Damn your love, damn your lies
Abuse, abandonment and the sisterhood that stands as evidence of a con artist in The Chain
A chain is a clean metaphor to note connection, a steely bond that is hard to break and kept extra safe by barbed wires and bolted locks. In 1977, Fleetwood Mac released its iconic album Rumours, which included The Chain, arguably one of their best songs ever. Written about the tumultuous relationship between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, the song alludes to how the chain will be what keeps them together, despite lies and burned-out love.
It’s this interpretation that author Chimene Suleyman applies to her aptly named memoir, The Chain. Not only is the song the book’s namesake, it also acts as a metaphor that links through the pages on which Suleyman shares her story, and those of other women who were abused and conned by a man they met on a dating app. By letting the chain run parallel with her own experience as the focus of the story, Suleyman does something we don’t always see at the forefront of these types of stories: she puts the women first.
Suleyman starts with herself, taking the reader through her somewhat brief relationship with this man—a relationship that starts off seemingly innocent but becomes increasingly peppered with red flags. Several months in, she finds herself pregnant. The man talks a big game about how amazing a family would be, about becoming a father and the life they could have. Then just when her hopes are high enough, and she’s starting to think everything will be okay, he begins sending messages to the opposite effect—a manipulative tactic used by narcissists to confuse the victim into not being able to think or feel for themselves. He tells her she needs to get an abortion. He books an appointment. He takes her to the clinic. Then abandons her while she’s in with the doctor.
She didn't see him again until months later when a drawing of his face popped up on her Instagram. The illustration was posted by a woman in Australia who tagged the photo labeling the man a psychopath. He’s not to be trusted.
This post would become the nexus for tens, possibly hundreds of other women to eventually find each other. Women from all over the world, and especially in New York, where he had a home base of sorts for several years, learned of each other for the first time. They shared with each other the things he had done and said to them, all of them following a very similar pattern—a con man’s blueprint. The links the women make between the stories he told is also representative of a chain—the lies he spewed would eventually help them piece together a picture much fuller than any of them ever imagined.
These women were connected long before they knew the others existed. Through their story sharing, they learned some had been impregnated by the man at the same time; he would take them to the same clinic. He would take one woman to another’s house while she was out of town, saying it was his buddy’s place he was crashing at. On top of the lies there were extreme violations of privacy, stealing, borrowing money that would never be returned, plus all the infidelity. Rather than be upset at each other for being the “other woman”, these victims saw him as the only one who did something wrong. They chose to support each other, the women with whom their boyfriend cheated on, impregnated, and sent the same messages to.
The women got loud, and their chain longer. The man—who Suleyman never acknowledges with a name or enough descriptors to identify—eventually begins to defend himself online on social media and eventually in podcasts that he hosts with his now wife, a woman Suleyman finds him to be cheating on.
When they were individuals and more vulnerable he found a way in. But now bolt cutters couldn’t get through this steel. It’s not completely unlike the victims in the Netflix documentary Tinder Swindler. But, from what the doc shows, only a small handful of women come together in support of each other after learning they were being conned. Having each other made the aftermath easier. But justice still wasn’t served. The women are left to pay incredible debts the Swindler left them with, meanwhile he’s off parading about—a new celebrity of sorts (at least in his mind). This is where the next level of harm comes into play.
Suleyman’s suitor only had one definable characteristic: he was a comedian. She never gave his name, said his nationality or race or let slip any possible physical descriptors. You know nothing about this man except for key facts that play a significant role in the story and what he did to these women. And that’s the whole point.
This man got away with a lot of shit. He hurt a lot of people and at no consequence to himself. Releasing his identity isn’t going to do anything to right these wrongs. Narcissists thrive on attention, irregardless of whether their name and character is being dragged through the mud. Naming him would have given him the validation that fuelled his horrific behaviour.
The Tinder Swindler is the perfect example of this. He was never charged with any crimes in relation to his conning of women he met online. And now he is allegedly pursuing a career in the entertainment industry because we have led him to believe he is worth watching.
By not outing the man who hurt her, Suleyman keeps her power. She and the other women in the chain do what they can to spread awareness in their circles about who this man is and what he’s capable of doing. They do, as the code of sisterhood instructs, everything they can to help a woman when she is in danger, especially at the hands of a predator. Sharing his name would have brought attention to what he did and warned a lot of women—there’s no denying that. Suleyman even makes that argument herself. But just because we’ve lit warning signs about one man, doesn’t mean he’s going to stop. And it certainly doesn’t mean there aren’t others like him out there.
On a poignant note, she closes out the book: “I realized then that I hadn’t fallen for something, or someone, so wicked because I was deeply flawed or fucked up. Because I was naive. Because I was drunk. Because I was damaged. Because I deserved it. Rather—he had come after me, come after all of us, because we were everything he wished he was but knew he wasn’t.
“The only thing he ever got right is that he has excellent taste in women. Women’s powers were never mystical, nor are they fantastical. Our only magic is that, together, we survive.”