Well, fair question.
I don't want to live the rest of my life alone. That being said, I probably will, regardless of what I want. I am stuck between a rock and a hard place, apparently. I am past the "sell by" date for any younger woman I might find attractive, it appears. I have no interest in dating someone who looks like my grandmother, but 100 lbs heavier, and more wrinkles than actual smooth skin. Does that make me seem shallow? Maybe, but I really don't care. I am shooting high. If it is too high, then that is just the way it is.
But about the topic of this thread. This internet dating stuff is pretty much insane. All of the sites are so heavily infested with scammers using photographs of super attractive women to lure the flies into their spider web. I suppose my being a widower makes me a prime target, as at times I feel like a fish that wandered into a mass of blood in the water with frenzied sharks thrashing all around. I have been internally referring to these scammers on the dating sites as "barracudas wearing lipstick". Probably more like piranhas, but I can never spell that word without looking it up.
On the positive side, the internet dating stuff has allowed me to climb out of that black pit I have been in since Connie died. I was taking Escitalopram prescribed by my doctor to get me past the agonized grief stage, and I am now fully off of it now. I noticed that I am kind of coming out of a coma. I was numb inside and out from that drug. It narrow banded me, kind of like audio filters taking out the highs and the lows from a signal. Yeah, it kept me out of the pits I could fall into, but it also shaved off the high spots where nothing was giving me any enjoyment. And I do mean NOTHING.
Now my toying with the internet dating scammers is kind of a game I play every day. Trying to see how long it takes for them to display the hook. Some are blatant and waste no time. Girls that look like they are 14 year olds claiming to be 39 wanting to sell me naked photos of themselves so they can by medicine for their sick grandmother is a very common occurrence.
Some will just come out and claim to be starving and need money for food. I did have a couple of them catch me when I was making my dinner, which made me feel awkward and uncomfortable. So yes, I did send two Filipino women money that they said they needed for food. But I wound up blocking them when they felt they had landed a sucker and every day was coming up with a new emergency that they needed money in order to get out of the jam they were in. And no, I did not send them any further money. It wasn't that much anyway, so yeah, I was a sucker, but there must be still a soft squishy area in my heart somewhere.
Some of the scammers run for the long haul. Trying to get you emotionally entangled with them via the method of trying to keep you chatting with them nearly all day long. Dropping innuendoes of sexual favors and trying to convince you that trusting them is how to build love. Eventually they will display the hook, they just take longer.
Another interesting scam attempt is via a really attractive woman contacting me via video chat to establish that they are a real live woman that matches her photos. More on the photo thing later. Anyway they start off with the usual questions about what I am looking for in a woman, what kind of hobbies I have, etc.... But then the questions turn to what sort of things am I invested in. Especially related to cryptocurrencies. Once I convince them that at my age I am not interested in any sort of investment, as now is the time of my life to be SPENDING money, not trying to MAKE more money. And like a flash, they are gone.
Another offshoot is one I am going through right now, with a Filipino girl who claims to be living in Canada. Obviously intelligent and write really well. Seems she has fallen in love with me after just a few days of chatting and wants to come down to visit with me. Oh yeah, she claims to be 29 years old. Yeah, I know..... EVERY ONE of these women will tell you that age doesn't matter to them. It is just a number. They all have had unpleasant experiences with men their own age and want to try someone older. MUCH older, apparently. So OK, I know it is just another attempted grab at my wallet, but heck I don't have anything better going on, so let the game begin.
Anyway, this girl, Kim, says she has come into a lot of money, and wants to know if it would bother me if she bought gifts for me while visiting. The only catch is that she needs to transfer the funds to my bank account and I would need to give her access to it for the transfer. Yeah, right. I didn't just fall off of the turnip truck. This came to a head just today, and I was trying to be diplomatic about how I told her HELL NO!. So I suspect that will be the last I hear from her.
Found sites "advertising" beautiful Ukrainian women. I mean knock out gorgeous. Any one of them can be had for the price of you sending them money so they can buy a plane ticket to come and stay with you.
Fortunately there is a very valuable site out there that has been indispensable to me for finding the photographs they use on other sites. Some on a LOT of sites. Particularly models and porn stars.
https://socialcatfish.com/
Many will just drop offline when I point the picture matches to them. But some will claim that they really are the porn star, just going under the radar to try to find a *nice* man to settle down with.
I certainly do miss the old days of dating I went through before I met Connie. This is a lot of work. And honestly, so far, pretty much a complete waste of time. I have been doing this for around 2 months now, and I am not even a millimeter closer to actually meeting anyone in person.
So why keep on doing it? Well there HAS to be some real women on those dating sites, doesn't there? I mean ones that are actually attractive and don't look like my grandmother and her sisters? So I guess I am hoping by continuing to plug away at this that maybe I will be able to find that needle in a haystack sooner or later. Meanwhile just playing the games with the scammers, just in case the ones that seem to be using their real photos just might actually be for real.
Oh yeah, ALL of the scammers will tell you that you are handsome. And they will all call you by pet names like "dear", or "honey" or "sweetheart". I presume that makes it easier to just cut and paste their comments to multiple fish they have lines in the water for. Most rarely ever use your real name in their chat comments to you.
So am I just being not just a fool but an old fool in my search? Am I looking for younger women who will look at my pictures thinking I look like their grandfather? I certainly cannot rule that out. But heck, if I found a woman in my actual age bracket that was attractive, of course I would be interested. But those seem to be few and far between on the internet dating sites. And I have a sneaking suspicion that they are just seeded into those sites to give the suckers hope that they can actually find someone like that.
The dating sites will have all different ways of grabbing at your wallet too. The worst are the ones that will put up photos of gorgeous women (I assume for the ladies looking for men, it is the same for them) and when you first start looking, you will get tons of interest from those babes. The catch is that you can send only one message of greeting to them. And you usually get a reply that you cannot read until you pay money into an automatic subscription account. Some will allow full access for the period of time for the subscription. Others, which I will not participate in, will sell you credits that are used up with every reply you make in their chat system. And boy those beautiful women can be talkative then! You will usually get a few free credits, but that is just putting more bait on the hook. You will go through those free credits FAST.
So anyway, the reason I took so long getting back to this thread was because I was too busy with the multiple "loves of my life". Today was cleanup day, it seems because several of them came to a head when they seemingly coordinated efforts to all ask me for money at the same time. Oh there was one that was a divergence. She says she is in the UK and needs to reset the password on her account that it in the USA and cannot do that from the UK. So she wanted me to be a dear and have me tell her the code that will be sent to my messenger system on my cell phone. Not sure where exactly that was going, but I declined, and she flew off the handle about me not trusting her. Then another girl was supposed to be flying in from Wisconsin to spend the weekend with me, but somehow forgot the time she was supposed to be at the airport. She even sent me flight information, and it appeared the tickets were prepaid by her. I didn't give her a dime, so no idea what that was all about.
I should keep notes on all this and maybe write a book about it down the road. Would be nice if I could write a happy ending for it, though. Everyone likes happy endings, don't they?
Yes, I am sure some will have just lovely personalities, but if I woke up in the morning next to any one of them I would have to rinse my brain with Draino.
