I’ve written before about the dangers of looking for mates through sites offering women from Russia, Nigeria, or other economically distressed countries. Not only are American men easy targets for scams, the women are easily manipulated by men who are not the kind of wholesome mate material that they’d like us to think.
Keli Dailey in “I Wish They All Could Be Mail-Order Girls” writes about the newly enacted International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA), which was passed as a rider to the Violence Against Women Act, all of which took effect this last March. While I had felt squeamish about the whole idea of men going abroad to find wives (often openly courted by the sites or marriage brokers with allusions that the women being offered were old-fashioned in their values and not like modern American women), this article tells some of the distasteful stories, along with the implications of IMBRA for men still looking abroad.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Now, here’s a story that has a number of unusual twists:
Rita Manning lived in Fresno, CA. 48 Years old, in 1993 she weighed 594. Following surgery, she lost 232 which left her at a still hefty 362. Widowed, she was ready for something new. Rita signed on to BBWDatefinder.com, a dating site dedicated to “Big Beautiful Women and Their Admirers.”
Well, she found one. An admirer. David Richardson of Eudora, Kansas, emailed her. 49 years old, David had never been married.
Kansas is a long way from Fresno, but Rita was taking a long-distance trucking course and happened to be driving through Kansas as part of her training. The met for the first time at a convenience store parking lot of I-70.
Rita ended up moving to Eudora and the two married on June 30. Take a look at the story in the Lawrence Journal-World: there’s even a slide show!
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
PS I have heard other good reports from women who have joined the BBWDatefinder site. So if you are not the “slim and trim” that most guys seem to want, hop (or stroll) on over. BTW, what most guys want is not what they are going to get, since the average weight of white women at age 50 is 155 pounds, 175 for Black women.
Here are two lovely stories out of Bozeman, Montana, for heaven’s sake! Dan and Carolyn Hopper met on ChristianScienceSingles.com, he living in Washington state, she in Montana. They are now living in Bozeman, happily married.
Marcia and David Crowell met online in 2002. But talk about long-distance relationships! Marcia (who contacted David first) was living in Sao Paolo, Brazil, while David was in Bozeman. It was only a couple of months after their first face to face meeting in Brazil before David proposed. “It was love at first sight,” says David.
And here are two more, this time in Plesanton, California. Vina (60) and Gary (63) Dugan met on eHarmony and married just a few months later. Marilyn Rogers (62) and a grandma had over 500 guys get in touch before she started steadily dating Peir Delfrate.
This one is a long-distance affair: Amy Shorter and John Whitaker were separated by 670 and 13 years (he was 35 and she was 22). And Ian Parker and Michelle Joseph have an even bigger age difference—17 years. But both couples met online (Amy and John in a chat room for military history, Ian and Michelle on Friends Reunited Dating. John and Amy are already married, and Ian and Michelle have a wedding date of April 29, 2006 - are year to the date from when they met.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
WOW! I just read about this great new website Site59.com. Talk about a service for long-distance romances! Whew!
Here’s what it does: It’s like Travelocity (which is going to add a similar feature soon), in that you put in the city you are leaving from and where you would like to go, and then it searches and gives you options. BUT… you can do arrangements for up to four people in two different places, and the trips are short notice! Two weeks or less.
Here’s what happened when I tried it out:
I tried Tallahassee, where I am, and Jackson, Mississippi, the closest airport for Drew. And I picked the weekend before Valentine’s Day. Both our flights (coordinated so that we would arrive and leave Boston about the same time), plus the costs of 3 nights in a nice Boston hotel (Four Points by Sheraton), for $739.10. Total. We could add a car for $87 more. But nobody wants a car in Boston. So we could do a romantic weekend for $370 each. AND…the site automatically calculates how much time you would have together: For the trip I planned, 2 days, 19 hours, and 31 minutes.
Almost makes me want to start dating again.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Here’s a lovely story about long distance romance, facilitated by Internet dating, or course! See how Don Valenta of Dallas got to live in Hawaii—even though he hadn’t thought about it.
I am a big fan of exploring out of your home territory, if moving is at all possible for you. Drew and I were 482 miles apart, door to door. I moved, and it was worth it.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
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