Barbara B.

Like most others, I was suckered into paying for a subscription so I could read my messages. I was quickly matched with an extremely high amount of men, and I had just as many men interested in me and requesting to chat with me. I began chatting with several different men. The first man I became interested in lived 373 miles away. After chatting on Zoosk for a while, he asked to chat with me via phone. I provided him with my number. We chatted via phone/text and he soon invited me to visit him. He paid for me to come to see him and we had a great time and really connected. I thought he was a wonderful man. I stayed for 5 days and we set up another trip, this time to come and stay for 10 days. In the meantime, he became ill and was hospitalized. I still talked to him everyday and when things were bad, I communicated with his daughter. He was in the hospital and rehab a total of 3 weeks and my trip was coming up in a week. He was anxious to see me. I talked to him on a Wednesday, and didn't hear from him the next day or the following day. When I tried to contact him, his phone would ring, I would leave messages, send texts - no response. Finally - a 3-line text saying "I'm sorry I've been so difficult lately. I really need to get my health straightened out. We'll see what happens at that point." That was it. I never heard from him again. He never officially "broke up" with me, he never officially cancelled the trip, etc. I was just left to wonder what happened. I did a little background searching on him and found out he had lied to me. He said he was married and divorced twice. He left out the third marriage and divorce I found on his county website. He also committed tax fraud on five years of his returns. The lawsuit against him was dropped when he filed Chapter 11 (Corporate reorganization) bankruptcy. I cautiously moved on to another man who was nice and a little bit closer (90 miles). Same scenario, chatted on Zoosk, moved on to talking/texting on phone. He asked to come to see me. We set up the date and time and talked the day before. He was to call me when he was on the road, but said the call should come around 12:30 p.m. That time came and went. At 1:30 p.m., I called him - two rings and it went to voicemail. He finally called me to say (in his fake shaky voice) that he was sick and had been trying to work up the courage to call and tell me he wasn't coming. In the meantime, I had spruced up my house, gone to the store to get some snacks, and got ready. Total time spent - approximately 4 hours. I told him that it wasn't a problem and we could reschedule some other time if he wanted. Still, the whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth since he had known the entire day that he wasn't going to come to see me and could have cancelled before I went to all the trouble of preparing for his visit. He contacted me the next day and asked to reschedule the date. We set it up for the next week, and every time I communicated with him thereafter, I asked if the date was still on, and every time he replied "yes." The night before the date he sent me a text saying that he had looked at a couple of places to eat and said his plan was to be on the road by 2 p.m., to arrive at 3:30 p.m. He said he would call me before Noon. Noon came and went. At 12:10 p.m., I called him. Same thing happened as the previous time - phone went to voicemail after 2 rings. I texted him - no response. At 12:30 p.m., I called again - same thing. At 1 p.m. I sent him a text and said that it was over an hour past the time he said he was going to call and that if he was planning on being on the road in an hour, that I would think he would be up and about and would have long since contacted me. Finally, about 15 minutes later, I received a text from him saying, "no matter what I say you are probably not going to believe me..." He went on to say that his days and nights had been mixed up for a few days and that when I called him the first time he had only been asleep for 3 hours and there was no way he could drive down to see me on 3 hours of sleep. I asked him why he hadn't simply called me when he went to bed at 9 a.m. to say he was just going to sleep and would not be able to come down. He had no answer for me. Luckily, this time I had done no preparation, not even getting ready as my gut instinct was he was going to do this again. I went on to learn that although his profile said he was "divorced," he was not actually "divorced," rather "separated." I told him that Zoosk had the option of putting "separated" as a status and asked why he didn't do that. He said it was because his divorce was going to be final "soon," and that he had been "separated" for 7 years; also, because women would just go right past him if he put "separated" as his marital status. So - another man who lied! In every conversation that I had with him, this man referred to the woman he was married to as "my wife." He never once referred to her as his "ex," or "soon to be ex," etc. It was why I questioned him about being married, and he told me he was "separated." I don't believe for one minute that this man was in the process of a divorce. Someone who had been separated for 7 years would not continually talk about his wife using the term, "my wife." I asked the man to never contact me again and blocked him on Zoosk and on my Facebook page. Unfortunately, I can't completely block him from my phone, but so far, he has not tried to contact me. I am now, again very cautiously, dating a man from Zoosk who only lives a few miles from me and has been a gentleman in every way. He is kind and gentle and I hold out some hope for this relationship. I went into such details about my first two experiences on Zoosk because I want to warn women to be very, very careful on this website. Even though we may feel safe with verified photos, phone numbers, email addresses and FB pages, these things definitely do NOT mean that a man is being honest. I wish that I could post the names of these men so that other women could be forewarned, but I know that is defamation of character, and so I can't do it. Hopefully my experiences will be enough that women will do a little background checking on the men they are going to date BEFORE they date them, rather than the way I did it - which was after the fact. Sorry for the long story, but if it helps just one person, then it was well worth the read!