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[channie80-blog]

PSA to the single ladies on dating apps. Beware of this gem!

Anyone else been "catfished" by Ernest Dudley Wellington III?

I met Dudley on tinder in 2016 when I lived in Phoenix, AZ and talked for about 2 years. His story was that he worked for the government in one of the "secret type agencies". He told me he had a home in Phoenix and was retiring at the end of the year and would be living in AZ full time. He was currently residing in Washington, DC with ties to Michigan and Maryland. We spoke on the phone constantly and texted all the time. We shared pictures and we started talking about a future together. He would send me a picture of a toddler and tell me he wants to have a son like the one in the picture with me. We talked about marriage and a life together.

Naturally I asked about past relationships and he told me that he had a long term relationship with a woman that had a son. It ended because she would never let him full in basically. I opened up about my ex-husband and we talked about what we both wanted out of a partner. With his past military type work, he told me he has severe PTSD so I didn't push for info and tired to be as understanding as possible.

I didn't have any suspicions that he wasn't the man in the photos so when he finally made a trip back to Phoenix to see me after talking for months, I was fully expecting it to be him, and it was. We had a nice evening together talking and hanging out in a public place. We had great chemistry and made out like teenagers (PG/PG-13) stuff in the parking lot. He wasn't sure how long he was going to be able to stay and ended up leaving the next morning, or at least that's what he told me. We continued to talk constantly after our meeting.

The end of 2016 came and went and he said he retired but was staying in DC for his PTSD therapy and treatments. He even made reference to how he should have thought about spousal therapy and how his PTSD could impact me (as a spouse). He told me he was concerned for my safety if he came back before he was ready as he wakes up in the middle of the night in full on panic mode thunking he is being kidnapped and breaking doors. How could I question that?!?

Fast forward to fall of 2017 where I made a plan to come to DC to see him. Shortly after making this plan, he tells me he has to go to South Korea as this is where his team was deploying to should they be needed for the North Korea threat (or something to that tune). He said he was hopeful he would be back by my trip. My BFF was wanting to plan a trip to Baltimore to visit a friend of hers so we ended up making it our annual girls trip and hit up NYC first and then flew to Baltimore. As you can guess, he wasn't back from his trip so I ended up exploring DC solo. Had a fantastic time. Texted and talked to him the entire time while sharing pictures, etc.

I arrived back home and within a few weeks he completely ghosted me. I wake up to a text on a Sunday morning saying that he needed space and vanished. Naturally I freaked out as my heart was sinking and breaking. I tried reaching out a number of times but nothing. I finally get a reply and he tells me he lost a member of his team and was in a bad place. I did my best to give space but it was hard since he had already dropped the "I love you" on me a few months earlier and I was just finally opening up to that possibility that he meant it. Finally letting my guard totally down with this man.

Fast forward again to end of 2018/beginning 2019 and we had been talking a bit more regularly at this point. I was starting to question things as all the pictures he would send me were of him in a car, hotel room, gym or just of his face. I remember asking for a picture of something in his life. He sent me a selfie of just his face and the ceiling and I asked to see his room. For him to show me something in his surrounding. He told me I was weird for asking and that was my last straw. I told him to keep his secrets and deleted every message thread we had. I deleted his phone number and email address.

You know that saying that a mom trying to find their kid can do more digging than the entire FBI....well in 2020 I started to dig. I had to fully let the entire situation go and do some healing due to some things that happened to me directly after he vanished. I had to get into a healthy space again and that took me some time.

I ended up finding his wife's Facebook page. She changed her status to "married" the exact same time he was ghosting me. Looks as if he never left the long term relationship he told me about when we met. Most recently, I relocated to Indianapolis for work and was on Bumble. I have lived here for about 5 months now and done my fair share of swiping but a couple weeks ago his face popped up on my screen and my heart about sank. He is a lying, cheating, predator that looks for women to string along and waste time with in random cities. Of course I swiped on him (his profile picture was rhe same one that he used in 2016) and we matched. Either he didn't recognize me because he does this to so many women or he was expecting g a different message than what I sent. Either way, he deleted the match immediately and never replied to me.

This is my PSA to all the single women out there. His name is Ernest Dudley Wellington III. He has been linked to Silver Springs, MD / Washington, DC / Michigan. He claims to be a contractor for one of the government agencies and travels a lot. I have attached some of the pictures I have of him as well as the most recent screen grabs of his Bumble account that I encountered in Indy. Beware of him. He seems like a good dude but he IS NOT.