Katie Price’s whirlwind engagement and marriage would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. The media are reporting that she met her husband Lee Andrews just days before the wedding. The whole show-mance has been played out to capture headlines - an engagement rock so big it needs it’s own postcode, matching tattoos and nuptials that included rose petals, lots of exposed, inked flesh and heavily filtered snaps.
Chaotic, ill considered, desperate.
I’m not judging Katie. She is a product of a life lived in front of a lens and everyone who has read, or clicked on, the stories about her has a part to play in her downward spiral. From the guys who ogled her topless at 16, to the rest of us who consumed her marriages, divorces and breakdowns as news. No wonder she is forever seeking a relationship that will give her the love and adoration she craves. Sadly nothing ever will satisfy that want because her expectations have been so warped by her life experience.
I am no Katie Price, but I have experience on the dating scene and know how easy it would be to fall for a shyster.
My dating era was a few years ago, but I worked out pretty quickly that people could misrepresent themselves on the apps. Obviously everyone is going to put their best pictures up, but on meeting some in real life they were distinctly ‘not as advertised.’ The snaps on their profile were taken years ago when they had a full head of hair and a six pack.
I quickly became aware that jobs like ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘investor’ sounded impressive but were mostly code for chancer, and that a lifestyle could easily be fabricated - pictures on boats that weren’t theirs, houses that were rented. All this must be so much worse now AI can make you 30% better looking at the touch of a button and insert celebrities into your pictures.
I know riches and good looks aren’t everything, but if someone is lying about possessing them what does it mean for their values? I worked out you needed a three month, probably six month, probationary period to work out if someone was a decent human being who was being honest about who they were.
I understand Katie’s need for this kind of romance. Broken people are very susceptible to love bombing and after my marriage broke down I was at my most vulnerable to it. To be told I was beautiful and bombarded with compliments, offered romantic trips and to receive declarations of love after weeks, and proposals of marriage after months, assuaged some very deep, base need.
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One guy (said he was a doctor, looked like Adam Brody) I met on the apps tried to get me to go to his villa in Marbella with him after a week of messaging, told me he saw marriage in our future, sent 30 messages a day and pursued me in a way that felt Hollywood-esque (but in hindsight was stalker-y).
I knew it was B.S. — confirmed when he popped up on my friend’s app weeks later with exactly the same play.
I count myself lucky I didn’t succumb to his charms, I had family and friends to bring me back to reality. Katie is not so lucky. I wish her only the best.
