There are many reasons for creating ‘catfishing’ profiles where money is not the motive, you can read about this here. Sometimes, these profiles will come offline and be in person, sometimes the person will be using their own face and name all along.
The connection, as with all romance fraud, starts with grooming and love bombing. You can read about these here. It continues with trauma bonding and coercive and controlling behaviours.
Many of these individuals display narcissistic and psychopathic traits where grooming and love bombing are part of their natural behaviors.
Most often, the reason for these non financial connections is a sexually motivated one. There can also be other motives around this, depending on the reason for the deceit and the abusers wish to get their needs met at the cost of the victim.
To the victim, this is the most intense and incredible relationship they have had, or at least it starts this way. They are made the centre of this person’s world. They become the person that is needed and relied on for support when that trauma arrives. For me, I was given a confidence I had never had in my life that I was important and beautiful.
Imagine, when you discover that, that person was lying about everything just for their own personal gratification. That person, manipulated your soul and skillfully undermined your gut instincts and convictions purely to have you as pawn in their game.
Why is this fraud? Isn’t it just a man or woman having fun? Seeking an affair? When the other party is lied to on so many levels, it is not a situation where they can make informed consent about the relationship in general or the intimate side of it.
My experience had 3 levels of deception:
- His identity
- His intent for our relationship and what that was without my knowledge
- His marital status
There is very much a premeditated pattern of behaviour. The traumas he created such as his mother being diagnosed with ovarian cancer were lies, told at a specific time to keep me close and compliant in his game. The emotional toll of these manipulations is long lasting. Mind and body feel violated.
I am still campaigning for clearer guidelines or changes in the law around consent. There has been an interesting project around sex by deception and the law released in 2023, you can read it here.