While it's likely clear to everyone outside of her bubble of delusion that Chris Olsen isn't real, Sarah is determined to meet him. In fact, she's enlisted the help of Dr. Phil to bring Chris to America so that he and she can be united and live happily ever after. Despite her two failed marriages, Sarah says, she still believes in love.

Advertisement

But what's going on here is much more than just a belief in love, it's a woman clinging to the fantasy that the person she feels connected to is real flesh and blood and, probably unconsciously, the fervent hope that the money she's spent hasn't been lost in vain and that the hell she's gone through is worth it. She's sent Chris money thousands of times and has even sold an apartment building to send him $550,000 to bail him out of jail after he was "falsely accused for money laundering."

The most difficult part of this is that Sarah is so intent on believing that Chris is real (she's "95 percent sure" he is) that she's taken his words, which sound like every other spam email that you get informing you that you've won millions or that someone wants to buy your coffee table on Craigslist but will need to send you a check for $25,000 for it, and turned them very personal, saying that he's a poet. "He calls me his flower," Sarah says. "He asks 'has she been watered today?'"

Advertisement
Advertisement

Hopefully the show will help her get some closure, but I can see Sarah believing that she was tricked when Dr. Phil doesn't produce the man of her dreams.