Digital Dating Red Flags #141

Your gut says something is off, but you keep dating them anyway. That’s the uncomfortable truth we get into with Anonymous Andrew, a host and storyteller who turned a painful, gaslighting-filled relationship into a deep dive on digital dating, dating apps, and why so many of us repeat the same patterns even when we “should know better.”

We talk about what happens when attraction and loneliness collide with codependency, anxious attachment, and the anxious-avoidant loop. We also unpack the culture shift that makes modern dating feels harder than it did years ago, even for people who are tech-savvy and comfortable online.

Then we get practical. Romance scams are no longer obvious, and AI-generated profile photos make it easier than ever to fake a person. There’s also a surprising overlap between heartbreak and exploitation, including “soulmate” promises that can turn into coercive, pay-to-belong systems.

If you’re navigating online dating, trying to avoid scammers, or rebuilding your confidence after a toxic relationship, this conversation gives you language, perspective, and a plan. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with the biggest dating red flag you’ll never ignore again.

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Anonymous Andrew

Tamara 0:00

Welcome to the Straight From the Source's Mouth Podcast. Frank talk about sex and dating. Hello, it's Tamara here. Welcome to the show. Today's guest is Anonymous Andrew. He is a host, storyteller, and founder of Anonymous Andrew Podcast Studios. Thanks for joining me, Andrew.

Anonymous Andrew 0:16

Tamar, thank you for having me. Um it's a pleasure.

Tamara 0:19

Yes, I think we have a lot of similar cover a lot of similar subjects on our podcast. So do you want to talk about it?

Anonymous Andrew 0:27

Sure. So I like to give Podmatch a uh a shout out. So Tamara and I belong to an organization called Pod Podmatch, which is now a podcast network, and the founder is growing it. So that's how Tamar and I came to know each other. Um but so three and a half, something years ago, I was in a relationship with a Latino woman who I was head over heels with, and it was about a three-year relationship, and it was, I thought the so I'm divorced, remarried, divorced, three grandchildren. There were two grandchildren and three children, yada yada. But that was a millennium ago, it feels like

Heartbreak, Sobriety, And A New Show

Anonymous Andrew 1:10

many, many years ago. And over the last 10, 15 years, I've also gotten into sobriety. I'm I'm an alcoholic in sobriety, and I've been dating, and the dating world has the dating world has uh changed dramatically. And so I'm talking about as a single person getting into the dating world and as a um person in the dating world uh dating somebody, I got my heart broken really badly in this last relationship, and I fell for something that I I really shouldn't know better. I'm an educated person, I'm an IT director, I have some background in psychology and suicide prevention. And so I'm not just your run-of-the-mill, you know, whatever. I'm I I consider myself an educated person, but you can have a relationship with somebody and let the human side, codependency, which we were talking about earlier, take over. And before you know it, you're lost. You lost your own identity in in another in a relationship with somebody where you're constantly chasing them, and that's called anxious anxiety, or or if you if you know the the love attachments and uh and the love languages and all that. And I've done a lot of work on that over the last couple of years, but I I got burnt really badly. This woman was gaslighting and cheating on me, and I it it I saw it, but I dig I ignored it and I thought it would go away, and it didn't go away. And and long story short, I finally ended it, but it took a year and a half for me to really walk away after I found out about it. And I was sitting home really boo-hoo, boo hoo me. Poor me, poor me, poor me, poor me. A drink. And I I I didn't drink because I have 10 years, but I said, I what just happened to me, nobody else could have possibly it couldn't have happened to anybody else because I found out that she was an escort, she had an OnlyFans channel, she was uh uh uh you know, she was doing all sorts of adult entertainment stuff. And lo and behold, I I started a podcast, and it was called the Anonymous Andrew Podcast, and it was just about my story. I just to marry, I just wanted to get out there and tell my story and and see if anybody else related to it. And next thing I know, people are telling me, you're not alone. Yeah, I'm my girlfriend was an OnlyFans, my girlfriend was a prostitute, blah, blah, blah. And so it morphed into a more of a all-inclusive. So I stopped complaining about me and my dating life and my girlfriend and and my and my heartbreak. And I started to want to and and learn about why people do this to each other. And so I got into I'm in my fourth season now on digital dating, and and now we're working, we're looking into what is happening

Why Modern Dating Feels Harder Now

Anonymous Andrew 4:00

in the modern dating society. Um I I noticed you had Paul Bauer on a couple days ago or one of your last episodes. I know Paul for a while, and Paul's a great guy. Um, I had him on my show as well. And um there's there's a there's a there's something going on in the dating world. Everything post so the P the Me Too movement, uh, I mean, I could go back as far as the George Floyd shooting, and but all the world events that have happened over the past, everything, including COVID and after COVID, has changed our society to the point where it just doesn't look the same. Now, I I I don't know how old you are, and I'm not gonna guess, and I'm not gonna ask you, but I'm in my 60s and I grew up in a completely different world. But I but I'm an IT guy and I morphed into the IT world and I embraced technology. I know I'm a podcaster, I'm a computer consultant, I'm a network administrator. So I'm I'm not a I know my stuff, but somehow I can't make heads or tails of what's going on in this dating world. I have dating apps, I'm checking out all the new AI dating apps, and I took a year or two off from dating because I just wanted to focus on the podcast. And like you had mentioned earlier, I was you were code, you said you were codependent, you're recovering a codependent. So I am too. I I had this need to have a woman on my arms, I had a need to have love, I need needed to be in a relationship until I found out that I really didn't. I didn't need all that. So uh, so yeah, that's my digital dating. I'm it I uh it's an all-inclusive relationship podcast, just tapping into our psyche, what's going on, men and women, young and old, all generations, is this and and and into the to the LBGTQ community. I'm a big LGBTQ um supporter. And I'm just trying to find out why dating in 2025 is so difficult when 15, 20 years ago it was so easy. I I and I don't want to sound like a Playboy or any kind of a but when I was single and I loved relationship ended, I went out and found another one ultimately and was in that for. But here's the problem like you, maybe like you, they weren't sustainable. So I get into a relationship and 18 months later it broke up, and then I get into another relationship, and a year later it broke up, and then so finally I had to stop and say, What's the common denominator here? It's me. You know, I I'm the one that's finding these women and going on dates and forming relationships, but then they end. And COVID was one of the last ones that ended very badly, and I think a lot of relationships ended at at the beginning of COVID. And I found somebody after that was the Latina, but that also broke my heart, and so I'm I'm I don't want to repeat the story.

The Cult Angle Behind Heartbreak

Anonymous Andrew 7:15

Along the way, I got introduced to the world of cults, and by accident, and uh it's a long story, but I'll just say that somebody came to me in the dating podcast and said, There's a cult in America called the Twin Flames Universe. You may or may not have heard of them. There they have a documentary on Netflix, there's a documentary on the on Amazon about this husband and wife who has a website, and you go on there, and if you are heartbroken and you lost your your soulmate, they will find you your next soulmate. But they they tell you that you have to pay for courses and become it's an MLM, you know, multi-level marketing kind of a scheme. And they just got raided um two months ago by the FBI, but they were around for about eight, nine years sucking money out of the young teenagers, adolescents who were who were breaking, their hearts were being broken, and they were they were they were focusing on these young teenagers and adolescents, and even adults who but you had to pay like $100 to join, and then the next one you had to pay $200 to get one course, and then but they wanted you to teach, they wanted you to become a coach, so you had to take a $4,000 course, and people were doing this, and the people that ran this cult became multimillionaires, and there that's when the documentaries came out, and nobody could believe how people were falling for this. I got involved on my dating podcast, and my audience said no, we don't want to hear anything about that. We we we came to hear about your dating and dating apps and online dating and what we should do. We don't want to care, we don't care about cults. So I found somebody who was interested in co-hosting because she was a cult survivor, and we started a second podcast called Cultimatum, the culture of cults and human trafficking, and it's about people who have it been like Jehovah's Witnesses, they've been uh the the children of God, the ordinance, the uh the Mormons, yeah, God I can go on, Scientology, all of them. And they're ex-members, and now they come out and tell their story on our podcast. Uh, we've had lawyers on, we've had professionals, professors on, we've had all sorts of people come on and tell us about cults. And I found out something very interesting that when you hear the word cult, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?

Tamara 9:59

Um, it's people being forced or or not unable to leave. I don't know.

Anonymous Andrew 10:05

Oh, okay. That's an that's an a description of what happens if you join one. If I said to you, what's the last cult you heard of?

Tamara 10:15

Yeah, I watched a show on Netflix about one of them, but I can't remember the name or okay.

Anonymous Andrew 10:20

Okay, so uh what I'm fishing for is like Jonestown, where um drink the Kool-Aid and you know many many people drank the Kool-Aid and they killed themselves. So that that happened back in uh in the 1970s or 80s. But there was many, many, many, many cults along the way. But those are the big newsworthy cults. But today in 2025, there are over could they estimate close to a million cults in the global world, and they they could range from just a group of 20 people to a to a massive the uh the Luz de Mundo from Mexico is one of the largest Hispanic cults in the world, and the bottom line with the cults is child trafficking and and pedophilia, and a lot of the cult leaders are some of them are now doing time lifetime in prison for trafficking children.

Tamara 11:18

When did you when did you start

Red Flags, Gaslighting, And Codependency

Tamara 11:20

your the dating podcast, Beck?

Anonymous Andrew 11:21

It's gotta be two and a half, three years ago. Um, and then the cult podcast was about a year and year and a half after that. So I but I've been in the business about three and a half years, give or take.

Tamara 11:34

What are some of the stuff you cover on the dating one? Do you go talk about sex as well or just dating?

Anonymous Andrew 11:40

Well, everything. So yeah, everything. So at the very beginning, it was really just me telling my story about how this woman gaslit me. So we I dealt no, uh and I know you and and a lot of podcasters, including myself, hear these words everywhere on social media. We're gonna hear them on is things like narcissism, all right? And uh all the buzzwords we're hearing, uh gaslighting, things like that. But these are real things. And uh what I was experiencing in my relationship with this woman was she was a narcissist, she was on the spectrum. I'm not gonna label her because I'm not a professional, but she had all the symptoms of NPD, narcissistic personality disorder. And I did get her to go to a psychiatrist, and she was borderline, uh, she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which is a different type of disorder. But anyway, she I would catch her doing things and she would deny them. But I caught her red-handed. Like I what I don't need to get into examples, but it's like walking into your room and seeing your husband in bed with somebody else, and and you say, I caught you, and she looks at you and says, No, you don't. There's nobody in my you ever hear that expression that you know you caught me, but you did you don't really see what you're seeing? And that's what she did to me. And I believed it. I saw the evidence and I believed it. So for years, that years, for the first season or two, I I went on my digital dating and I talked about gaslighting and how to identify if you're dating somebody, how to identify the person who might be a narcissist or might be a gaslighter, a liar, a cheater, all the red flags that I experienced going into this relationship that I now looking back saw, but I ignored.

unknown 13:38

Yeah.

Tamara 13:38

Do you want to talk about some of those like red flags or like sure.

Anonymous Andrew 13:42

Well, I can be specific. We met on e we met on e Harmony, and when when we went on a couple dates, and I by the way, she was a Latina, she was a Miss Universe contestant from South America. She was 10 years younger than me, and I phenomenally, beautifully gorgeous, just gorgeous. And and and this is where the male mind will sometimes melt and just not think logically. And I would have done anything for her, and I did. And that's where you get in trouble. So if Paul if Paul Bauer was here, he would really he would scold me. So yeah, I I she sat on my couch and said, Well, number one, I'm still living with my ex-husband. I divorced my ex-husband because he cheated on me, but I live in the upstairs apartment because we don't want to we don't want to sell the house. Well, that's a red flag. Because what does that tell me? That when people divorce, now I know you're gonna hear it from time to time that some people divorce, but they don't literally divorce. I mean, they don't split up because of financial whatever. But she was living with him and then and and they would interact. But anyway, that was one red flag. And then the second one was she got married to another woman to get her green card to become a citizen in the United States. So she was pretending to be a lesbian and got legally married in the state of New York to get her green card. Kind of why I did the whole anonymous thing, because I don't want to out her. And she did she hurt me, but I I'm not looking to out her and get her in trouble or deport her because I don't know if she's here legally. Anyway, that those she sat there and told me that, and I even met the woman who married her, and then the next thing came was you can't post any photos of us on Facebook. I'm like, why not? Well, if immigration sees that I'm dating you, then my marriage is a fraudulent marriage. You see where I'm going? So these are flags, red lifeguard red flags. But I sat there like a little puppy dog and looked at this beautiful woman and said, I don't care. That's fine. Whatever you want, I'll do it. Because I just looked at this woman and said, I will never get this caliber woman again. And that is me selling my soul to the devil. That's literally what that was. And I'm I'm I'm bargaining with the devil now to get my soul back.

unknown 16:25

Let's just put it that way. Yeah.

Anonymous Andrew 16:28

So that's just an eye, just an example of some of the red flags. There was many, many, many more.

Tamara 16:33

Yeah, and then you mentioned being codependent, kind of fostered that as well or furthered that. We want to talk about what you know of codependency or how you are codependent or yeah.

Anonymous Andrew 16:44

Well, codependent, uh it turns out that I'm the one that's the tox. So in a codependent relationship, if I'm the one that's the anxious attachment and I feel as if she's got she's pulling the strings, she's the one in charge now because she knows that I will do anything to keep her. So she calls the shots, and all of a sudden, on a Friday night, we had plans, and she would say, You know what? I'm not gonna see you tonight. I'm gonna go out with my girlfriends. At the last minute, you know, you and I talked about canceling podcast uh guests. She would cancel on me all the time. And the next day she'd come over, we maybe go to the beach or something. And um, do you have an explicit warning on your? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So she'd come over the next day, and we would have to go to the beach and come home, take a shower, and then we'd have our intimate time, basically going in the bedroom, having sex. And then I but I would see indications that she had sex already within the last 24 hours. Just use your imagination. And I would say to her, What's that? And she would say, What's what? And I'd I'd point it out, and like you could tell, and she's like, I don't know what you're talking about. So codependency is just that's just one example of like I didn't want to know the truth, and I didn't care to know, and I just said, Okay, and it went on with it. Codependency is buying her flowers and uh doing whatever she wants to do to keep her happy, to keep her pleased, because if I didn't, she'd I'd be I'm walking on eggshells. And the days that she pulled away from me, because I I was the anxious attachment, but she was the voidant attachment, so she'd pull away, pull away, pull away, and I'd be chasing, chasing, chasing. And the more I chased, the more she pulled away. And that's how codependency works. Um, I'm the codependent, she's the one that's got me on the dog leash, you know. And um Yeah, like that's not how I was raised. That's not how that's and also just to keep in mind that I'm in the 12-step program, which they teach you how to have self-respect for yourself because when we're drinking and and drugging our life, we're destroying our who we are, and so for 10 years I did the 12-steps and I learned how to love myself. Well, apparently I didn't learn to love myself because if I love myself, I would not allow this to happen to me. So yeah, digital dating is now not just about that anymore. Digital dating is just learning how to get back out there because I don't know if you're single or you're dating or what, but it's a mess out there. And uh, but let me let me stop there and ask, see if we have any more questions before I go on.

Tamara 19:34

Yeah, I mean, I was just

Scammers, AI Profiles, And Safety Rules

Tamara 19:35

gonna agree. Like I a lot of my interviews basically say the same thing. Like, yeah, dating is not like it's crazy, and everyone's just carrying their baggage and not being open, and then all the scammers and just all the stuff going on.

Anonymous Andrew 19:48

Oh, yeah. So I'm gonna name drop here. There's a woman named the Pink Lady Against Scammers, she's a friend of mine, and she's got a podcast and a YouTube channel, and she's uh got uh uh uh what do you call that? A whole uh crusade against scammers. And uh she's entertaining to watch, but she she gets live scammers from Nigeria, all the ones that call over and say, I'm an oil rig, and I and and they try to romance you, and then all of a sudden they need money. Well, she follows through with them. I gotta give her it's funny to watch, but it's but it's real. And she teaches ladies mostly how to avoid the romance scams that are happening that are ruining people's lives around the world. You know, uh elderly women, young women, lonely housewives, divorced housewives looking for love. Yeah. It's horrible.

Tamara 20:42

Yeah, they say all the right stuff that that women believe it.

Anonymous Andrew 20:47

Oh, they have scripts and they're professionals. They know exactly for any scenario that you can throw at them, they're ready. The really good ones.

Tamara 20:55

And then they use the pictures like the woman you fell in love with or gorgeous pictures of you know attractive people.

Anonymous Andrew 21:01

Oh, none of those pictures are real, or they're AI. Now with AI, they're AI generated. And um, yeah, it's it's uh so I'll give you an example. Um I was texting somebody on a dating app the last two weeks, and the pictures look real, and uh and I couldn't tell if she was a real real person or a scammer. She was Asian, and I have an Asian, I have a thing for Asians, and and she would um, but she didn't speak English. So we're texting, and I finally said to her, she finally admitted to me she was using a translator, and I said, wait a minute. So we've been texting for 10 days, you're using a translator. What happens if we go out on a date? And plus, I would like to hear your voice because when you're dating on a dating app, there are rules, and if we have time, I'll go over them. But the first five rules that you must do, and one of them Is get them on the phone as quick as you can and then get them on a video call as quick as you can to make sure that they're real. And not just any video call, because then they can fake video calls. You got to get them on a video call and ask them to touch their left temple or something, you know, or get them to move so you'll know it's real. And it's happening where they're not women are just falling for these. I shouldn't say women, because that happens to the men as well. Uh, this Asian woman pulled me along for two weeks, and strung me along, and and I finally said, I don't see how we're gonna date. Are we gonna sit in in a diner or or Starbucks, each with a translator in our hands? And what kind of date is that? So I think she was a scammer. I think she's or she was an immigrant looking to get an American to sponsor her because those aren't scams, but they're illegal.

Tamara 23:01

I interviewed someone that was caught up in a scam, and she said the doing all her research that she there's like, you know, kind of like slave labor of people that are stuck having to be on WhatsApp and be on all the apps luring people in so that they're the people holding them can get make money off of them.

Anonymous Andrew 23:18

Oh, but that's a whole different boy, yeah. That's called the boiling room, or they yes, they have um if you go on YouTube and look at some of the scam baiters, you'll see they actually have footage of these women who are doing this. And some of them are doing it with um they make them, they actually make them take their clothes off, and it's horrible. It's just disgusting what these guys are doing, and it's all happening overseas. However, it's happening here in America, and I live in New York, and somebody was just busted a couple of days ago. A big, big, big sex trafficking ring was busted on Long Island, New York, um, was in the papers. So it's not sex trafficking is happening all over. It's not just don't think of it like it's happening in the Philippines or in uh jihad, whatever. It's happening right here in our backyard.

Tamara 24:09

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely a crazy no, it's not pretty. And you said two or getting a video call and the call.

Anonymous Andrew 24:18

Yeah, all right. I I can do that quickly. So if you're if you're talking to somebody on a dating app, and there's two sides of that coin. So if they try to get you off that dating app too quickly, that's a scam. Okay, so you're texting somebody, and with let's say within 12 hours or 24 hours, they say to you, hey, do you have WhatsApp or do you have Telegram? And would you switch over to there because I'm not, I don't they'll they'll they'll say, I don't you take Facebook dating, which is free, which I'm on. They will say, I don't, I'm not on Facebook a lot. Well, first of all, that's baloney everybody. Whoever has Facebook checks it once a day or once a couple of times a week. But they will say to you, can we go on WhatsApp? Now, right there, that's them to get you off of Facebook. And so don't do that. Do not get off the app. Number two, you want some sort of verification that they are who they say they are. So take an image of their profile and do a Google has it, and there's so many other websites, do a reverse image search to make sure that that picture has not been stolen from somebody's Instagram account. And I did that today. I was talking to a woman today from the from the Dominican Republic, that she's here in New York, but she says that she still has a job back there. The third thing I'm gonna say, which ties into that, is use chat GBT. ChatGBT will or you or your AI of choice. It doesn't have to be chat. I'm not sponsoring chat, is take your conversations that you're having with the date, with the person on the date, and put them in chat, and and it will analyze the context, the fluidity, what it's interesting, it'll break it down and tell you things that this is typical of a scammer, or this is typical of a scammer, somebody who's who's after your money and not after you. Um, and then I mentioned make sure that if they do want to get you off the app, now bumble and and I think uh I can't remember all of them. I've been on so many of them. A lot of them have videos within the app itself, so you can make a video call and not have to leave the app. Try to stay on the app at the point. Don't get off the app within three days, stay on it for a week. And then if you're comfortable, here's the most important and the fifth rule. Ladies, especially get yourself a second phone number, a burner number, we call them. So you can go to Google and they will give you a Gmail number, which is for free. So if you don't have a Gmail account, you can sign up for one. It's free, and it will give you a free phone number. You would be surprised, and this is gonna sound creepy for me, that every woman that I get their phone number off the dating app, because and I'm not a scammer and I'm not looking to steal your money, I'm looking for a date. The woman would give me her phone number. Now I'm going to Google that phone number that you let's tomorrow. Let's say you and I are on the dating app. I'm gonna Google your number. You'd be surprised what I can find out about you just from your cell phone number. I found out women's well, addresses, their workplaces, how much their homes are worth, how much mortgage they have left on their home, their ex-husman's phone number. Um, so much information about them. And 10 years ago that wasn't the case. But now, because cell phones are the primary numbers that we have, remember it used to be landlines, now it's cell phones. Google has your all of your information. So the point is get a second number and give that to the man or whom woman or whoever you're dating, chatting with that number, and there will be nothing that comes up. And if you do meet them and if it pursues further, you can come clean and say to them, I'll give you my real cell phone number. And some I've had people say, Oh, so you gave me a fake number, and I told them. I said, I had you know, I have to be careful, and so should you. Women, more important more than men, should be careful because that guy that you're talking to now has his your address. I had one woman who told me that she she came on the on the show, and two days into the date, flowers showed up at her house. And I said, How did he get your address? She said, Because I gave him my phone number and he looked it up. That's creepy.

Tamara 28:56

Yeah, and I didn't realize that was a you know flowers two days after you meet him on a dating app. Yeah, yeah. All right, well, um, do you

Final Dating Advice And Closing

Tamara 29:05

have kind of like final thoughts or something to wrap up?

Anonymous Andrew 29:08

I know we're just uh if you're looking for dating advice, uh and I I I know there's a thousand dating uh uh podcasts out there. Uh I I'm I'm nobody I I don't have a PhD and I don't have I'm not a dating coach, but I have years and years and years of experience, and I have um a lot of I team up with a lot of other podcasters, Pink Lady, Paul Bauer. I team up with these people, team up and work with them to get the knowledge out to you. So come listen, check me out, digital dating, anonymous angel digital dating. And if you're into cults and you want to hear what's going on in the cult world, come check out the other podcasts, Cultimatum, the culture of cults. Everything's available on Apple, um, Spotify, Google, Pandora, iHeartRadio, all of them. Just Google it.

Tamara 30:00

All right. Well, thank you very much for being on. It was eye-opening stuff that I didn't realize.

Anonymous Andrew 30:07

It's it's dangerous out of it. Just be careful. That's all I want to tell everybody.

Tamara 30:11

Okay? Definitely. Yes. And if you love this episode, be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it as well. And thank you again, Andrew, for being on.

Anonymous Andrew 30:18

My pleasure.

Tamara 30:20

All right, bye. Thanks, everyone.