"He was my ideal type. He filled a void by always continuously messaging me and checking up on me. He made my life better and I made his life better," Christine Abadir said of her assumed boyfriend. Photo / TikTok
"He was my ideal type. He filled a void by always continuously messaging me and checking up on me. He made my life better and I made his life better," Christine Abadir said of her assumed boyfriend. Photo / TikTok
An Australian TikTok star has revealed the moment she realised her "boyfriend" of half a year didn't exist.
Speaking to 7Life, Christine Abadir, who has a whopping 1.9 million followers on the social media platform, said she believed for months that she was in a romantic relationship with "Jay", a man she met online.
"Basically a part of my job is going Live on TikTok during the week and interacting with my followers," the 22-year-old said.
"He would always join my Live videos so I made him moderator, which is a role you can choose for your followers to block out hate comments. After making him moderator, I introduced him to my friends on Instagram.
Abadir was catfished by a female scammer in New Zealand. Photos / Instagram
"We started talking from there. I'm not going to lie, his photos drew me in … I found him attractive and we started talking. He flirted with me and it kept going every single day."
After "messaging back and forth for about three to four months", Abadir and Jay made their relationship "official".
"It's ironic to say but it went better than most (real) relationships I've been in," she said.
"He was my ideal type. He filled a void by always continuously messaging me and checking up on me.
"He made my life better and I made his life better."
Not long into their romance, however, Abadir started to notice red flags in Jay's behaviour.
He "started becoming more controlling and possessive", telling her she "wasn't allowed to hang out with certain guy mates because he 'had a feeling' they liked me or I couldn't wear certain clothes".
He also consistently came up with excuses to avoid face-to-face contact.
"Every time I brought FaceTime up he said he didn't like it, he had an Android [phone] so he'll reveal his face later," she recalled.
"But it kept getting prolonged and dragged every time I asked to see his face. I found it weird because he would send me photos and videos of his body but never his face."
Still, it "never" hit Abadir that she could be being catfished.
After six months of dating, the Sydney local made plans to meet Jay at a nightclub when she travelled to New Zealand.
"He told me he was at this club, so I go there, I stood outside and I asked him to come out of the club to see me – but he said he wasn't there anymore, he 'changed clubs'," she said.
That was when the penny finally dropped, and she realised her "boyfriend" didn't exist.
Abadir hopes by sharing her story, she can "spread awareness so someone out there can actually be aware that catfishing happens". Photo / Instagram
"My friends kept telling me from the start, 'He isn't coming out'. I was delusional, I had so many feelings of betrayal going on in my mind. I never thought I was catfished until my mates woke me up from my fantasy. I was angry, upset and confused."
Abadir's story took another turn when she and her friends "tracked the mobile number he gave me and we are able to find the name of the person the number was connected to".
"We knew from the moment it hit me, we found out it was a girl," she said.
"I got catfished by a girl. The whole time, it was a girl."
Abadir said she hoped that by sharing her story, she could "spread awareness so someone out there can actually be aware that catfishing happens".
"We live in a world where it's so easy to catfish people. We share too much of ourselves online and we put so much out there on social media like our life, family and friends," she said.
"It's easy for anyone to use our photos and videos to create a fake persona and target us. Someone can be using your photos without you even knowing … I want everyone to watch out because it's serious."
