Transference: a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which repetitions of old feelings, attitudes, desires, or fantasies that someone displaces are subconsciously projected onto a here-and-now person.

She believed he was interested in her, giving her no reason to think otherwise with his persistence, but she never bothered to ask herself why, still imaging herself a 20-something coquette, a grand delusion. The truth was … there was nothing, no real reason. The man could have whom he wanted, women far above her looks and status. It was not cruel to say it, as it was the cold, hard truth that she refused to hear, but, given that she could see the types of women he had been with, was with, the stable of them on his profile, that he spent time courting her inflated her ego, instead of sending up the proper, healthy red flags. Her own illness, her ego, led her to transfer her childhood fantasies of the perfect life onto any man who possessed the right pedigree and bank account, especially if he were secretly a loathsome individual, though she was utterly incapable of recognizing that aspect. 

But the more severe illness belonged to him and assured that there was something fundamentally wrong with him. For the fact was something else she would never acknowledge to herself, but, yet, the absolute truth—she was a doppelganger for his ex-wife, the mother of his children. The similarity was so striking that it appeared one could swap their faces without much distortion whatsoever. And that truth made his interest in her so psychologically debased as to presume some manner of severe insanity. She was not a person to him but a proxy, a proxy for his ex-wife, to such a degree that, if she were to fall for his charms, she would likely find herself being accidentally called by his ex’s name and, without a doubt, treated in whatever way he had treated his ex that had made her leave. A healthy man would have avoided someone who sparked those hurtful memories, in lieu of trying to rekindle them with someone who was not whom he wanted, but he was not a healthy man. 

The likeness between these two women was so strong that his desire was akin to losing a dog, finding one that looked exactly the same, and giving it the same name. It was reminiscent of horror stories about people who kidnap children who look like the one they lost. It was unmistakable illness, the interest impossible to be sincere, and the intent behind it not in any way truthful. It could not be. 

Unfortunately her illness was almost as strong as his, though stemming from a different past, and with different intent. She did not want him because he looked like the paragons of sleaze she had chosen before. Hers was a transference of the desire for the material, the need of a spoiled little girl to be a princess. But the fact that she did not notice, or ignored, that he had pictures that looked like her, though they were not her, was deeply disturbing in its own right. A well-adjusted woman would have seen why he was coming for her, out of innumerable choices, immediately and rejected all advances, realizing that, when he looked at her photos, he did not see her, and the emotions he spoke to her were not for her. She had allowed herself to be a doormat. She had chosen horrible, sociopathic men and rejected true love. But it wasn’t enough debasement for her to change her ways. She was letting herself become the avatar for another woman. She was allowing herself to be erased. 

To compound the mental aberrance of the situation, they did not even actually know each other. No. She had been targeted by this man, who could not resist the chance to again own what he once owned, and that was the correct word for it. His delusion and need for a replacement were so great that it was not even a matter of here-and-now but of over-there and later, another red flag she should have noted, the product of infantile fantasies and a need for control.