He Lies to Women on Dating Apps
Her ex-roommate is a creep who lies to women on dating apps, among other offenses. Should she warn an unsuspecting public?
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Dear Chump Lady,
My ex-roommate is constantly lying to women on dating apps.
He says he owns the condo he lives at and they can live there rent free, which he doesn’t. His parents own it and do not condone his behavior. He is a horribly disgusting man who doesn’t clean. His room was piled with soiled clothes, trash, dog waste and trash. He neglects his dog. He has wrecked 3 cars in 2 years, once running a red light and hitting an elderly man. With no insurance on the vehicle.
When confronted on his horrific behavior, he becomes violent or condescending. His own relative told me to call the cops on him. He barely showers or changes his clothes. And he expects women to have sex with him if he buys them chicken nuggets at McDonald’s. He will already be seeing one woman, talking about how much he loves her, but is talking to other girls on the same dating apps. And finally, he uses the fact that he gets free booze from his job to solicit women to have sex with him.
I want to warn women about him.
Tamara
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Dear Tamara,
A bunch of chumps reading this are going to think “Oh, so you’ve met my ex?”
He sounds like an absolutely vile individual. But perhaps his own stench is all the warning needed? How many dates do you need to go on before you notice that the guy is wearing the same clothes and doesn’t shower? Two? Three? If he’s pronouncing his love at that point, I hope most women would run. And that’s before we get to his disgusting apartment.
He says he owns the condo he lives at and they can live there rent free
Is that how you came to be his roommate? Fuckwits prey on vulnerable people. I understand the urge to expose him. But even if you just happened into a horrific roommate situation, you seem to know a lot about his duplicitous love life.
Should you expose a guy who lies to women on dating apps?
Sure, but understand that it’s most likely not going to change his behavior. And it could make you the target of his rage. If his own family can’t stand him, it’s not like he’s going to have a character epiphany on Tinder.
Consider your motivations. It’s a noble impulse to want to warn the next chump, but weigh that against your own mental health and what it would mean to stay entangled with this guy.
It’s okay to walk away from the nut cluster.
No contact is the fastest path to sanity. Thank your lucky stars you’re no longer in his orbit. Forget your security deposit or whatever investment you had in this person and save yourself. You aren’t a super hero responsible for ridding the world of FWs. (Says the woman with a blog devoted to telling people to leave cheaters. I understand my hypocrisy on this point.)
Tracy, this is very unsatisfying advice. What else can I do?
Think carefully about exposure sites.
The interwebz have tried to solve the FW problem with technology. The thinking being, oh, if we have a creep registry, potential partners can do their due diligence. But many of these expose a cheater / home wrecker sites are predatory scams. They aren’t vetted and the whole point is to monetize scrubbing the “cheater” off the site. Remember, if it feels good, don’t do it. There’s nothing preventing your cheater from doing the same to you.
If you are going to warn women about a creep, consider a “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” online community near you. They have strict rules about entries and the anonymity of posters.
Don’t lower your standards.
You don’t control other people. You just control what you put up with. Like, chicken nuggets will not cut it for a date. I’m not dating a smelly man. You might get cynical and think “Oh, all men lie to women on dating apps. I’ll never date again!” That’s your choice, but boundaries are an essential life skill.
Change the narrative about being single.
The only reason your ex-roommate gets a second or third date is there is a culture telling women that even a disgusting man is better than no man. You might date a total loser BUT HE WANTS YOU and that’s the validation that really matters. Mount Trashmore desires you.
Instead of pointing out the obvious — your ex-roommate is vile — point out that misogynistic cultural messages are vile. That will do more to inoculate women against all losers than outing one bad apple.
Tamara, I hope your future living situation is free of FWs. For now and evermore.
It amazes me that our society has continued to make women feel “less than” if not in a relationship at the same time young men are failing to launch into adulthood.
Chumps are uniquely prepared to define adulthood as the ability to care for oneself and then to bring/share additional resources in a committed relationship.
We can model appropriate behavior, set boundaries with adult children (even others’ children) and avoid the drama.
The sooner that someone learns that there are worse things than being single – one of which is being in a relationship with the wrong person – the quicker that they are likely to make healthier life choices.
The societal expectation for people to be “coupled up” as the default setting is horsesh*t.
LFTT
I consider myself fortunate that I learned at an early age that there are worse things than being single. From my parents’ marriage. Also one relationship where the guy got verbally abusive 4 months in. He got dumped.
“The societal expectation for people to be “coupled up” as the default setting is horsesh*t.”
Our experience as Chumps, I think, gives us such an interesting perspective on that. Having been partnered with the wrong person, we realize that being single is by far prefereable than being with the wrong person.
I am not ready to date, I may never be. Or a more accurate summation would be, I’m not ready top date yet, and I may never WANT to. I think it is possible that I’ll continue to take take to heal nd find my new normal and perhaps once I am in a position where dating would be an ok option, I may decide I’d rather be single.
What I can say for sure is that ironically the more “ok” I get with being single, the better I would BE as a partner. Wouldn’t it be nice to find yourself in a relationship because the other person adds the cherry on top of an already perfectly great sundae, vs dating out of desperation to “not be alone”?
SoOI,
I’ve been single for nearly 10 years now and am totally at peace with it. I would only consider dating were I to find someone who added to the life that I’ve built since Ex-Mrs LFTT left without taking away from it …. as you put it, “the cherry on top of the already perfect sundae.”
LFTT
The cultural messages are indeed horrid. I’m a little better off in my 60’s because people seem more willing to accept singleness in that age group because some are widowed. Going through a gray divorce was terrifying, but I’m under less pressure to pair up again than those who are younger.
I have a newish friend who married in her mid-forties and has a darling kindergartener, and she believes I’ll find someone. Mmm…my divorce was final just before the pandemic, and nothing yet. I’ve never gotten beyond a coffee date.
Thankfully, my kids made it to young adulthood and are dating decent people. They have solid, meaningful careers and are self-supporting. The rest is up to them.
When I left FW a decade ago, I decided to try dating apps but encountered many questionable individuals. Living in a smaller city where social circles overlapped made it even more complicated, as I knew many of those guys were in long-term relationships. Some claimed to be separated or in bad relationships, which always raised a red flag for me after my experience with FW. When a guy sent me pictures of himself and his child on Christmas, saying how he told his kid all about me and how excited the kid was to meet me… A stranger he had only seen a handful of pictures of and exchanged just a few sentences; my stomach churned; I blocked him and deleted everything.
The red flags are unmistakable, but birds of a feather..I’ve observed that many couples who initially connected online end up being dysfunctional, almost like something out of a reality TV show. It’s disheartening to realize that the chronically online, entitled individuals who care more about their social media presence and who seem to put as much value into selecting a life partner as they would ordering a pizza— the Fuckwits of the world— might be the norm in future generations. I really hope they chose single hood over a bad partner.
I get the desire of warning people but it doesn’t usually go well for the messenger. Just recently, when my ex was sentenced, I put the sentencing on my facebook and announced “if you know my ex husband, you might want to stop knowing him.” Guess what happened? Someone I didn’t know went through all of my pictures and wrote PEDO RAPIST LOVER on them. That’s what I get for trying to warn people. We’ve been divorced five years with zero contact so there’s definitely no love there and I’m outing him to the world but it doesn’t matter, I still get attacked. I went to my ex’s profile and that of his supportive pedophile girlfriend. Didn’t seem to be a single negative comment on their profiles, just mine. Because I am the evil one who told.
It did inspire me to directly contact every single one of his facebook friends and send them the information. I had a nice conversation with his aunt who has disowned him. But yeah, there is a lot of negativity. In my case, my ex is a literal criminal with crimes against children, he has pled guilty, he is in prison, he is a registered sex offender, and I am still attacked for speaking the truth. That’s just how it is. Personally, I think it’s because a lot of people are bad people and they feel threatened if another bad person is exposed. Because if I would expose my ex, I would expose them too. So they go on the attack.
If you’re in a really good place and can handle the beat downs and humiliations that people are going to throw at you then maybe you’ll wanna do it but consider it is going to be bad and can seriously affect your life. I told some people before he was arrested because I worried about their children. I was followed, my social media accounts were hacked into, etc. I told someone after the arrest because, again, I cared about her and she had children. People showed up at my work and said weird personal things about me, like knowing how long I was in the military. Someone aimed their car at me in the parking lot and then screeched over to my car and smashed a liquor bottle on my hood. Like, weird, scary things.
My case might be extreme but none of these people knew me and they were willing to come after me for their “friend.” A shitty guy who gets lots of women to date him has people skills. He knows how to manipulate. Don’t underestimate people like this, that can be dangerous.
Do you think your ex might have been involved in some pedophilic ring? Such that there are more people feeling personally threatened by your speaking up?
I 100% believe there are pedophile rings and that they network with each other. One of the things I found in the divorce was that he belonged to a group on the website fetlife that was for DDLG, which is daddy dom and little girl. These are couples where the man pretends to be the father and the woman pretends to be a toddler and they roleplay an incestuous, pedophile scenario. From what I saw on there, the man is usually a lot older too and the girls are young, like barely legal young. There was a group chat I saw where one of the men posted something about how he was in the mall and heard a child say daddy and he instantly got an erection. He asked if that was normal. Most of them said things like “Congrats! you’re one of us now!” or “LOL, yeah, you have to expect that happening when you live this lifestyle.” They were celebrating becoming pedophiles who were aroused by the sound of children’s voices. It’s an accomplishment to them, becoming aroused by actual children.
As for the women, I noticed that a large number of the women in this lifestyle had the same #1 turn off, which was men who don’t know how to act appropriately around children. Gee, I wonder why they meet so many men who don’t act appropriately around children. It’s such a mystery…
But yeah, I believe it is organized. Every time the weirdness ramped up around me was right after I warned someone. I think the people I warned said something to him after I warned them and he told his network. It is very disturbing. Someone even named a device “Katie’s Ipad” and used it to try to get into my accounts. I had to change all passwords and even deleted my old google accounts and made new ones, and as I was explaining all this to my boyfriend and thinking I sound unhinged, a notification that “katie’s Ipad” was trying to access my account popped up right in front of us. The thing is, Katie is my nickname. I don’t use my nickname on things. So my Ipad was not Katie’s ipad, it was Katherine’s ipad. And it was sitting on the table right next to my laptop when this happened. Now I don’t even use my full name on things, I have to be more careful than that. But it was a lot of insanity. And it was a lot of different people.
I genuinely believe we need to start executing pedophiles. They are not afraid anymore. They would come into my work where there are cameras everywhere, use their credit cards, and says fucked up things to me to let me know they knew me and I was being threatened. We have their photos bookmarked, I have some of their names from their cards. They have zero fear or shame openly threatening me in public in support of a pedophile. It is so much worse than people realize. They feel entitled to not only harm children but to threaten anyone who has a problem with it.
There was one guy in a white truck who followed me to work multiple times. i get to work before the store opens so there’s no reason for him to be lurking in the parking lot. Managers saw him so I had to start calling them when I got there so they could meet me at the door and let me in, and they would watch him with me while he drove by us, lurking around in our empty parking lot. One day, a white truck followed me to the gas station and I Moved FOUR times thinking I was being paranoid. He followed me every time. I pulled up to a gas pump, he pulled to the one behind me but didn’t get out and didn’t get gas. Finally, after moving multiple times, I pulled right up in front of the store and ran inside. He moved again and parked next to me. I came out of the gas station screaming, with my phone up recording him, recorded his license plate, recorded his shocked looking ugly ass face gaping at me in shock and then looking down and pulling his baseball cap down to cover his face, and reversing out of there. Never saw his truck again after that.
They genuinely feel entitled to do this and are stunned when they face any consequences. But I guess that’s the level of evil entitlement required to rationalize harming children.
I wish I felt like I could say you’re wrong about the people harassing you being part of a pedophile ring or network. And that you’re paranoid. But with these examples, I can’t. Although some of it could have been random weirdness because there are a lot of troubled people in the world. But it does sound like you’ve been targeted specifically.
WTFFFFF, I have no words.
OMG
People are disgusting. I’m so sorry you had these horrible experiences, this is terrifying.
Also glad to hear your ex got sentenced. I hope it brings you some closure and peace of mind.
It’s ridiculous. You were the one who went above and beyond because the safety of women and children was at risk. A true matriarchal leader, and to save face with the deranged, he unleashed a mob, and years after the fact, the witch hunt continues.
My suggestion is to put him on one of those report an abuser type social media groups. Since he is violent, women need to be warned.
My ex-FW was a walking, talking red flag you could smell from a mile away, just like your former roommate. I saw the signs when I was young and dumb and doubled down, initially thinking he was a poor, misunderstood, timid forest creature whose childhood was a legitimate reason for misogynistic entitlement, slovenly unhygienic behavior, lack of ambition, and self-medicated addictions. My friends hated him, and my coworkers and classmates couldn’t understand why I was with him (he was a family friend I grew up with). The more they told me to leave him, the more I doubled down and thought I could fix him.
When I started to wake up, it was because I saw on his phone that he was talking shit about me to some girl he was trying to hook up with; I was getting sick of his pornography obsession and his sexual aggression. It took me waking up after being baby-traped, financially supporting him while he smoked and gamed all day, then partied all night, and would get abusive if I tried to persuade him to change for us. He would never change, and if
I didn’t want to live like that, I had to plan a safe escape with our kid. I’m still dealing with his legal BS a decade later, even though he hasn’t seen or asked about our kid in nearly ten years. We have been stalked and harassed by a Bunny Boiler who ignored his red flags and helped finance his legal battle until he moved on to the next Schmoopie. Had I left at the first sign of disrespect fifteen or so years ago, I wouldn’t have dealt with this chaos, but I didn’t, and now I have to live with the fallout.
Tamara, Actions have consequences, and no good deed goes unpunished. His own family can fight the good fight and continue to warn people about him while you get the hell out of dodge. Refusing to see, hear, or speak of the elephant in the room is the simian’s burden.
Tamara,
I agree with CL that it sounds as if you might be expressing an activist/advocacy impulse but I think it’s wasted in this particular instance.
As a lifelong “hyperactivist,” I think the impulse to change the world is great. But a word of caution when campaigning to change hearts and minds and fighting the good fight on issues even tangentially related to sexual abuse and victims’ rights: this is an extremely risky subject that no one should fight alone.
In short, this guy presumably knows where you live. Sexually-themed abuse in all its forms is a powder keg because sexual abusers of every stripe– from douchy little PUA trolls all the way up to sex traffickers, pedophiles, serial rapists and batterers– are statistically more likely to be violent. Those types will lash out even more viciously when thwarted than people who use drier sheets do when you tell them the sheets are toxic af (shhh, the ether in them is addictive. Do not poke that bear).
Kidding aside, even cops are afraid of “domestics” because, just like in nature, getting between a predator and their intended prey can be deadly and intervening in domestic abuse is the cause of most line-of-duty deaths. Forensic researchers have tied most male-on-male homicides to sexual competition because, even when altercations have trivial triggers (cutting in line, bumping into someone in a bar), the real stake is status related to “mating”– that higher status men get more sexual partners. They’re basically killing each other over bootie.
In any case, beyond being willing to be supportive of victims you know personally or corroborate a victim’s report to police if you personally witnessed a crime, playing vigilante FW-slayer in your personal sphere isn’t a safe thing to do. But there are tons of wider causes related to sexual justice that desperately need support and, if you’re involved in collective activism, there’s safety in numbers (as long as you don’t post your address online).
Tamara,
I’m more worried about YOU. You say he’s your “ex”-roommate, so you moved out? Does he know where you live now, and how easy would it be for him to come get you?
How long have you been gone? If your warning got back to him, would he know it was you?
Please weigh your own safety against your desire to warn women about this guy. Your safety matters, too.