This man knew exactly what I wanted to hear and said all the right things. I was being set up, lied to and deceived. A red flag should immediately have gone up when he asked me to maintain an exclusive relationship. We had never met in person and it certainly was not a logical request to make at that point. And this brings me to my final point.
Loneliness can be a terrible thing.
If a person is not firmly grounded in reality, loneliness can open a Pandora's box of horrors that can ruin your life. So to all of you out there, I say be VERY careful. Obviously, not everyone on the Internet is a predator like the one I encountered, but until you know someone well enough to entrust them with your most private thoughts, information should be provided on an as needed basis. Don't make the same mistakes I did and you won't have to suffer the consequences. While the Internet can be a wonderful place to find romance, it poses challenges not unlike those encountered when travelling in a foreign country.