so one of the things that has gone on in this two weeks now of chumpery is this:  online dating scams are kicking me in the ass.

It was just a couple of months ago I took a break, but this? Unrelenting. 

these are men who have full portfolios at reputable dating sites, and the entire portfolio is someone else.  you see, you talk… you slowly feel funny………..

you are asked for money.

i am too much of an old leathered briefcase to fall for this. but i stick with it way past feeling funny, and therein lies my biggest chumpery.

here are things to look out for….

(of course there are exceptions, but these are basics.)

widows.

oh, how sad, how sad. how sad that we as women find an obviously wounded man so attractive.  eyebrows up!  hint o’truth: just cause the lady’s dead, doesn’t mean there aren’t issues.

Foreigners.

I know, you think I’m an asshole now.  But I’m not.  what you’ll find, when you look at a picture of a ‘caucasian-ish’ male, and then when you talk on the phone, he will have an accent… which he will describe as irish, and you will wrinkle your forehead about. and you will say ‘hmmm, wow… that last guy said he was irish too… why are there so many irish guys on here’… (one guy said he was italian, to be fair.)  foreign does not mean brown, bitches.

also, as an addendum, the texting you do before the phone call will be rife with mistakes, grammatical or spelling… but you will overlook it because many men cannot use their potato fingers on phone keys.

one actually real man actually typed ‘are’ for ‘our’ and it took me ages to figure out what the hell he was saying. He wasn’t even an online dating scam, he was just a doof. 

 

Photographs

You will see such lovely photos. So handsome. When you ask for a selfie, which you should, you will be sent one that you have seen on the website. you will ask for another and receive another, but it will not be a current photo.  When asked for a selfie, one man sent me a photo of himself in a tee by a pool.  but it was Thanksgiving, and 19 degrees where we live, and he said it was his mother’s pool.  (no one In NEW ENGLAND doesn’t close up their pool by Thanksgiving. no one.)

I actually had one ‘video call’ which was to assuage my worries about reality, and the man was cooking at 7:15 in the morning, not thanksgiving, and the call ‘cut out’.

what this tells me? man, these scammers are stealing a lot of material from people… a lot. he had his ‘daughter’ text me that afternoon asking for a phone card. she called me ‘ma’.  legit.

Children

Of course they will say they have children. because, man, we are women who want to be needed.  But of course, those children will live with their mothers or their sisters… because it is just too hard for men to do it all alone.  thus proving, how much we are needed.

Fast and Furious

There will be dramatic love, very early on, like the first day you have any communication. They are so struck by your beauty, by your eyes/smile/voice that they have never felt like this before… that it is so amazing for them, that they can’t wait to wake up to call you first thing…. They can ‘tell’ and they can manipulate and be so ‘affronted’ by any questioning… its like the perfect storm.  this is all without any actual meeting.

I think it must have some relationship to emotional abuse… because that is what it is, when a stranger can make you somehow feel beholden to them somehow… how does that work anyhow? why does that work?

——-

I haven’t fallen for anything, don’t worry, but it has happened a half dozen times, and I am not getting any faster at swiping correctly and there is a part of me that continues out of curiosity.  Should I help them out with their English? Some are so much better than others… and, I mean, how far are these guys going to go?! I presume that they do not want an actual meeting, so are they going to say they’ll show and call last minute? would i really be sitting, stood up, at a bar ?  really?  this is for what?

so i’ll buy their make-believe daughter a 50 dollar phone card? so i’ll buy a deployed soldier an itunes card? So i’ll help win a work contract or help pay for the travel there?

does this really ever work for someone? are there women out there who buy this?

i know there are. and I feel for you.  because this last guy?  he got me in the feels.

not because i ever really doubted my suspicions, but because I REALLY WANTED TO.

i wanted it to be like he said it was. I wanted to be someone’s lucky star.

and therein lies the ouch.

 

This latest one called me Queen, told me it was my smile that got him… called me in the morning to be the first voice i heard.  ( i mean, for real?!…) and the fakeness became sort of heartbreaking (in a..i’m too tough to be heartbroken by a fake sortof way) … but it was heartbreaking because its the first time i really REALLY realized that I am ready for the next thing… with a little romance thrown in, and maybe some of those frightening feelings that i’ve tucked away for so long.

i had some of that with Chef, my first lover after the marriage ended. took me a year and a half to be interested, which i still think is remarkable, and sadly devastating.

it was completely delightful. and extravagant and So utterly perfect for the first times i was having.  but the other thing that was perfect was his distance.  he was essentially a sailor, coming through and leaving soon… so challenged none of the systems i had precariously rigged to get me through my first stages of single momming. i should definitely talk about him soon. it was unbelievable, in all the best ways.

I HAVE DIGRESSED.

there’s also literal SAILORS… soldiers on deployment. i’ve bumped into foreign legion men, men who say distance in no object, who also have children living with their mothers, who also can’t seem to get itunes gift cards at the base. the government just can’t seem to keep stocked.

 

sigh.

feel me people. hear me.

SIGH.

There’s a lot of research out there. Just go look. Online Dating scams. just go look. Don’t believe the sunshine and roses anymore. https://www.wikihow.com/Spot-an-Online-Dating-Scammer I mean, maybe if its your thing to stay heart-exploded, then go ahead. Go ahead then.