Story of "Tom"

At some point, we all come across a “Tom”, the almost too good to be true person we’ve met online, that makes us have instant butterflies in our stomach. Before we know it, the truth comes out, whether they’re married, not who they say they are, they’re living multiple lives, they’re the “Tinder Swindler”, or in some way, they’ve misrepresented themselves. For some, it is a long slow burn and for others, it’s a quick implosion shortly after meeting that person for when the truth comes out. Either way, when this happens we are left either physically and/or emotionally affected by what happened.

 

The formation of The Dating Sleuth, is due to my “Tom”, shortly before the pandemic when I started to enter the dating world after a 10+ year relationship, it was intimidating, anyone on the internet can become whomever they want, from saying they are single while they are married, lying about their name, age, job, where they live, or anything else they want. I initially struggled in the dating world knowing what was true and what wasn’t. For me, it was the long slow burn until the truth came out, which caused me to take a break from the dating world.

 

I’ve built my career off of research, I'm the type of person that not knowing isn’t good enough. I will always find a way to obtain the information I’m needing. During my break from dating, I replayed my “Tom” relationship in my head hundreds of times. I started to think about how I could take my research skills and find ways to utilize it in the dating world to answer the question we all ask, “Who am I really going on a date with?”. I developed research tactics that paid off, and before I knew it I felt empowered on the dating apps. My friends initially would make jokes about how well-researched I was prior to meeting someone, which quickly turned into them asking for my help while they were dating.

 

Before I knew it, I was getting Facebook messages from people I’ve never met before saying I helped a friend of a friend and they were hoping I could help them as well. This is when I knew the research tactics I developed needed to be accessible on a much bigger scale, so that people could take back control in our current dating world to know, “Who am I really going on a date with?”. 

 

So thank you to my “Tom”, the dating world is more empowered and knowledgeable than prior to The Dating Sleuth.