Scandal, Heartbreak, and Deceit : One Woman's Experience with Online Dating

Reeling from the sudden, shattering implosion of her twenty-eight-year marriage, single mother and health care professional Elizabeth Mahoney turns to online dating sites in hopes of finding a way to heal and move ahead with her life. Instead, she discovers that the site is rife with opportunists who prey on emotionally vulnerable women. After a dizzying series of experiences with a scammer who exploits her trust and intimate confidences to rob her, sexters, married men looking for something on the side and other questionable Lotharios, Elizabeth becomes romantically involved with a man looking for his dream woman in cyberspace.

With sardonic wit, keen psychological analysis and a wisdom born of bitter experience, Scandal, Heartbreak, and Deceit reveals how easily a woman can fall prey to a victimizer if trauma has rendered her susceptible, and provides irrefutable evidence that dating sites and apps are nothing but tricks, lies and scams. In a post #MeToo era, the author examines the dangerous misogynistic attitudes of powerful men, Internet subcultures and other online predators, and discusses the risks of online dating for women.

Beyond the author's own misadventures on Match.com, Scandal, Heartbreak and Deceit brings to light the many faces of intimacy, and shares personal stories of Canadian, U.S. and U.K. women in a modern hook-up culture. Varied perspectives on dating, casual encounters, friends with benefits, serial monogamy and polyamory, including the millennial experience of dating and cohabiting, are explored....