DEAR JANE: I fell head over heels in love with a man I met online - but when we met in person for the first time I was HORRIFIED

Dear Jane,

I recently met a man online and fell very much in love. I never believed that people could fall in love online, that they could form such a strong connection without actually meeting in person… until it happened to me.

It happened quite by chance; a friend set me up with a dating profile after we’d had a few drinks one night, declaring that it was time for me to move on from my most recent break-up and find someone new. 

We spent a few giggly hours flipping through all of the profiles on there, laughing at the cringe-worthy come-ons and the awkwardly-posed pictures. But then we got to a guy who really caught my eye. 

He was handsome, his answers to those inane prompts they give you seemed entirely genuine and very witty, and I didn’t get the same ‘ick’ that I’d experienced with every other profile I’d seen.

So I reached out, on a whim, not really ever expecting to hear back.

But hear back I did – and it wasn’t long before I started to feel real chemistry with this guy. We moved our chat from the app to text, and from there we even had a couple of phone conversations. Every time we spoke I fell a little harder.

I wasn’t foolish enough to think he wouldn’t have flaws – we all do – but there was something about him that just made the whole scenario feel different. It felt natural, it felt easy, and that’s really all I’d been looking for.

When we first ‘met’ online, he was living about three hours away from me – but he was already in the process of planning to relocate to the city where I’m based. So I figured we’d take it slow, see whether the connection was really there, and by the time he moved, we’d know whether it was something we wanted to take to the next level with actual dates.

Finally, after four months of talking pretty much every day, we had our first official meet-up scheduled. We were going to grab coffee and just kind of wander around, see where the day took us.

I felt all of the emotions: nervous, excited, giddy, panicked… there was a lot going on! But when I turned up at the coffee shop I was thrilled to see him standing there, looking every inch the man I’d come to know and, well, love.

But after we grabbed our coffees, he sat me down and said there was something he needed to tell me. Alarm bells immediately went off. It was then that he revealed that he’s a double amputee who had both legs amputated when he was a child. I was absolutely stunned. It felt like the ocean started pounding against my ears and I went completely deaf as he continued to explain, even lifting up his pants to show me his prosthetic legs.

Stupidly, I actually burst into tears. Not, I should point out, because the idea of being with an amputee was in any way repulsive to me, although I’ll admit it was an idea I’d never really considered, but more because I truly felt as though I had known this person. That he’d been completely honest with me and had held nothing back. I know I hadn’t!

It’s not the truth behind the lie that has left me feeling sick to my stomach here, it’s the fact that he lied in the first place. Or hid the truth, or whatever you want to call it. It’s shattered pretty much every bit of trust that was built up during those four months of talking, and I now find myself frantically analyzing all of our conversations and poking holes in everything he’s said.

I know deep down he’s still the guy I fell for. But this lie feels like it’s poisoned everything we had.

Am I stupid for feeling that way?

From,

Bitter Truth

Dear Bitter Truth,

There is not an easy answer to this. 

I feel compassion for you, and how you are feeling about what you perceive to be a betrayal, and compassion for him, for not being able to tell you about being an amputee.

The thing is, this isn’t a lie, but rather an omission of the whole truth. The fact that he didn’t tell you from the get-go tells me that either he has had bad experiences with women in the past once he has told them, or, that he carries shame about being an amputee. 

My guess is that it’s more likely to be fear around how women react when he tells them, and honestly, even though of course it’s something that could have, and one might say, should have been revealed to you in the beginning, my heart breaks a little at how difficult this must be for him, and how he might have been rejected in the past.

I urge you to talk to him about this, and why he didn’t tell you. I am imagining that once you discover the reasons behind his omission, you may find you have more compassion and empathy; you may understand exactly why he kept this from you.

I don’t see this as a betrayal, but rather one man dealing with difficult circumstances who has previously been made to feel shame. It only poisons a relationship if you let it. 

Finally, I would caution you ever so slightly in thinking you have fallen in love with someone you only knew from talking on the phone. Phone calls and Zoom chats are not real. Loving someone requires time, patience, building trust, and connection in real life.

I hope you work things out with him and wish you well.

Dear Jane,

My marriage has fallen apart thanks to the shocking behavior of my in-laws and I don’t know how I can possibly move forward with them in my life.

This all started when I was pregnant with my daughter, who is now four, and my husband and I decided to move in with his parents – under the strict understanding that it was a temporary situation, and that we still needed to be able to come and go as we pleased conditions that they happily agreed to.

During the pregnancy, his mother kept making snide comments about everything I was doing; to her mind, I could do nothing right. I wasn’t eating enough ‘healthy’ food, I wasn’t doing the right pre-natal exercises, I wasn’t doing enough to stimulate my baby’s development… the list goes on and on.

The only thing worse about her behavior was that my husband fully took her side.

After my daughter was born, I struggled with post-natal depression. But rather than help me with the care of my child, my in-laws saw it as an opportunity to bad-mouth me to my husband. 

They told him I wasn’t pulling my weight with our baby, that I was using my depression as an ‘excuse’ to be lazy, and that it wasn’t fair of me to dump everything in his lap, despite the fact that I was doing everything in my power to share the load, while also trying to stop myself from falling apart at the seams.

Eventually, it became too much for me and our marriage fell apart, and I’m now happy to say I’m living in my own home, with my daughter by my side. But my husband is still living with his parents, and thanks to our custody arrangement, I still have to see them once a week. 

And every time I do I’m filled with such rage and sadness – and I can tell that this is starting to rub off on my daughter.

I would obviously much rather she didn’t have to spend any time with them at all, but she does. I can’t stop her from seeing her father, nor can I demand that he live apart from his parents. But she’s started crying and yelling every time we go to their house – and my husband is accusing me of purposefully poisoning her against him.

How can I resolve these feelings so I don’t spread my fury to my innocent child?

From,

Simmering Rage

Dear Simmering Rage,

As painful as it is to break up a family, I acknowledge you whole-heartedly for moving on. 

However wonderful your husband may have been, the fact that his parents are still so involved in his life, that your first port of call was to move in with them, and that now he, an adult man, is choosing to live with them, tells me there are some serious enmeshment/co-dependency issues going on between your (now ex-) husband and his parents, and you are wise to remove yourself.

That unhealthy enmeshment prevented him from standing up to his parents, from setting appropriate boundaries to make it clear that you are now the primary woman in his life, letting them know that his family – he, you and the baby – is sacred, and it is not their place to say anything about it.

First of all, I see no reason why you have to see his parents during the custody exchange. 

Have your husband come out to the car to pick up your daughter, or insist on meeting elsewhere. I know just how painful it is to feel that your in-laws were the cause of your break-up, and until that healing starts, I think it best for you to restructure the custody setting so you don’t have to see them.

But you do have to deal with your rage and sadness. It isn’t appropriate for your daughter to be witness to this. 

However much you dislike your husband’s parents, they are your daughter’s grandparents and I urge you to learn to process your feelings about them away from your daughter. 

Find a good therapist, either local or online, and start to heal this pain. I wish you well.