A real story from Cleo 's magazine

I met this guy online. We chatted for a while, and within four months he told me he loved me. He sent me flowers and rang me every night of the week. What started off as just a casual chat, ended up with us falling madly in love. After 16 months of chatting online we decided to live together. I was from another country so the move had to be well planned. He found a nice place, and within two months I moved in with him. Two months after that I began to notice a few odd things about him. He'd sit on his computer all-night long and make lots of phone calls. One night he left his MSN open, so I decided to take a peek. I found out that he'd been seeing another woman at the same time he was seeing me. 

I thought she was just a friend, as she'd stopped by to visit a couple of times. I'd caught them closer to our bedroom on the last visit and asked what was going on. I was still unaware that they'd been sleeping together all this time. After her last visit she'd e-mailed my partner telling him she'd cried all the way home and that she'd missed him so much. She said that she felt I wasn't the right one for him, and that she'd rather see him with someone else. She continued to tell him how much she cried for him and only wanted the very best for him (and how she felt that she was the very best for him and I wasn't).

This woman also had a partner, and was seeing my partner on the side. I had to reply to her e-mail. I told her that I knew of her cheating on her partner and I was prepared to blow the whistle if she didn't stay away. In the meantime, I told my partner that I was fully aware of him cheating on me and made it quite clear that if it continued I was out of the relationship.

He did everything in his power to try to make it right. All was well again in the land of love, so to speak. She sent a few more e-mails and made a few phone calls to his mother and then stopped trying to make contact with him.

Unfortunately this was only the beginning. I discovered that my partner also had a fetish with online dating. He'd made contact with a couple of women online and even organized to meet with them. He had a thing for women who were already taken. I warned him that he wouldn't want this to get out as it would ruin his business, so he stopped. Time went by and everything was rosy — or so I thought.

It was Christmas/New Year 2005 when I actually caught him out. He didn't deny any of it. He told me that he no longer loved me and wanted out of the relationship. I did try to sort it all out with him, but I knew he'd fallen for this other girl. Three days after he told me he didn't love me, I began packing my stuff. I moved out one day, and his new girlfriend moved in the next.

Within a couple of weeks, his business had lost a lot of customers. The girlfriend he had dumped me for began taking money from the business and within a couple of months she had dumped him. He then picked up another woman, who he also cheated on, and then another, and was dumped by them all! Now he's single, living at home with his mother.

I have learnt never to trust anyone you meet online. You can paint a pretty picture online, but face-to-face you see a whole lot more! I have come out on top of this, feeling a lot more comfortable with who I am. When he dumped me, I thought it was my fault, then I realized that he was the one who couldn't stay faithful; he was the one who was dishonest. I know I deserve a whole lot better!