It is a strange phenomenon but you meet someone in chat and they start to open up to you. Before long you figure out this person is posing. Posing takes on many forms. It might be a man posing as a woman. It might be someone not being his or her real age. You wonder, Why do they do it? Well the reasons, while sad, are not that hard to understand.

To get some attention. Being in a chat room and not getting any chats is a very lonely experience. If a guy cannot get a conversation with a girl, he might pose as a girl just for the conversation. They use the fake ID to replace what a good personality and ability to be real would get them otherwise.

In a word . . . for sex. The dirty underbelly of chat rooms is online sex. Now there is nothing wrong with cybersex in its own right, but when you are online to find a relationship, a romance and a soul mate, going straight to sex just does not work. But for many online, that is all they want and by giving you the most attractive image they can dream up, they often get what they want.

To harvest future contacts. In some chat services, you can have multiple profiles or personas. So one ploy posers use is to meet you perhaps as the same gender as you are, become friends and learn what you like and dislike in a lover and then build a profile to give you just that thing. It is manipulation and it is wrong but it happens. So what you need are ways to sort out if the person you are chatting with is genuine or a fake. If you find a fake, you can decide what to do about it. You can block them and that is that. Or you can try to help them come clean with you so you can build a real relationship with them. Or you can even go as far as reporting them so they will be punished by the service. My advice is politely bid them farewell and move on to greener pastures.

To sort out if the person you just met is really as wonderful as they seem or if they are a poser, be clever and alert as you talk and look for these clues:

Do they move too quickly to talk about sex? People that want a relationship do not go there very fast. If they really want to get to know you they will go slow and not rush to get intimate online.

Do they try not to tell you very much about their past? Most people have rich histories to share from and many funny stories to tell. If your friend does not offer those generously, it might be because there is no past to the character he or she is playing.

Watch for gender mistakes. If you are dealing with a poser who is not being their real gender, they probably do not understand the gender they are trying to portray. You have talked to a real girl and a genuine man; they will express themselves easily and appropriately.

Do they avoid voice contact, have few pictures or keep stalling on making contact via webcam? Then obviously they are not who they have presented to you. Even if they provide a picture, this may be so. It is a sad thing to report but posers steal pictures to complete their persona.

Keep some notes on your talks, particularly about their personal details and history. The good thing about IM is you can save your talks as text files to refer to later. If the relationship goes for a while, they may not remember their own past very well and you can catch those mistakes which show they are lying.

After a while you will become skilled at flushing out posers and be able to identify them easily so you can move past those contacts and nurture relationships with genuine people who are being honest and open with you and want to develop that kind of romance, the kind that can grow and become a beautiful part of each of your lives.