The day I found out my partner of 10 years had a secret life catfishing women

Clara found out that the ‘boringly normal’ man she was planning to marry had been using the image of a black man he had found on a dating app to form online relationships with women

False pretences: Clara found out that her former partner had been catfishing

John Meagher

The email piqued my interest immediately. It was one of several I had received in the wake of a pair of articles some weeks back about having my identity stolen by someone unknown to me. Through enormous good fortune, I had managed to find and confront the catfish who was using an old photo of me to connect with women on dating apps. The experience seemed to connect with several readers, including Clara from Cork.

She had been sufficiently moved by my strange tale to write to me about her own experience. “I don’t really think this angle has been told much,” she said, when I spoke to her on the phone a couple of days later.