“Dating imposters” can have a big impact on your dating world. What is a dating imposter? A dating imposter is someone who acts like one thing, but actually is the complete opposite of what they portray themselves to be. I recently encountered an imposter and it reminded me how important it is to hold true to one of the key tenets we have discussed in the past related to the flow of a budding relationship: actions and communication are the way to judge if things are progressing in the right direction.
By actions, I mean:
Do they make every possible effort to spend time with you
Are they willing to see you during the day just to say hello
Are they sharing personal things, such as their family, background, fears, desires, etc.
Typically, if someone does these things, the relationship is moving in the right direction. However, if the person you are seeing is a “dating imposter,” they will artificially do these things as a way to progress the relationship faster, which helps them get you to a place where you are giving them what they want sooner than normal, be it physical intimacy, or security in a relationship. This may sound manipulative in a deliberate way; however, many imposters don’t even know they’re doing this.
For example
Let’s take my recent experience with my dating imposter. I met Joe at the gym, and we dated for 10 weeks before I realized he was a dating imposter. We had several interactions in person at the gym, since his best friend, who is a really sweet kind man and a friend of mine, goes to the same gym as me. Joe never asked me out on a date. He and I actually connected on a dating app, which is a much safer place to show romantic interest. He shared that he had been interested in me for a while but didn’t feel comfortable asking me out at the gym. We made plans to meet for a first date. The first date was really exciting. We had good banter, and I felt a strong physical attraction to him. I noticed he had big hands and smelled delicious – two of my favorite things in a man. He had more tattoos than I typically like to see, but it actually didn’t bother me since his personality and energy was so kind. He was very inquisitive and wanted to know everything about my kids, job and background.
Our planned “happy hour” date turned into dinner. We went to a really nice restaurant and continued our fun conversation. He was very complimentary. We ended up staying until the restaurant closed. He walked me to my car and shielded me from the rain. He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek before saying goodbye. He texted me the next morning to say he had a great time with me and asked when could we see each other again. We ended up going to a movie the next day. He was very masculine, super protective, opened doors and did everything a “gentleman” is supposed to do - all things I'm looking for in a man. He asked me out often over the next few weeks for coffee dates, lunch and just to say a quick hello. We even worked out together; he invited me to a yoga class. He came with me to two Pilates classes, and I marveled at how confident he was to do something so physically challenging for the first time. He brought me around his friends often. His friends asked me for female advice, and Joe was always so complimentary regarding how smart and classy he thought I was.
There were several times that I was unable to meet with him due to my travel schedule and the fact that I was dating other men at the same time. We hadn’t been intimate yet. We had a date planned for a Saturday, and he cancelled that morning. I asked if everything was OK since up until then he had been very consistent and reliable. He said everything was fine, and I heard from him the following Monday with a long text explaining how he really liked me and that I have all the things he’s looking for in a woman, and that he is looking for a strong healthy relationship with one woman and felt that I didn’t have the time for him due to dating more than just him.
The irony was, I was actually spending the majority of my free time with him. We hadn’t had any discussion about just dating each other. My response to his text was that we should probably discuss his concerns in person, and he agreed.
We met for lunch that day, and he explained that his ex-girlfriend had cheated on him and that he was feeling like I was spending time with other men, which limited his time with me. He said that he really wanted to get to know me well and focus on just me. He said since I was dating others, it was hard for him to get to know me. I jumped to my own defense and explained that most of the times I was not free to meet him, it was mostly because of work, not because of other men.
His other concern was that he was always initiating the text messages, which made him feel like I wasn’t that interested since he was always making the first move. We decided to continue to date each other and to be open and communicate concerns in advance before making snap judgements about the other person. From there, things continued to move forward. We communicated almost every day via phone or text. I made it a point to initiate conversation. We were intimate a couple of weeks after this conversation. Our communication increased, and we continued to see each other at various times during the day and night for the next five weeks. We weren’t intimate all the time, which made me believe that he was really falling for me.
I began to treat him like a boyfriend and stopped dating other men. I started doing things contrary to my normal approach, which is to let the man chase me harder. I started to feel him pull away after about nine weeks. On our last date, we had a nice conversation and dinner. Things took an odd twist that night, though, which made me feel uncomfortable. He was incredibly aggressive and dominating when we were intimate. He completely passed out after we were done and started snoring. I left to sleep in the guest room because I had an early morning the next day. He left without saying goodbye and I didn’t hear from him at all the next day.
I started thinking that he might think he turned me off based on an awkward moment during our intimacy that occurred the night before. I made a decision to reach out to him with a sweet text to say hello and ask about what time he left, etc. He was responsive but basically stopped trying to see me the rest of that week. I made a decision that we needed to have a conversation, to stay with the spirit of our open communication we had throughout the time we were together. He agreed to meet with me in person, but then we were not able to connect that weekend. His energy and cadence of communication had been reduced to only communicating with me in response to my texts. He didn’t initiate anything after our last date with the awkward moment.
What I learned
That weekend, I had an opportunity to speak with one of my single male friends to get his input on what may have happened. He explained to me that there are men out there that do all the “right” things to make a woman think he is committed to her. They act like a boyfriend, make all the effort to see the woman often, introduce her to his friends, act nurturing, and all the things Joe did, as a way to move the relationship to sex or a stable relationship quickly, more as a goal to achieve. Then once they get what they want, either physical intimacy or achieving the goal of “winning” a woman that was initially adverse to a commitment, the man starts to move on to the next conquest.
I did some further research on this by reading two different books about types of men. I quickly realized that Joe was a “dating imposter.” He knew exactly what to say and how to act to win me over. Because of our frequent interaction in a short period of time, I felt like he was falling for me and it made me take down my guard too soon. I started thinking back to all of our times together and then it hit me like a brick: I had ignored the signs he had given that he actually was a commitment-phobic man.
Some men who have a difficult childhood, or grow up without a father or mother, recreate a situation of pulling someone in and then pushing them away. It’s almost as a way to fill the void that is programmed into their soul from a young age. In Joe’s case, he grew up without a father and his mother left him alone a lot. He had to raise himself through his teenage years. He had something bad to say about every woman that was significant in his life: ex-wife, sister, ex-girlfriend. He thought they all treated him poorly, or cheated on him, or in the case of his sister, he expressed how angry he was that she took advantage of his mother and lived with her rent free. He also shared that he got into a lot of fights as a child because he was so angry about growing up without a father. On our last date, he brought this up. I asked him if he had been to counseling to help him process these feelings, and he said he had gotten over it on his own.
Basically, I ignored the signs that he was an insecure, angry person that has no positive female interactions to speak of and that by pulling me in then drifting away, he was getting back at all the women who had wronged him. The funny thing is, I don’t even think he knows this about himself. I believe that he has built up a wall to cover up all this emotional angst from his childhood. It is buried so far down that I think in his heart of hearts he thinks that he “tries” to be in a relationship, but the women wrong him somehow. Or if the woman doesn’t wrong him, since he expects them to eventually, he bails on them. He actually shared this with me during our open communication lunch after he cancelled our date.
Moving on
At this point, I have moved on to dating other men that are actually happy with the “chase” and like that I don’t respond to all their texts. I took his insecurity in wanting to see and hear from me all the time as him wanting to be my boyfriend, when I was actually filling a hole in his heart for a brief period. It made me sad to realize this, but there is a lesson to be learned here. Never forsake your desired dating pace to satisfy someone else’s insecurity. If you are not comfortable dating just one person, or to put all your eggs in one basket so to speak, it is OK to set your own timing.
As a rule of thumb, a man has to demonstrate consistency in his behavior for at least four to six months before you can see what their true intentions are. Don’t allow “dating imposters” to convince you they are looking for a relationship. By slowing down the frequency of seeing each other and living your life, a relationship will blossom slowly. When you meet someone who seems to be rushing to get to a perceived monogamous relationship, let that little voice inside your head that says “Hmmm, this isn’t the normal way confident people behave during the initial dating stages,” be heard. You control the cadence to suit your comfort level and if they push their agenda, be honest about your concerns.
Hopefully you will not be hijacked by a “dating imposter” as I was. ☺