Anna Akbari logged onto OkCupid, looking for someone who matched her energy and curiosity. As an accomplished professional with a PhD in sociology and a teaching position at New York University, she got more than she’d been looking for. According to his bio, Ethan Shuman was a tall, attractive 35-year-old New Yorker with a PhD in applied math. He worked for Morgan Stanley and the U.S. government, had apartments in New York and Washington, DC, a BMW, and a dog named Harvey. From their very first text conversation, Anna was swept up in what she called “a communication tidal wave” (Akbari, 2024a).

She’d met other men online, but Ethan was different. “He wanted to go deep and he communicated with a level of sophistication not easily found in the average person.” With escalating excitement, they chatted on Gmail late at night, discussing their lives, their past relationships, their hopes for the future, dreaming of a life together. Ethan was serious, looking for “real connection and companionship.”

They wanted to meet in person, but she was leaving on a trip to California, he was working in Washington, and their plans were disrupted by major snowstorms on the East coast. So they continued to meet virtually, in what Anna later called “a little time out of time bubble, just the two of us, as the world melted away.”

They flirted, they argued, they fought and made up, and the emotional intensity increased. They made plans to meet in New York. Ethan promised to meet her at the airport when she flew back from California, but a crisis........

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