Ask Elisa Podcast

PODCAST EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to a special Dating Storytime episode of Ask Elisa. I’m Elisa and I’m here with Claudia. In these kinds of episodes, we just share a story from our dating past.

Claudia, would you please do us the honor and share one of your craziest dating stories? I’m really excited to share this. I haven’t heard this too. This is live, my live reaction.

So this story I do think should be like a Netflix show. So that’s where we’re going today. I’m gonna use this man’s first name.

It’s Chad. Matched with this man, I believe it was on Hinge. Chad from Hinge.

Chad from Hinge, which that in and of itself should have made me run the other direction. But Chad, I had been doing some online dating. I had taken a break, gone back on, had like a short stint with somebody else.

And I was like, I don’t even know if I can like people. Like, am I broken? Whatever. I was like, dating is hard.

Sounds about right. Sounds like a normal process of going through dating. Yeah, it’s like the ups and downs.

But then I met Chad and I was like, whoa, this person. We actually have an intellectual connection. He’s intelligent.

He has a good career. And we hit it off. And he told me a little bit about his background.

And you know, I’m, well, you don’t know this, but now you know I’m 42. He was a couple years older. And so like at a certain age, people have history and that’s fine.

That doesn’t scare me away. He told me that he had been married before. And they had a child who unfortunately passed away.

And after their baby, as a baby, after their baby died, she cheated on him and left him like pretty quickly after that. Then he got married again. I think it was in like 2016 he got married.

And then that wife got cancer and died. And so like obviously. Looking back, it’s like that’s a lot of tragedy for one person.

Yeah, yeah. But of course like I’m empathetic and I know that we don’t get to control when those things happen in our lives. He also, most of our interactions was like during the daytime we would like meet for lunch and coffee, which felt like great that he was understanding and wanted to do that.

Like for safety reasons, I wanted to be in public the first time we met, blah, blah, blah. He then, we couldn’t spend time at his house. And it was hard to find some time together because he, let me see how to explain this.

He was raising his, he was helping to raise his niece. His niece was living with him. But it was the daughter of his deceased wife’s brother.

So he, this teenager, had a lot of like behavioral things. And it was like a last ditch effort before this kid like went to residential or something. So staying with Uncle Chad and trying to do life and whatever.

Chad happened to be in a, let’s see, I want to protect some anonymity, in a home fix-it profession. And I had a thing that was broken. He was working on fixing it and he was using his phone as a flashlight, which meant the screen was facing me.

He had previously told me his deceased wife’s name. And then bling, as he’s using the flashlight, a text comes up from said dead wife. And how long had you been dating at this point? Three months.

Whoa. Three months, folks. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

He also had told me that like he hadn’t been dating anybody since his wife passed away. I was the first person that he had been intimate with since his wife passed away. And so there’s like all this history.

He gets a text. And I’m like, I feel super bad because I’m not one that would look at somebody’s phone. But we were both like looking at the thing that he was fixing.

And then the phone was right there. And I just happened to glance at the name. And so then later I was kind of like, I’m really sorry.

I did not mean to look at your phone. I’m not the type of person that would look at your phone. But I saw this.

And he was like, oh, oddly enough, my brother married a woman with the same name. So that’s how it came up. She just happened to have the same name.

It’s not a very uncommon name. It’s also not a very common name. So it was like not a great response.

But I was like, okay. Gave me enough pause that I started Googling him. Okay.

And I had Googled him before. But he had told me he didn’t have any social media. Like in hindsight, I’m like, girl, all these red flags.

But he told me he’d never had social media. He didn’t find value in it. So then he also had told me his, well, let’s see.

In hindsight, when he gave me his last name, he actually gave me his quote-unquote deceased wife’s maiden name as his last name. So when I saw the text, it was like wife’s first name, maiden name, last name. So when I Googled that and his name, I Googled her name, his name, and both of the last names.

And up pops their wedding website, which was just a couple years ago after she had supposedly died. Whoa. So I, and he had told me some truthful things about her.

Like she was a school psychologist. Oh, so he has a type. Yeah, I know.

I know he does. Thought he was a therapist. And we looked really similar.

Like short, kind of curvy, long, dark hair. Same for both of us. So, yeah, I looked her up by her name, and she was still working at these schools in the area.

And so then I was like, maybe I got the timing wrong of when he said she died. So one of my coworkers, I told her all about this, and she called the school to talk to the wife. And she didn’t actually talk to the wife.

Turns out, bearing the lead here, wife’s alive, like fully alive. Found out, yeah, she still works at these schools. So on the wedding website, it was a few years old, but it was still up.

And it was like, if you have any questions, text wife’s name. So I text the wife, and I’m like, is this so-and-so? Yes. Are you married to so-and-so? Yes.

Who is this? I’m so sorry. My name is Claudia. I’ve been dating your.

Apparently, I’ve been dating your husband for the past three months. I did not know he was married. He told me that you were dead, da-da-da.

And so it turns out she was not dead, obviously, and did not know that he was cheating on her. The child that died did not die and was actually the niece, quote-unquote niece, his real daughter that he was referring to as his niece. And talking all this trash about was his daughter from that first marriage.

So he told me that his child died, but really, she didn’t. She grew up. Oh, my gosh.

Told me his wife died. Really, she didn’t. She grew up.

So me and the wife were messaging for a bit, and I had stopped messaging him. Typically, we messaged all throughout the day. But I stopped messaging him, and he was like, hey, is everything okay? And I was like, why are you texting me? You should be texting your wife or your child.

And so then all of a sudden, the texts go from blue to green, so he blocks me. And she asked a few more questions. She said that he’s saying that you lied about this and that this isn’t real.

And I was like, well, do you have any proof? And I was like, I have, yeah, screen recordings. I’ll send you everything that we – I mean, I would have sent her literally our whole conversations if she wanted because I don’t think any man should do that to any woman or vice versa. I don’t think anyone should do it to anyone.

But I had – because I was so enamored with like, oh, my gosh, there’s somebody that I actually intellectually connect with, I had screen recorded his profile and sent it to a friend of mine. So I was like, here you go. And so I sent it to her.

And that is the story of how I dodged the Chad bullet. I mean, did you really dodge it, though? No. I think you got hit by it.

But I wasn’t mortally wounded by it because I – like, the thing is, if I hadn’t have seen that text, I don’t know how long it would have kept going. Yeah. I mean, eventually I would have been like, well, if you’re going to keep dating me, I need to – like, I do need to meet your niece or like something.

But he was framing it that, of course, I wouldn’t have – like, he needs to take it really slow and careful because this is like – A delicate situation. The family of the woman that he was married to that has since died. But no.

And she stayed with him. Oh. I asked because I was – like, a few months later.

In my own, like, therapy. Yeah. You wanted to know.

I didn’t get any closure, so I had reached out to her to say, like, would you be comfortable with me sending him a letter? And she said she would, and she gave me their address, and I sent a letter telling him some choice things about how he needs to get his life together and respect his daughter and respect his wife. And she told me at that time that they stayed together, and I’m like, I do not know. I offered to send the letter to her first so she could read it.

But she didn’t want to, and she – Wow. That’s a story. Yeah.

I mean, I think that is a lot of people’s fear because a lot of – it’s, you know, it’s so common. Or like men saying that they’re in an open relationship when they’re not. I’ve had that too.

Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah, that could be a – I feel like sometimes when there is, like, tragedy clusters and complications, like, those can be a little, like, yellow flags.

Yeah, and it’s hard because if those things were real, I wouldn’t have counted it against him. Like, if those are real, like, that’s not his fault. Yeah.

And he was so calculated. He had so many answers, and he had stories, and he chose to give me, like – he was very strategic in giving me information that was sort of real so that he wouldn’t forget it, and when it came back up – I wonder if he’d done it before because he had – I have to think that he had. Yeah.

Yeah. Because if he had it all kind of figured out – Yep. Yeah.

He had an answer for everything, and so it was very calculated, sociopathic-type behavior. I have never found out that anyone that I dated is married in just this past two years of dating. So I only have had a handful of relationships go past, like, five or six weeks anyway.

Mm-hmm. I think the longest one was maybe, like, three months, but we never, like, became boyfriend and girlfriend. And, yeah, so I never really had anything – I didn’t really have – I haven’t had a lot of experiences that have gone past, you know, a month.

Yeah. A lot of connections that way. Lots of one-to-three dates.

Yeah. But nothing more – not a lot more than that. But that is quite the story.

Thank you so much for sharing. Yeah. Yeah.

It’s like a badge of honor a little bit now because of how ridiculous it is. Yeah, I think it’s really cool that you, like – I mean, some people would say, like, you know, when you are ghosted or when you are lied to or when, you know, you find out somebody’s, you know, bad news to just, like, don’t give them any more of your time. Mm-hmm.

That is a really strong stance that people take, but I find confronting them kind of empowering and therapeutic. It’s not like it has to be something that you’re, like, giving your energy and effort to if you feel like, you know, you’re doing it for yourself. So I will share my dating story time.

It’s a shorter one. It’s just about matching on a dating app and chatting. So I matched with someone who seemed like a pretty good match for me.

We had some things in common. His mother was from South America and my mom is from South America, so we had this kind of cultural connection. A little bit different because his mom was from Brazil and my mom’s from Ecuador, even though they’re right next to each other.

It’s two different languages. We just had that in common, and so we kind of bonded a little bit over that. And he looked very handsome.

He lived maybe like an hour, 45 minutes to an hour away from me. After a few days of chatting, he asked me to meet, and it was maybe like a Thursday, and he asked to meet on the weekend. And I said, this is crazy.

I’ve been on the app with no matches and no dates for so long, and suddenly I have three first dates. I have two first dates this weekend. Can we schedule for next week? And his response was, I only date one person at a time, and I expect whoever I’m dating to do the same.

And I was like, well, honestly, I don’t really like dating multiple people, but I don’t really consider a first date dating. Exactly. And so I was like, how about we just check in next week? And he was like, no, I know what I’m worth.

Ew. And unmatched me. Like this man was expecting me to be exclusive before we even met.

That is insane. He will continue to be single for a long time. Well, I saw him, like a month later, I saw someone post him on one of those, are we dating the same guy? Ooh.

Yeah. And they were saying that he was super creepy, immediately on the first date wanted to go home together, and was really pushy, and got extremely sexual right away. And so, yeah, I’m really glad.

I normally don’t say, oh, I got all these dates lined up. You don’t share that kind of stuff normally, right? And I normally don’t, but for some reason that time I decided to say, because I was just kind of baffled that I had suddenly had a bunch of matches that were actually turning into first dates, when normally I’d been having a bit of a lack of matches recently at that time. So, yeah, when I saw him on there, I was like, whoa.

I mean, I already knew that I got out of something, because that’s a crazy thing to demand of someone you haven’t met. And there have been times where I’ve gone on a date with somebody and it’s gone well, and they’re like, are you dating other people? And I’m like, well, I actually have a first date scheduled later this week or something. And they’re like, okay, I just like, oh, I hope you – I hope he sucks.

Like they just make a joke, you know, like I hope that you like me better than him. And they’re like nice about it, and they don’t – you know, it’s not a big deal if people ask. But most of the time people just don’t ask.

You know, you just assume like you’re getting to know someone, one or two dates in. You don’t need – That’s more like five or six dates in. Right.

And even then it’s a, hey, I really like you, and I would be interested in making this more exclusive. How would that feel to you? Yeah, it’s like a conversation that you have. And the way the guy was like, I know my worth.

I’m like, yep, you sure do. Goodbye. In your delusional world.

Yeah. All right, so thanks for sharing your story. Yeah.

This concludes a special Dating Storytime episode of Ask Elisa. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to Ask Elisa, the good, the bad, and the ick.

I’m your host, Elisa Sparkman. This episode was produced by me and a guy I met on a dating app. Audio engineering, editing, and music by Jacob Patterson.