Name: Cassandra
 

Info:: It all started with my own personal ad on Astro Match, complete with a photo of myself.  One day, to my surprise and delight I had a response from what appeared to be a really nice guy from Raleigh, North Carolina named David.  I waited a couple of days, played it cool and finally wrote back to him.  He responded immediately and a whirlwind romance ensued.  We started corresponding in late November, and were speaking on the telephone by the end of the first week in December.

His photo was very nice and he seemed genuinely interested in me.  We made plans to meet in the beginning of January.  Our conversations grew in length from a few minutes to a few hours each night.  We were both single and had our own places.  We had a lot in common and figured that we would make a good pair!  We couldn't wait to meet each other.  He filled me in on the details of his life.  He said that he was in the Army for ten years, but was currently in the reserves.  He was married at one point, but came back from being stationed somewhere and was faced with the realization that his wife was pregnant with another man's child.  He worked for the state as a computer programmer and had a side business of public pay telephones.  He also informed me that he raced motorcycles!  Wow, this guy really did a lot!

I must have been feeling blue about the upcoming Christmas holiday and the fact that I was living alone, and my family being so far away from me.  During a phone conversation I mentioned that I wish we could be together for New Year's.  He said that had plans to go to Paris to visit a friend, but those plans may fall through, especially since I was interested in going down there to visit him.  Within several days plans were made for me to fly down to Raleigh for New Year's; I got lucky and found a reasonable airfare through USAir, that I had to pay for.  We spoke on the telephone even more up until the day that I flew down to meet him.  We even discussed the possibility of my moving down there to live with him in several months.  Things were moving along at a wonderful pace; only we hadn't met face to face just yet.

When I arrived in Raleigh, David was waiting for me at the gate.  We were both happy with what we saw and proceeded to have a great New Year's and a beautiful weekend together.  We even started talking about my moving in with him and he even took me house-hunting with him, as he was planning on moving out of his large 2-bedroom apartment and into his own house.  The houses he was looking at weren't cheap.  They had price tags of $200,000.  Plans were still on for him to come up and see me the following weekend and I couldn't wait.  I was growing more and more attached each day.  When he was up the following weekend I introduced him to my best friend and her husband and we all went out for an evening together.  Things were moving along so nicely and with all of the bad luck I have had in the past, something told me that it was just too good to be true.

We saw each other two more weekends during the month of January, and still spoke frequently, although the e-mails became less frequent.  USAir had their E-Savers program during that time and I was able to get bargain airfare ($70 round trip) so I could go down and see him for a weekend.  He paid for me one weekend to fly down; the remaining time I ran up my credit card.

During January I realized that Valentine's Day a month away I hinted about the possibility of us getting together for that particular weekend.  He told me that he was flying to Turkey to go snowboarding with a friend of his that lives there that he knew from when he was in the Army.  At the end of January he called me one day and told me that he was being laid off due to the fact that the company he worked for lost their contract with the state of North Carolina.  That's when things started to go bad between us and things started getting strange.

He supposedly took off to go on this overseas stint conveniently for the week leading up to Valentine's Day weekend with the promise of calling me while I was staying with my family for a few days.  Of course I did not hear from him.  I was starting to get worried by the end of the week that I had not heard from him and attempted to leave a message for him on his cell phone, which he used frequently.

To my surprise, he answered his cell phone when I called it to leave a message for him.  I didn't know what to say or if I should simply hang up.  He said he just got back in town and that he was at Ft. Bragg when I called.. I smelled a rat at that point.

The telephone conversations between us started becoming a bit strained.  There was less and less mention of my moving down there; I also had realized that I started bringing quite a bit of clothes down there during each visit and leaving it at his place; all at his urging.  If things didn't work out, how was I supposed to get my things back?

During sometime in January he had made plans to come up the weekend after Valentine's Day and had bought his plane tickets at that time.  I figured everything would be ok once he came up.

Before that weekend I enlisted the help of an on-line organization that did background checks and had one done on him.  According to what they came up with, David was never in the Army.  As a matter of fact, all of his addresses were throughout the Raleigh-Durham area.  When someone is in the armed forces, they normally have an APO address, but this guy only had P.O. Boxes for address before his current address.  It was also brought up that he was arrested for assaulting a woman several years ago; and that he was never married before, nor did he own any property or any businesses.

I didn't know what to think.  Surely there must have been a mistake.  Why would he lie to me about these things?  I wasn't certain what to do. We spoke several times the week after Valentine's Day, but I knew that the magic was gone between us.  I went to the airport to wait for his flight to arrive that Friday night.  We had made plans to visit my best friend and her husband after his flight arrived.  David got off the plane and I noticed immediately that he was drunk.  There wasn't anything adorable about him.  I was wearing a new ring on my ring finger of my left hand that was an heirloom that I finally had sized to fit me; on the way to my girlfriend's house, David said something to the effect that we'll have to replace that with another ring. I still didn't know what to think; this guy was talking out his ass.  To make matters worse, there was no Valentine's Day card or gift to make up for us not being together for Valentine's Day; I was heartbroken.

The weekend was not good at all.  He avoided all topics of conversation that pertained to our relationship and my moving down there.  He basically yesed me to death, but did not want to elaborate on anything, not matter how much I pressed him.  I brought him to the airport that Monday morning before I went to work and he couldn't wait to get away from me.  I was crushed to say the least.  I felt stupid and betrayed in that I had been taken for yet another ride by a man.  I had clothes at this guy's place and I wondered if I had asked him to send my things back, would he or would he just throw them out?  My gut told me that he wouldn't send anything back to me, so I figured I had to make one final trip down to North Carolina.

He apparently had to be in Daytona for the motorcycle races in early March, or so he claimed, and while he promised me he would call, he did not.  He used some lame excuse that there weren't any phones around and that he didn't have time to call.  This man used to have all of the time in the world for me and now he couldn't even give me the time of day.  We talked on the telephone off and on, but it was not the same as it was in the beginning.  I pinned him down for a weekend in April so I could go down there and get my stuff.  I finally got smart and met someone else by the beginning of March.  At that point, I just needed some closure with David, at any cost.

Luckily I didn't get too close too soon with the new man in my life so I was able to extricate myself from this guy for a Friday night in April to fly down to North Carolina.  When I had made my flight arrangements sometime in March, I had originally planned on staying from Friday until Monday like I usually did.  When the time came closer, that week in fact, I called USAir to change my return flight to a Sunday only to find out that it would cost me $500 more to do this!  There was no way that I could be away for several days, without being able to call, with the new man in my life.  At that point I didn't give a damn and paid the extra $500 and got upgraded to first class in the process.  I would fly down on a Friday night and return the following morning.  I felt like I was on some sort of secret mission!  I would come up with a creative lie about why I had to come back the following day and no one would be the wiser.

I flew into North Carolina that Friday night and lied my ass off when I saw David by telling him that I had to return the following morning because I had to go to New York City for business.  He knew what my job entailed and that I did travel on occasion, so it didn't really phase him in the least.  The son of a bitch practically ignored me the entire evening.  When we got back to his place I took a look around and noticed that a lot had changed since I had been there last.  A buddy of his had moved into the second bedroom (probably to help him pay the rent) and the few pictures of him and I were now gone from sight, along with my toiletries, which were in the bathroom the last time I was down.  I asked him about the pictures being gone and he told me that he had put them in storage.  I asked him about my toiletries and he told me that when his buddy moved in, a cleaning lady came in and she must have put my things away. While he was sitting in the living room, having a beer, I went into his bedroom and removed my things from one of his dresser drawers along with my few things from his closet and stashed everything into my suitcase.

We spent that final night together and he brought me to the airport the following morning, walked me to my plane and we have not spoken since.  It was well worth the $500 extra to fly down there and get my stuff and to put some closure to whatever it was that started out so good and went so bad.

I learned my lesson though.  Be careful with long distance relationships.  A lot could go wrong and both of you have to be committed to the relationship in order for it to work.  Communication is very important and whatever you do, do not keep things at each other's place unless you are living together!  It also helps to get some background checks done on the individual; it's worth it and doesn't need to cost more than $75.

It's so easy to meet someone on the internet and feel that connection.  It is magical, I must admit, but be smart and do a background check before making emotional and financial investments that could cost you nothing but money, grief and heartache, not to mention the inability to trust again for a long time.  There are plenty of bullshit artists out there, both men and women, so be careful!

There is a happy ending though.  The new boyfriend (who I mentioned towards the end of this story) and I are very happy together and loving each other more and more every day.  We have been living together for over a year now and looking forward to each day we spend together!
 

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