How One Man's Grisly Lies To Multiple Women Came Back To Destroy Him
He didn't know who he was dealing with.
Snappy Cactus, Billion Photos, bonetta | Canva To write one's thoughts down after the fact, after the healing has taken place after the lies have all been exposed and the initial sting of the break-up has faded into nothingness ... is a good thing. To take a step back and view the failed past with clarity and less seriousness is not only a liberating experience, but one filled with laughter and a brilliant sense of clarity, and in this case: divine justice. This is how I feel now, years after being lied to by someone I'm not sure I ever trusted. So, rather than write a blog about yet another crappy man who did another crappy thing to me (and women, in general), I'm releasing my thoughts as a retrospective; a hilarious trip down Bad Memory Lane, so to speak.
A few years ago, I was stalked by some dude on the internet. He liked everything I put up, including photos I'd posted from years and years before. That's what stalkers do, they go through everything you have made public, and then they go for more. This particular dude found a way to get to me: He was an art freak, and I am an artist. He became a client of mine, and by commissioning and purchasing tons of artwork from me, he got to be an insider in my world. Once inside, he laid the groundwork for his abusive, lying nature. He pretended to be in love with me so that he could get art from me for a better price than I'd give anyone else.
I was very flattered by this guy, and I let my guard down because my ego was being made to feel good by his constant flattery. He was enamored by me, and because he was someone I didn't find too attractive, I did the stupid female thing: I felt sorry for him. This is, unfortunately, something women do; they see a lonely kind of guy, notice that he's not very good-looking, assume he's probably a decent guy because he hasn't had the privilege of what beauty gives a person, and they create a fantasy about him where he's this poor, homely, lonely loser boy who's never known real love and needs to be saved by the noblest woman around.
I was especially interested in this man because after I told him that I wasn't into being intimate, he told me the same; he thought it was boring, he hadn't had it in so long, it was so overrated, and he only sought spiritual meaning in life...as did I. So, basically, he read me the perfect script for keeping my attention. A man who didn't want intimacy yet could be flirty, fun, romantic, and profound. I was in! No intimacy, yet tons of romance and deep, magical conversation? Could it finally be so? Was I really in touch with someone who could honor my lifestyle, or was I being groomed for the kill? Was this the big chase? Was this ugly yet kindly man just setting me up for what he wanted, which was to break me down and make me into someone I would never want to be?
So, having not met, we began our little text-driven, faux love affair, where I kidded myself into thinking he was honest. He continued to buy my art at a revoltingly cheap price, which I figured would somehow balance itself out, seeing how much art he was consistently commissioning. He would wake up in the morning, tell me he loved me a thousand or so times, and then he would tend to his day, which consisted of having no job other than to take care of his mother, whom he lived with. Hmm. Norman Bates, how much?
Then came the onslaught of nasty pics. Every morning. Every afternoon. Every night. Even though he was 'not intimate' he surely went out of his way to show me how much he wanted me. His photos were foul and offensive, and some were particularly sickening to look at — but did I tell him to stop? No, stupid me let him continue, and why? Because I felt sorry for him. Once again, the stupid woman's reaction: "Poor guy never gets attention. I'll let him get away with it so that he knows I'm on his side, a real friend..." Oy, such a schmuck I was.
But the going story was the same: We are together, in a non-physical relationship, we are monogamous, honest, and enthusiastic about some kind of future together ... someday. Nothing ever made sense with this guy, and I knew he was everything but in love with me, a non-intimate, monogamous, honest person. I knew it, and I began to appreciate the distance between us. I began to crave more of it. Let him continue to commission art from me; I liked the money.
As time went on, he started to show who he was: a stalker of women. He lived on Instagram and adult websites, 24-7, where he continuously scrolled through photos of women, always leaving a comment on some woman's photo telling her that she should believe in herself and that she's truly beautiful. He was 'that guy' — the heroic male saint who makes public statements in honor of women and the sacred feminine only to come across as sensitive and desirable. *shivers of revulsion.* His act was of the guy who respects women, while his reality is that he was the ugliest misogynist I've ever known.
He declared he was a very private person which is why he preferred that I stay off his social media pages, asking me to not leave comments or love — in other words, he didn't want people to know I existed. He wanted to look single and available, which was doubly hilarious considering he was married: something I'd only recently discovered. When I confronted him on his marital status, he told me, "I figured we'd talk about that when we met." Wow, what a lucky woman his wife must be.
Yes, pass the vomit bag this way, thank you. So, now we're looking at a married man whose entire life is about touching himself and adult videos, taking care of his mother, and living up to all the midlife crisis stereotypes a man can muster up, including growing his balding, frazzled hair out so long in some effort to present as a rock star of olden days. He became obsessed with working out and steroids and started to look the part, covered in acne and old musculature, pants too tight, looking desperate and weird — weird like a guy who exposes himself in urine-scented public bathrooms, hoping for attention — someone whom no one has ever taken seriously.
And then there was me; non-intimate, trusting me ... who learned very quickly that when a man says he's not into intimacy, it means he's addicted to internet porn, and sliming every woman he sees. Men had been turning me off for a long time by then, but this guy was the one who made me know that never again would I be taken by a man in any way. He ended any chances of me finding romance or love in a male. Kaput. He was such a turn-off, he should get an award for being the Most Unattractive Man Alive. I stopped taking him seriously altogether; this dude was a pervert and very little else.
What went from a relationship built on kindness rapidly descended into a nightmare that consisted of rapid-fire junk pics and very little conversation. He was trash, I knew it, he knew it, and our connection started to wither. I remember telling him that if he lied to me, it wouldn't end well for him, that I depend on that trust, and that should he defile my sense of honesty, the universe would conspire with me to ruin his life. I believed in my sense of power and retribution; karma is a woman scorned that I intended to have on my side, should I need her. And ... karma came.
And no, karma wasn't a figment of my imagination, but a real woman — a woman who happened to be going through exactly what I was going through at the very same time — with the very same creep. Not only did she come, but so did many other women, all suddenly being made aware of each other. We'd all been duped, and now it was out in the open. The internet is a cold, cruel place and when it explodes, it shows no mercy. We all found out the truth via the internet. A little birdie, in an act of innocence and love, let go of a personal post, exposing a photo of her and the man of her dreams, and we all recognized who it was. It was him, the man who claimed he was 'ours.'
We were all duped by this pathetic excuse of a worm. We were all women who fell for the pitiful man who was kind and promising. Each one of us was unaware of the other, sharing the same time slot, and thinking we were the only one. All at the very same time. He had us all well-balanced, in our slots, and when he desired one of us, he'd approach. If we didn't hear from him, it was because he was with one of the other women. Most of us were simply disgusted and ready to disembark; I know I was. But one of the women who I call the Angel of Karma was not going to walk away without a fight to the death.
We'd all been promised the same things: monogamy, a life together, romance ... we'd all been told the same things. He was sending us all identical messages in the morning, probably copied and pasted from the last message he'd sent. We were all bored of the pics and we all were starting to feel extremely uncomfortable at the fact that none of us were publicly known, personally told by him to not comment on his posts. Each one of us paid him this respect because he declared he was a 'very private person' and didn't want people to know what went on in his personal life. We were all one woman, and we were all simultaneously finding out that this creep we'd trusted was a clown worthy only of the worst disrespect. We were all that scorned woman, indeed, but the one woman — the Angel of Karma — was the hero of the story, and it was she who would not let him get away with murder.
His crowd was made up of people who all knew each other, from youth, from the same area, the same interests. So, everyone who knew this guy was about to find out exactly what he did. And the Angel of Karma made sure that every person he knew throughout his entire lifetime found out just what a monstrous fraud this clown was. First, she approached his wife, and let her know the details. Divorce ensued within weeks. Then she found out he was in some hot water — something family-oriented and outrageously illegal. She took that info to him and told him she was going to expose him. In an admission of profound guilt and in the hopes she would never reveal his secret, he gave her one of his cars. She took it, and a very cool car it was, indeed.
She approached every one of his stalked women and told them the story of his sickness; each one of them turned on him and shut him down. Then she posted over and over — with the help of all the other women — endless posts talking about this guy's behavior, what he does, how he treats women, how he treats his wife, how he pretends to not be a father, how he can't get his hands off his junk for two minutes, and that every single thing this person does is a lie designed to hurt as many people as he can in one shot.
The world turned on him. He was attacked left and right online, and harassed into oblivion. His only friendships were those of those he met online, and now everyone in his hometown knew what he was all about. Everyone rejected him. He was humiliated and verbally tormented until he was run out of town, alone and without a single person to sympathize with him. It took me a good solid three weeks to get over him, which kinda says it all, so I didn't have the steam to bulldoze all over him. But the Angel of Karma had been intimately involved with him. She was with him in real life, as were all the other women, save for me.
I was the one who got away with not having to be with this cretin in the flesh. For me, he was already way too boring for me to return to for vengeance and justice ... but for those women who had intimate relationships with them, holy smokes, they were not about to let him get away with it. And they didn't, and for all it's worth, none of us will ever have to endure his putrescence again.
The Angel of Karma is a real woman, a very dear friend of mine, someone I came to love and admire so very, very much. She is the reason he's gone today. She is the reason he has no presence online anymore. We never think karma is going to be fair to us, or that we'll ever see the balancing of an act of betrayal. Men have been getting away with this kind of crap forever, and rarely do the women ever get to ruin them back so sufficiently and with such expertise. But this loser deserved to be ruined. He deserved to have it all taken away from him. This lady, my beautiful friend, came in like a Superhero and showed this man — and many other men — that we can indeed be very scary if pressed. Do not mess with women.
Dori Hartley is primarily a portrait artist. As an essayist and a journalist, she can be read in The Huffington Post, ParentDish, YourTango, The Daily Beast, Psychology Today, More Magazine, XOJane, MyDaily, and The Stir.