a big deal, that they had to clean up anyways and it looked like we were having a good conversation so he didn’t want to interrupt.

We talked a lot over the next few days, but then our constant stream of messaging was reduced down to a trickle, and then that trickle dried up. I figured I must have come off as clingy. 

“Fuck it, it happens,” I told myself. 

At that point, I should have just shrugged it off and set up a date with someone new, but in a move that reeked of desperation and instability, I texted her and told her I hadn’t felt this way about anyone in a long time. It wasn’t true. I had felt that way in San Francisco, only mere months before. Very appropriately, I didn’t hear back.

When I had given up all hope of hearing from Molly again, I did what all “normal” people do when they are trying to recover from love withdrawal… I swiped the pain away. And it didn’t take long before someone else caught my eye.

When Shay responded back to me, truthfully, I didn’t even know who she was. It wasn’t something I was proud of, but just like a fisherman casting a bigger net to sort out the haul later, that’s what I did in a poor effort to heal. I swiped on everyone within a two-mile radius, saw my matches, and ignored the people I wasn’t interested in. I became the type of person I despised, one who played with the emotions of others. Though I was still hurting over Molly’s disappearing act, Shay’s presence was a nice distraction. Nice long legs, a butt that was definitely IG peach worthy, and a pair of luscious lips to go with an already immaculate smile. Just textbook pretty. I got over my disgust with myself quite quickly. At this point, I was just excited because Shay could have been the poster child for an adolescent wet dream, but experience has taught me that karma has a way of catching up to you.

Romantic idealization is a glitter that is not gold, but sometimes a little sparkle is all that is required for someone to be hooked. Shay asked me why I swiped on her profile. I didn’t have the courage to tell her I had swiped on everyone, but my conscience wouldn’t let me come off as a saint, so I told her it was based on pure attraction. She thought it was cute. Not the typical response you get when you tell someone you only like them for superficial reasons. She asked me what I would like to do to her physically if I could do anything. It was an intense question, and I gave her an intense response. I told her my darkest fantasies involving her and specific parts of our bodies. I was worried my honesty might be off-putting, but she delighted at the fact. I started getting nervous. This was moving way too fast. She barely talked about herself and continued to push me to tell her about all my hobbies, interests, and sexual preferences, until I slipped up and mentioned Molly. Then, as if a light switch were flipped, all she wanted to do was talk about her.

I told her there wasn’t much to say; I liked her but came off as too needy. Shay asked me if I still liked Molly. I told her it was hard not to. She said that was cute. This was not the typical response I expected, but I thought it might be one of those east coast vs. west coast differences I just didn’t understand. They did always say that people on the west coast are more laid back, but this was pushing the envelope.

At first, I thought it was just general fascination on Shay’s part, but then she encouraged me to talk to Molly again and said she probably liked me and was just nervous since she may have thought it was love at first sight. Shay also made a lot of very specific inferences about my life that were all spot on. It all felt strange. Never had I met a woman on a dating site who was rooting so hard for the other woman to succeed. But it was also weird how she jumped from asking me highly sexual questions to things like “Are your parents fine with mixed marriages?” and “Do you want to have kids?”. These weren’t really questions you ask when you are looking for a hookup. My gut said something was off; Shay seemed too good to be true. She had no flaws, only wanted to hear about me, and was agreeable to a fault. The internet has taught me that if it’s too good to be true, it probably is. At that point, I did what any rational person does when they doubt the validity of the person on the other end.

I demanded that Shay take a selfie with today’s date on a piece of paper by her head. Expectedly, she called me insane and told me I should see a therapist. And perhaps I was insane, but I pressed the issue. My intuition was telling me that the person on the other end of the line either had met me before or knew someone who did. There was no way Shay could know these things about my life. She began attacking me, mentioning all my insecurities that I thought I hid so well… how I used humor to cover up how I was truly feeling, how I had an anxious style of attachment… she even told me what type of woman I probably like, which happened to be a direct physical description of Molly, down to the turquoise nail polish. I hadn’t described Molly’s appearance to her at all. I freaked out and demanded to know who she was. At that point, she stopped talking to me… but not even ten minutes later, Molly called.

It was well past midnight. She apologized for not talking to me recently, said she had a family emergency that brought her out of town and that she just got back now. She also said I sounded panicked in my voice and asked me what was wrong. I told her… she comforted me. I figured it was just a big misunderstanding. She said she liked me a lot and that we just needed to take things slowly. And just like that, the crisis with Shay was forgotten. I was back on cloud nine.

The next time we talked, she told me to do two things: Go see a therapist she recommended and to set up a date for us on the weekend.

Me: You know, you’re the second person this week to tell me to see a therapist.

Molly (laughing): Well, you know what they say, if two people say it, it must be true.

Me: But on a serious note, why do I need to see a therapist?

Molly: I think you have a lot of unresolved dating issues. I think if we really want to give this a decent shot, then you have to sort out some baggage. Don’t worry, I know a great therapist in town. Just go a few times, for me? Please?

Though I had always had an irrational fear of therapy, I decided it might be for the best. It all seemed crazy, to do this all for someone I had only been on one date with, but she was right, I did have some emotional baggage that was slowing me down in life. I figured it couldn’t hurt to go for a session or two. After that, if I still wasn’t feeling it, I could just stop going. I’m not sure if she would get annoyed, but I could cross that bridge when I got there. However, I never did get to that bridge as my suspicions soon flared up again.

Any writer will tell you that the way a person uses syntax in text messages is very personal. In fact, we typically have patterns of writing and speech that we do unconsciously. I’m not sure what led me to do so, but when I looked back at the old text messages that Shay had sent me, they appeared to be identical to Molly. From the number of exclamation marks to the use of certain slang, it was too uncanny to think they weren’t sent from the same person. I wanted to ignore my gut, and just continue having fun with Molly, but the feeling kept me up at night. Against my own happiness, I decided I was going to confront her in person to see if she was lying, but I started feeling guilty, so I just half-assed it and asked her via text. It didn’t go well.

Molly was perturbed and said that she couldn’t date another man with trust issues this big. She advised I keep going to therapy but that she would now be blocking my number in her phone as she wanted nothing to do with me. I asked if she still at least wanted to be friends. I was lonely and didn’t know too many people in Santa Barbara. She quickly rebuked my invite. She said I scared her, which scared me. I barely recognized the person in the mirror. It appeared my paranoia had gotten the best of me and now I pushed away another person.

This must have been the straw that broke the camel’s back because I cried in a manner I hadn’t done so in years. I finally broke down. All the signs pointed to her being right. I wondered if a lifetime of being ghosted and failed relationships had finally left a foul stench on me that made me untouchable. After I was done feeling bad for myself, I decided to continue going to therapy, but for myself this time. It didn’t take long for my therapist to determine that I had an anxious style of attachment from past dating experiences, but we didn’t stop there. We continued meeting twice a week and in that time period, I faced every fear I had tried to tuck away in the quiet corners of my mind. After coming to terms with who I was, I decided to make amends. Being a recovered alcoholic, it was something I was already familiar with. Though not all people responded back kindly, I eventually got through everyone I had an unresolved issue with, except for two people… Shay and Molly. I had vehemently accused them of being the same person and felt the need to apologize. It was my distrust that drove both of them away.

I decided to start with Shay since I felt less ashamed about our interactions. To my surprise, she responded back quickly, said it was water under the bridge, and that I should probably not give up on pursuing Molly. I told her that seemed like the type of advice that would lead to me getting a restraining order placed against me. She laughed; I did too. This was a lot easier than I thought. She asked me how I had been, and we caught up. It was all going well until Shay said something that sent shivers up my spine. In fact, what she said I had only told a single soul… that soul being Molly.

At this point, I had all the evidence I needed. I called Molly, but it went straight to voicemail. I wasted no time and cursed her out over text, telling her to stop, how I knew it was her, and I was tired of these fucking games. She confessed, half-heartedly apologized, and told me she didn’t like when I acted this way. I was livid at her response, but at the same time happy. Happy to know it wasn’t all in my head, but livid that I was smack dab in the center of an elaborate rouse that I did not know the purpose of.

I asked her why she pretended to be this other person when she knew I already liked her. She didn’t respond to the question and curtly said that I shouldn’t try to text or contact her, but that she would call me later tonight. She said if I tried to contact her before that time, she would never talk to me again. I’m not sure why, but I acquiesced. I told her I was free anytime before midnight, at that point I’d have to go to sleep as I had therapy in the morning.

11 pm rolled around and still no word. When it got past 11:55 pm, I texted her one more time to see if she wanted to talk, but my messages weren’t showing up as delivered. At that point, I realized I most likely had been blocked by her and went to bed.

When I woke up in the morning I saw a string of text messages, but all from Shay. I was confused about why I was still receiving messages from this number, especially since Molly had confessed to being this person. I texted this number back and said to “knock it off”, but Shay insisted she had no idea who Molly was and that I had schizophrenia. My therapist quickly knocked off this assertion by telling me that schizophrenia wasn’t something you randomly gain in your 20s, let alone 30s. At least I was relatively sane.

My head was beginning to hurt. I would later come to learn that this daily questioning of my reality was called gaslighting. While I was decent in dealing with physical pain, these recent revelations showed that I had many gaps in my mental fortitude. Looking back, this is when I should have quit playing the game. At that point, I should have just blocked Molly/Shay and moved on, but a combination of curiosity and mania addiction got the best of me. I began combing the internet for more clues. It was borderline obsessive and definitely unhealthy, but I was driven to find answers. What I found next left me in a perplexed state of being in awe and shock at the same time.

While snooping for information on Molly online, I stumbled across her Spotify public playlists. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary… at first. However, upon further inspection, the most recent playlist appeared to be referencing me. From my tattoos to my personal thoughts… everything Molly knew about me was there in song form. I figured I was reading too much into this, but my suspicions were confirmed when I started making new playlists. Every time I posted, the very next day, a similar selection would appear in Molly’s playlists. If I made a classical mix, classical appeared in her playlists. Same with rap, indie, and even white noise. At one point, I decided to try to get definitive proof and posted a Will Smith album in its entirety. I figured if Will Smith showed up in her Spotify then there was no doubt that she was checking up on me. It wasn’t the soundest logic, but it was what I was going with.

The next day nothing showed up… same for the day after. However, on Friday, a new playlist was there… country. Just hundreds of country songs. I guess it was all in my head. I closed my laptop and went for a walk to clear my brain. However, when I came back, something told me to comb through the playlist and there it was… smack dab between Townes Van Zandt and John Prine was Men in Black by Will Smith. Nobody randomly throws Men in Black in a country playlist… or at the very least it should be Wild Wild West.

I’m not proud to admit it, but I found it very flattering. It probably helped that most of the playlists were pretty stellar. At the very least, it must have taken her a while to put in the painstaking level of detail they required. We spent the next couple of weeks speaking only in songs. I’d post something, then something would come back. It was all so strange, but I enjoyed it. While I wouldn’t recommend anyone stays in a state of mania for extended periods of time, I will say that it beats the mundane. However, this wasn’t a sustainable lifestyle. In fact, it all felt like a big cryptic game that was going nowhere. When it became apparent that Molly was never going to tell me in person why she did all of this, I began to pull away. I stopped making playlists and stopped texting with Shay. There were more clues to chase, but I just didn’t care anymore. I felt I was slowly losing my mind. Every few weeks, Shay made an attempt to lure me back, usually with false promises to meet in person or FaceTime requests that started with a blank screen and ended with her taking a screenshot of me; but after putting in a firm “no contact” policy in place, she eventually got the point and stopped reaching out to me.

I had heard about the mental distraught that may follow a person after they’ve been catfished on a dating site, and until it happened to me, I really didn’t understand how someone you never met could have such an impact on your life. Add to that fact that this wasn’t as straightforward. I’ve heard of people being catfished before, but never going on a date and then being catfished afterward by the very same person.

It would take almost a full year of cryptic communication before I hung up my detective hat for good. I no longer use dating apps but appreciated the lessons I learned there. Looking back, I now know that you could describe what I was going through with many words, but love would not be one of them. No, this wasn’t calm and stable like love, but some sort of irrational version, a scary one based out of fear, lust, and obsession. Looking back, I don’t know which one of us was the bigger monster: Her for gaslighting me via a fake online identity or me going through extreme lengths to try to shatter that fantasy world she lived in. Molly had confessed to being Shay, but for some reason, it was never enough for me. It was at that point I realized that it wasn’t the “who”, but the “why” that kept driving me forward in my journey.

Perhaps Molly thought I was too good to be true and wanted to test me?

Perhaps she had been lied to so many times before that my pledge of love seemed hollow?

Perhaps she was just a person that was scared to fall in love again, for fear that she might get hurt, or for fear she may hurt another?

Perhaps I had accidentally stumbled upon Molly’s secret account she used to flirt?

Perhaps this was all just an elaborate game to stave off boredom?

Or perhaps the person I had been infatuated with simply wanted to be another person altogether. Maybe the truth was I had fallen for someone who was addicted to pretending to be other people. What do you do when the person you care for doesn’t want to exist? Either way, I hope Molly got something out of all of it… I know I did.

I’m often asked two things when I tell people this story, “Are you still mad?” and “Do you still talk to her?”.

The answer to both of these questions is met with a very swift and emphatic “No”. Molly had a way of seeing the deep wounds that I thought I hid so well, and by exposing them, she forced me to face my fears. While I didn’t appreciate her tactics, she indirectly helped me to stop seeing myself as a victim of unfortunate circumstances, to limit “black and white” thinking, and start seeing myself from the perspective of others. She helped me see what I truly was: A person in a shade of gray, with beautiful, soul-cleansing flaws. Neither good nor bad. Just human. For that, I will always be thankful, regardless of how I got to that point.

After hearing my tale, a close friend of mine posed a hypothetical question for me to answer. The question was, “If Molly contacted you to grab a coffee and would finally tell you everything, would you meet her up?” I’ve thought about this a lot and to this day, I still have no answer. I’d be lying if I said that she wasn’t a huge part in pushing me to finally remove the mask I had been wearing and start truly living the life I wanted to live. But I’m not sure if there is much we could teach each other at this point. We usually only change as much as we want to. The catalyst may be from outside, but the desire must be from within.

My cousin always told me that people came into our lives for a reason, season, or a lifetime. Perhaps the extent to me knowing Molly ran its course already. I guess like with most things in life, I’ll cross that bridge if/when I ever get there. And while it may sound pompous, my gut tells me she’s still keeping tabs on me.

In fact, there is a good chance she’s reading this right now.

*Names have been changed to protect each subject’s identity.