Ooohh, I just don’t know how I feel about this one. The photo with the article (follow the link and maybe you can see it too) shows a very overweight man with a slim, attractive woman, and the article makes clear he is 15 years older than she is. Now, he may have gained the weight since meeting her, but this is such a clear case of a less marketable man (at least with similarly aged American women) using money and the promise of life in the USA to get a young, pretty, and desperate woman. The ick factor for me is high. What about for you?
Inter-racial couple finds true love online
By Henni Espinosa, ABS-CBN North America News Bureau
ORINDA, California – An inter-racial couple found each other 6 years ago through a dating website.
Filipina Rhoda Mae Sancho, 35, and American Rick Vincent, 50, found the love online.
Sancho was born poor in Bacolod City. She was only a high school graduate, unemployed and desperate to get out of the country. She saved P20.00 a day to go an Internet café with the goal of finding true love online.
“Kahit mahirap ako, tinitiis ko talaga na maka-Internet, makatagpo ako ng mabait na Amerikano, makapunta ako dito para maiahon ko rin ang pamilya ko sa hirap,” said Sancho.
In 2004, she found Vincent through a dating website. Vincent is a millionaire stockbroker from the Bay Area who was ready to start a family.
A few months after their first online chat, Vincent flew to the Philippines to meet Sancho and her family for the first time.
“Pinangkra ko talaga siya, sabi ko ‘I’m so sorry. I cannot speak too much English kasi I’m only high school graduate. Sabi niya, ‘It’s okay. I understand what you’re saying.’ Sabi ko, ‘Thanks God!’” Sancho recalled.
For Vincent, it was love at first sight. Because he fell in love with Sancho, he also felt the need to help her and her family out of poverty.
“I knew that if I wanted to marry a Filipina girl, I had to make her parents happy. That’s what I did my first trip. I brought my mother-in-law 2 boxes of See’s Candies,” said Vincent.
“Parang hindi ako makapaniwala na lahat ibinigay niya sa akin. Yung gusto ko lang mahalin niya yung anak ko kasi lumaki siyang walang tatay,” said Sancho.
Not only did Vincent become Sancho’s husband on January 2005, he also became a father to Juliana, her daughter from a previous relationship. Juliana is now 8.
Soon, Sancho bore Vincent 2 children—Charlotte, now 2, and Kenneth, now 10-months old.
While they live comfortably in the US, Vincent has not forgotten to take care of Rhoda’s family and relatives in the Philippines.
He now sends 22 nieces and nephews, even children of Sancho’s friends, to school.
He also bought her parents a new home where he plans to build a swimming pool for them.
Vincent said the secret to an inter-racial marriage is the same as any other marriage.
“I make sure that when she says something, I say, ‘Yes, Hon,’” he said.
“Yung love, walang pinipili yan. Kung nagmamahalan kayo talaga, hindi importante kung sino ka man, kung ano ka man,” said Sancho.
I do love the Geek Squad and those little black and white VWs that they drive around. And it is so great to be able to go to Best Buy and get tech help when you need it, even if you have to stand in line forever. This piece is too late for their Valentine’s Day contest, but it does contain a great suggestion for long distance daters and online romances. If you are looking for love online and wonder if your cyber sweetie is as good as his or her pictures, then why not Skpye and find out? I’m starting to working with my clients via Skype. What a change to have visual as well as voice!
Geek Squad wants to Help Long Distance Couples Stay Connected
By Ron Gabrielson
Geek Squad is looking to connect 6 bi-coastal long distance loves this Valentine’s Day.
Anyone who has been in a long-distance relationship before knows how spending special days alone (birthdays, Christmas, etc) can suck.
This is especially true for that day for lovers everywhere- Valentine’s Day.
As a former member of the long-distance club (my wife is from Toronto, I’m from Minneapolis), I can attest to the incredible strain thousands of miles can put on a relationship. You have to work at it really hard, and be really committed to each other, in order to succeed – and sometimes you have to get really creative in your approach to connecting.
For us, we used Skype, an internet video conferencing platform, to stay connected to each other. Every night we’d chat online, “face to face” — something that really helped us cement our bond and keep it strong despite the distance between us.
As a recently married man, I am very happy the long-distance chapter in our lives is over. So when I heard about our Geek Squad Valentine’s Day contest, I wanted to tell you all about it.
This Valentine’s Day, Geek Squad is doing something special for long-distance lovers: arranging a romantic dinner for two — via Skype.
On February 12, we’ll host dinners for six lucky couples at the BLT Steak restaurant in Los Angeles and BLT Steak restaurant in New York. Romance will be in the air as Geek Squad Agents connect each of the couples via Skype at their dinner tables , enabling them to spend a romantic, candlelit dinner together (virtually, at least). And to sweeten the pot, we are throwing in a free netbook worth $350 plus a $150 Geek Squad gift card to help them stay connected past Valentine’s Day.
We’ve partnered with Sheknows.com and ChipChick.com to pick couples who fit the bill. To enter, one of you needs to be in LA, the other in New York City.
Deadline to enter is February 8th, 2010. Do you and your special someone fit the bill? Head to the sites listed below and make your case for why you are deserving of this special treat!
I’ve always been a fan of long-distance love. My Sweetie Drew was 482 miles away when I found him, and we made it work. Here are other folks who didn’t let miles, oceans, or country borders get in the way. Inspiration for us all.
Daters without borders New Yorkers find international love online
By CARRIE SEIM
There are more than 8 million people in the city of New York. Most are either too young, too old, too married or too incarcerated to date. The remaining 17 have weird hobbies, creepy hygiene and bad manners.
Plus you’ve already slept with them.
Time to look beyond the boroughs. And no, we’re not talking New Jersey. More and more New Yorkers are searching for love on European dating sites, living out fairy-tale fantasies of international romance.
“French men really treat you like a lady,” says Lillian, a 42-year-old Manhattan copy editor who signed up for Meetic.com, Europe’s largest dating site. “They wine you, they dine you, they make you feel like you’re the only one on the planet.”
Lillian describes the men she’s met on US-based dating sites as “sleazy,” and the real-life dating scene in New York as “nonexistent.”
“I go out here — and nothin’,” she says.
But on Meetic, she Skypes with a Parisian man from the site for an hour each day. This month they missed connections — she flew to France for vacation the same day he flew to NYC for business — yet Lillian managed to line up two dates with another Frenchman Meetic member while in Paris.
“I was talking to guys in Italy, France and Sweden all at once,” she brags.
Susan, a 22-year-old grad student, also struggled with dating locally, so she widened her eHarmony parameters.
“What are the odds that that perfect person is within a 25-mile radius of your home?” she asks.
Turns out her future husband was living 3,400 miles away in a tiny village with the population of 60. eHarmony matched her with Peter, a 30-year-old Slovakian living in England. After months of Webcam chats, Susan hopped the pond for a face-to-face.
“I was really, really nervous on the plane,” she remembers. “I don’t do this sort of thing! But he was that special.”
Peter proposed a few months later in a romantic English garden. They married last June near a lake in Aurora, NY, and he’s since moved here.
Even “Real Housewives of New York City” reality star Alex McCord and Simon van Kempen met through Matchmaker.com while living on different continents.
“I had already dated most of the guys I knew and wanted to date in New York,” says Alex.
Simon, meanwhile, was based in Sydney and posted a profile on the Australian section of the site. On a lark, he changed his location to New York during a work trip to the city.
“I wasn’t looking to find a New York woman and move here,” he insists.
Still, international love prevailed and they tied the knot in 2000.
“Expect it when you least expect it,” they say. In unison.
Mark Brooks, editor of OnlinePersonalsWatch.com, says international romance is a growing trend, due to singles’ increasing pickiness about potential life partners.
“The longer the shopping list, the further afield you should cast your net,” he advises.
A single New Yorker four years ago, he flew to Prague for a European online dating conference where he met — and fell for — a Czech woman. They married last April and now live in Malta with two daughters.
It’s not just New Yorkers who are searching overseas for love. Sarah Shaw, 45, describes the dating scene in LA as “a nightmare,” so a French friend made her register with Meetic, where she stumbled upon Pierre Dubois, a handsome French painter. They fell into a whirlwind “fantasy” romance and were married soon after. Pierre moved to California and they now have identical twin girls.
Sarah credits European men with being more open and less threatened by female success than American men. Plus there’s that foreign accent.
“You have to be willing to look under every rock,” she says. “In every country.”
Here are some of the most popular dating sites from around the world:
* Europeans: Meetic.com
* Brits and Canadians: PlentyOfFish.com
* Asians: AsiaFriendFinder.com
* Australians: RSVP.com.au
* Indians: Shaadi.com
* Russians: Member.ru
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/lifestyle/dating/daters_without_borders_lE0aVEOO6fidW6lXlntY2H#ixzz0YYvNa9GM
Anyone who knows much about me and how I became a Romance Coach knows that my husband Drew and I were a long-distance romance—482 miles apart, to be precise. I believed that I would not let location get in the way of finding a perfect mate, and I didn’t. Today’s online daters often balk at distances as slim as a few miles, but here’s the story of a couple who went half way around the world:
From Online Romance to a New Life in Sydney
Jack Atley for The New York Times
In 2006, while Alexander Falber and his wife Romy Samuel were still in New York, the couple bought a 1,722-square-foot apartment in this 1940s era Art Deco building in the Bellevue Hill section of Sydney.
Alexander Falber and Romy Samuel are enthusiastic about their three-bedroom apartment in Bellevue Hill, one of Sydney’s most prestigious suburbs.
“Where else in the world can you be equidistant to the beach and the city?” Mr. Falber said. “It’s the best location for making the most of the city.”
The couple came to Sydney in 2006. They met a couple of years before through Jdate.com, a Jewish online dating site. It was a romance that could only have been had through the Internet, because Mr. Falber was in Manhattan, studying for his doctorate in chemistry, while Ms. Samuel was in Melbourne, Australia. But, “His profile said, ‘Willing to relocate,’ ” she noted with a cheeky grin.
After a quick courtship they married, spent a couple of years working in New York and then decided to move to Sydney, where Mr. Falber, 32, a native of Monroe, Conn., is using his chemistry degree and entrepreneurial spirit on solar energy projects. Ms. Samuel, also 32, imports luxury goods.
The couple used realestate.com.au to find their apartment, which is in a 1940s-era brick structure of Art Deco design, a favorite style in Australia during that period. The 12-unit building stands at the end of a long driveway, insulating it from the noise of nearby traffic, and on a hillside, so the couple’s apartment has a broad view of Sydney Harbor even though it is on the first floor.
“We bought the apartment without even seeing it,” the couple said in unison. They were still in New York when they found the listing, so Ms. Samuel’s cousin, a managing partner at a Sydney law firm, went to the auction on their behalf. (Most properties in Australia are sold at auction.)
“I was on the phone listening to the auction while Paul was bidding — it was very exciting,” Ms. Samuel recalled. “The next thing I knew, I heard a hammer go down, clapping and Paul shouted, ‘Mazel-tov, you’re now residents of Sydney!’ ”
They paid 850,000 Australian dollars (about $666,670 at the time) for the 160-square-meter (1,722-square-foot) apartment. A real estate agent told Ms. Samuel recently that it was worth 1.2 million Australian dollars ($941,200); a similar apartment in the building recently sold for 1.15 million Australian dollars.
“The property market in Sydney remains quite steady, with a lack of supply holding up prices,” said Elliot Placks, a real estate agent at the Ray White Double Bay Group. “Also, the Australian government’s initiative with the first-home buyer’s grant, which is between 14,000 dollars and 21,000 dollars, is fueling demand.” (That works out to around $12,000 to $17,400.)
He also noted that interest rates in Australia are at 20-year lows.
But the global economic downturn has affected the top end of the market, Mr. Placks said, resulting in price declines of 20 to 30 percent.
The apartment’s living room has a gas fireplace, framed in cherry wood, but the couple turns it on only about one month a year. The parquet floor has a herringbone pattern, while the walls, which are double brick and painted white, are decorated with a lot of memorabilia from their days in New York, including photographs of their first apartment’s front door, Ms. Samuel looking through binoculars at the Top of the Rock Observation Deck at Rockefeller Center and the Brooklyn Bridge.
Just off the living room is the dining area, where there is a table that seats eight because Ms. Samuel likes preparing traditional Jewish meals.
They plan to renovate the kitchen in the future, but for now, its fittings date from the original construction. But it does lead to the balcony and a barbeque for outdoor grilling. Also, the couple’s year-old cat, named Lionel Richie, likes to use the outdoor space to stalk the geckos that bask there in the sun.
One of the apartment’s three bedrooms has been converted into a study, with two glass desks facing each other for their laptops and some shelving for their books lining the walls.
The apartment has two bathrooms, a garage for their car and scooter and a separate storage area.
Mr. Falber and Ms. Samuel recently celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary. Both said they couldn’t be happier living in Sydney. They have been bowled over by the clean ocean air, the clear skies and beautiful beaches, they said.
Ms. Samuel, who was raised in Melbourne, said, “It feels like home, sounds like home, but has the challenge of living in an unfamiliar city.”
When I went looking for love on Match.com way back in 1998 (ancient history in Internet dating terms), I looked all over everywhere for my perfect match. At that time, few people were doing online dating at all, and I decided I wasn’t going to let location get in the way of finding the best person for me. Sweetie Drew came in at 482 miles away in Vicksburg, Mississippi, just under the 500 mile circle was searching. Now folks have gotten spoiled with all the people online and are tending to restrict themselves to close by. But Drew and I are living proof that long distance love can work. See this article below for more hints on how to make love work over many miles.
Long distance dating; can it work?
Noreen Panizzoli
Relationships are complicated enough without having hundreds or thousands of miles separating you from the one you love. Living long distances apart can be challenging and brings its own special issues and concerns to the table. But thousands of people hook up via Internet dating services that turn into lifetime commitments. And there are thousands of examples of military families and other couples who are apart for work, school or other reasons.
It takes time to make a long distance relationship work, but may be worth the effort to bring joy and happiness into your life. Your chances of having a healthy long distance relationship are better if you’ve spent some time together before a physical separation. A firm foundation will help make it more likely to succeed.
* Clear Expectations
Knowing what you want from a relationship is perhaps the most important factor to getting what you want in a relationship. If both people aren’t on the same page in terms their hopes for the future, the relationship will not survive. Communicating with each other about your expectations gives assurance of a shared future. How and when you’ll talk, how often you’ll be able to see each other, whether you will remain monogamous are some of the issues that need to be resolved.
* Day-to-Day Communications
Connecting with a distant online date involves sharing the details of your day-to-day activities. Intimacy grows stronger the more we know about another person and is essential for any romantic relationship to evolve into a long-term commitment. Sharing the serious, as well as the trivial, parts of your day will bring you closer, as well as eliminate some of the awkwardness that distant relationships can bring out when you finally do see each other.
With online dating you may never have met face-to-face, making it more difficult, but not impossible. In this situation, communication is the only tool you have. So make the most of it. Technology has brought us closer and makes it easier to keep in touch daily or even minute to minute. But even with the advent of 24/7 web cams and email, there’s just nothing as touching as an old-fashioned love letter, unexpected gift or surprise weekend visit.
* Building Trust
Absence can make the heart grow fonder, but it can also bring great anxiety. To offset feelings of doubt, couples who are in a long distance relationship need to work doubly hard at instilling trust. Thoughtful gestures, endearing messages and dependable communication will help build trust.
* Speak Your Mind
Problems in a long distance romance are magnified by the inability to address the issue face-to-face. Bottling up doubts and concerns about relationship will only put more obstacles in the way of your happiness. If you hope that time will change how you feel and you hold back your feelings, you may end up saying hurtful things out of frustration. Be honest and speak up.
One of the unspoken advantages of a distant relationship is the opportunity to maintain your independence. This allows both people to take the relationship slowly, giving you time to really get to know your partner without the distractions that can come with being physical.
For most people, a loving relationship is only complete when the two of you can spend your lives together. Some couples do maintain long-term, long distance relationships; however, if you’re stumbling along because it’s convenient rather than pushing for the togetherness you crave, you will be disappointed, disillusioned and ultimately dissatisfied with your relationship.
Who says you can’t find love around the corner? These folks did ... but keep in mind that they had to join an online dating service to find each other, still.
Online lovers turn out to be neighbours!
Posted on October 16, 2008 | Category: Other News
A Brit woman joined an online worldwide dating service - only to find love with a man who lived just seven houses down her street.
Teacher Julie McIlroy, 46, started chatting online with Allan Donnelly, 53, after skimming through thousands of pictures of eligible men on the Internet site.
They were amazed to discover they both lived in Cardiff - and were even more surprised when they found that they were neighbours.
“I was totally stunned. It was an incredible coincidence. The dating website could have put me in touch with someone anywhere in the world,” the Sun quoted Julie, as saying.
The couple began seeing each other and went on holiday to Thailand and then to Cambodia and Morocco.
Electrician Allan has popped the question and the couple, who are both divorced, are planning their wedding for next year.
The father of two proposed mum-of-three Julie at a surprise birthday party for her at his home.
“I was amazed that we live so close. But it was my lucky day - Julie is right up my street,” Allan said.
Love it!!! Not only is this a successful long-distance relationship, it spans two countries! And this couple’s experience is very close to what I had with my now-husband Drew: We got to know each other so well by email and phone that it was practically a done deal when we met. Now, this is not usual, and many couples take much more time, but for us, and for Janet and Robert, it worked!
Cyberspace couple marks year of marriage
QUISPAMSIS - A couple in a whirlwind romance, who married three months after meeting on an Internet dating site, celebrated their first anniversary on the weekend surrounded by friends, still talking about how amazing it was to find each other.
Janet and Robert Hunt say that after a year, they are still amazed at being with someone who shares the same values and enjoys the same things, including motorcycles.
Janet and Robert Hunt, both in their 40s, agree that from the outside it looks like they moved very fast, but any obstacles to their union just melted away - the first being geography. She is from New Brunswick and he lived in Florida.
After making contact through eHarmony.com in July 2007 there were daily phone calls, some lasting several hours. It left them feeling they knew each other better than most people who date the conventional way. They also give credit to the in-depth questionnaire they had to answer before the dating service put their names together as possible matches.
“The end result was that I have more in common with her than anyone I have ever met,” said Robert.
Last year a friend urged Janet to give Internet dating a try. Although she didn’t have a lot of faith in the idea, she spent an hour online completing the form on July 1. About a week earlier Robert had done the same thing in Florida.
The computer matched them up, but for a couple of weeks, Janet put off making any further contact because he was so far away. Every couple of days her list was updated with a few new profiles added, and some taken off, but Robert’s was always there.
“I liked his profile, but he lived so far away I didn’t think it was worth responding,” she said.
But then she realized the worst that could happen is he would say he wasn’t interested because of the distance, so she sent a request for contact on July 13 and heard back from him two days later. By July 16 they were talking daily on the telephone.
A month and a half later they met face-to-face when he flew into Bangor from Orlando. Janet’s best friend and her husband invited them to dinner that night because they wanted to meet the man she couldn’t stop talking about. After dinner Robert got down on his knee to propose and Janet accepted. He had already decided to pop the question before he got on the plane.
“I don’t think (Janet’s best friend and her husband) were ready for that,” Robert said, with a chuckle.
“No, they were quite shocked,” Janet agreed.
“We had spent more time talking than anyone I had ever known, so I really knew her very well,” he said. “We talked five or six hours a night after work and prepared meals over the phone and sometimes we had dinner together.”
Last winter in New Brunswick, when Robert first met people who heard he left Florida to live in Canada, they teased him. But he says Canada feels like home.
When they decided to marry, Robert agreed to move to Canada without really knowing the job situation, but luckily his profession is included in NAFTA. Within a few weeks he had a job as a geotechnical technologist at Fundy Engineering and a work visa.
Janet, who is an executive assistant at Moosehead for Derek and Andrew Oland, and has two sons, couldn’t very easily pull up stakes and move to Florida.
“People move across the country for a job, so why not for the love of your life?” Robert said of his decision to relocate.
After a year they are still amazed at being with someone who shares the same values and enjoys the same things, including motorcycles.
“We’ll be thinking the same things at the same time,” he said.
“It’s like he once said, it’s almost like we share a brain,” she said.
But it wasn’t just the two of them starting off married life together last fall. Her sons Alexander, 19, and Jonathon, 16, were part of the family along with Robert’s 16-year-old daughter, Sonja. There was some drama between the teenagers at times, but it didn’t cause any fights for the parents. They think so much alike that when a problem arose they usually came to the same solution.
Sonja, who attended Kennebecasis Valley High School last winter, is in Connecticut with her mother this fall, but is talking of returning to Quispamsis after Christmas.
Although Robert and Janet had both been married before, and thought they knew what love was, they agree they didn’t. Robert said it’s like someone who ate cheeseburgers all his life, thought they were the best things ever, but was finally served filet mignon and now knows the difference.
Occasionally I have a client who has decided to look for a mate overseas. While the reasons may differ, the risks are the same. And dating outside the US is risky. Take a look at this article for a few eye-openers:
Disappointment Awaits Men Seeking Foreign Brides Online
Sites promising exotic Asian, Russian women are often scams ... or worse
By Tom Glaister
I was in an internet café in Thailand last year, trying to work out which continent I should fly to next, when my attention was entirely absorbed by an attractive Thai girl who sat down next to me and logged in. She gave me one of those Thai smiles that could mean anything at all and then concentrated on her correspondence. I was beginning to wonder if Thailand had its merits after all and couldn’t help stealing repeated glances at her.
She was totally absorbed in her online conversations with four messenger windows going at once, however, and in each of them I could see the photo of a Western guy. The youngest had to be 45 at least.
I miss you.
When you coming back?
I wait for you but I no have money for my rent.
I looked at her again and realized she was wearing too much makeup and revealing clothes for the average Thai girl. She almost certainly worked in a bar as a hostess for Western guys looking for Eastern romance and now that their holidays were over, her “boyfriends” were back home at work, dreaming of the month or two they’d spent in Thai heaven. They’d be coming back as soon as they could afford it — if their “girlfriend” didn’t drain their bank accounts dry in the meantime.
Thailand, like Brazil or the Philippines, is full of Western guys trying their luck with women half their age. With terrible dress sense that betrays the serious lack of a woman’s touch, it can be pitiful to watch them trying to mend their hearts under flashing neon signs, sharing a common vocabulary of maybe 500 words with the women they meet.
It’s not easy getting old. Along with worrying about balding, beer guts and prostate cancer, many American men suffer the flip side of the national individualistic character — they end up feeling quite alone.
As school friends move away and get married, opportunities to make new social contacts tend to diminish with age. And our modern lifestyles often dictate that we work alone in front of a computer, shop alone in a supermarket and go home alone to apartments where neighbors don’t talk to one another.
Until the Internet came along, the natural desire to meet the opposite sex did much to boost the attendance at bars and evening classes in the hope of meeting that special someone. Drinking too much beer and pretending to be interested in learning Italian were the only options left open to the millions of Americans who simply didn’t know how else to meet anyone new.
Out of the bars
photo of dating siteBut then the advent of online dating sites meant the American guy could go hunting without having to get out of his dressing gown. Unshaven and unwashed he could woo any number of women by complimenting them on their profile photo and including the right kind of charismatic emoticon in the message to show his sensitive side. It made the first step in dating safe, voyeuristic and cheaper than buying drinks all night while searching for the courage to approach the blonde on the other side of the bar.
Which explains why some 40 million American men logged onto dating sites last year.
Yet there remained the fact that most of the women on American dating sites were … well, American.
“They’ve lost their femininity!” an American expat once told me when explaining his choice to move south to Mexico. “American women these days dress like men, talk like men and call you a chauvinist if you ask them to make you a cup of coffee.”
I thought of the aggressive, sexless look of the supermodels and the passing of the days when men tipped their hats to women in the street. Then the expat’s Mexican wife came in, brought us each another beer, wiped the table and went off to calm the crying children and prepare lunch.
Talk to American men who have married foreign women and 90 percent of them will have been attracted to the old-fashioned values of another culture. Dinner on the table, clean clothes in the cupboard and strong maternal instincts.
“Western women have been campaigning for equality for so long that happiness went out of the picture long ago.” another friend married to a Thai wife told me.
I initially thought this was a bit over the top until I learned that even complimenting a female co-worker can be considered grounds for sexual harassment. Have feminism and political correctness taken all the fun out of American love?
Well maybe. But there’s also the fact that, for many, exotic is erotic and there’s nothing like a foreign accent or complexion to hide the personality faults that stop domestic relationships getting off the ground.
Where to look?
I get asked this all the time by guys everywhere I go when they hear that I’m always on the road. Surely by now I must have found that paradise where sultry babes spend all day topless on the beach, ready to trade their bodies for a cocktail and a cheap pick-up line.
In fact, guys tend to be such suckers for this fantasy that Russian scam artists send out millions of emails allegedly from hot girls called Tanya or Olga. Accompanied by alluring photos, the messages promise eternal friendship, physical relationships or marriage.
In realilty, the people sending out these snares are often hairy Mafioso guys in their dressing gowns who know just how to talk to the average male libido. Should they convince someone that they really have found love, an actress is employed to turn on the emotional blackmail by phone and initiate the first in a series of requests for money to arrange her visa/buy a flight ticket/pay off kidnappers or any number of absurd pretexts. Naturally, she never gets on the plane.
But can true love be found abroad?
According to the senators who sponsored the recently-enacted International Marriage Broker Regulation Act designed to protect foreign women from stealthy male American predators, some 8,000 to 12,000 U.S. men marry foreign wives each year. The divorce rate of such couples is up to three times lower than the national average and hundreds of agencies exist to introduce American men to these Russian, Colombian or Filipina beauties. I just typed ‘Russian girls’ into Google and 9 of the first 10 results turned up mail order bride or dating services.
Introduction agencies can serve a valid role. The honest ones can put you in touch with women in the destination country looking for long-term relationships. They can arrange tours and help with translation and bureaucratic difficulties. Surfing around some of the sites I had to wonder about the motives of some of the women involved, however.
“My name is Ludmila and I am student of psychology. I am looking for man to care about me, care about our children and make my dream come true.”
Her script might have been a little more convincing if the accompanying video hadn’t shown her walking down a main shopping street in the Ukraine in lingerie. Other videos showed Russian student girls in bikinis, draping themselves around national monuments while they talked about their hobbies. I was somehow reminded of Miss World contestants talking about world peace. Then of course my girlfriend walked in and point blank refused to believe it was all part of my journalistic research…
Gold diggers?
So were these beautiful girls really looking for true love or were they just in it for the money?
Any American guy looking to marry a woman from a poorer country is always going to have the doubt at the back of his mind that she’s only going through the whole ordeal to get her hands on his bank account. And even if he’s too enamoured with the hobbies of his new love to think about it, the social stigma of a ‘mail order bride’ can make him the laughing stock of the community.
Thanks to the Beatles, we all know the money can’t buy you love and why else would a young woman choose to leave home and marry a stranger?
Before I left Thailand last year I found an interesting guide on the shelf of the airport bookshop that was a manual for foreign men and their Thai wives. On the left hand side of the book the text was in English and opposite the same content was written in Thai. The idea being that couples could read the book together and navigate their way through the cultural minefield which can sink mixed marriages before they get started.
Particularly enlightening was the section on money. Thai women were informed that ‘love and money are seen as separate and distinct concepts in Western society’ and that if their husbands seem stingy it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care.
The men, on the other hand, were encouraged to understand that husbands in Thailand are expected to take care of the families of their brides. It’s simply a form of gratitude for having raised the wonderful woman they have now married.
It seems that sometimes we get so caught up in looking for ulterior motives that we forget some of the basics of human nature.
Since the beginning of time marriage has had a strong economic aspect in cultures all over the world. How long ago was it in the West that a young man’s suitability was based on his “prospects” and his ability to keep his bride “in the manner to which she has become accustomed?”
Many of us announce our wealth every day in the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the places we frequent. And it’s not unreasonable to suppose that most women would prefer their partners to be reasonably solvent. Naturally, try to buy a feminist a drink and you might receive a knee to the groin but these are strange times…
Asking for trouble
Many Americans who marry foreign wives do end up getting scammed, cheated or abandoned once her visa comes through but they’ve usually invited trouble on themselves.
After years of loneliness they often step right off the plane into a bar in Bangkok and start dating the first girl who approaches them. Or else they choose a woman half their age who fulfills all their fantasies but who doesn’t speak English and who sees them only as a walking wallet.
Finding love abroad is mostly about common sense. For a start, you’re unlikely to find the woman of your dreams in a bar with girls doing pole dances in the corner.
Whether in Colombia, Russia or Thailand, respectable women with serious intentions live normal lives and it takes time to get to know them. You need to be able to speak at least some of the same language and have something in common. And if you expect her to emigrate, you might first want to live for a while in her country to appreciate what kind of culture she comes from.
And if you get to know her first on an Internet dating site, remember that no one who’s honest will ever ask you to send money upfront. Period. And if the first couple of telephone calls go well, jump on a plane and go to meet her — if you discover she has a bad drinking habit and she can’t stand your body odor … well, at least you’ll have found out in time.
Finding love abroad can be thrilling. Hell, it’s one of the things that keeps me on the road all the time.
But while the average Vietnamese girl might be half the weight of her American counterpart, she may not be able to get your jokes and a festival like Christmas probably won’t mean anything to her. She may cook food you’re not used to and hate the weather but hey, at least you probably won’t be able to understand what your mother-in-law says.
And lastly, before you go running overseas to look for love, ask a female friend if there’s any way you could make yourself more attractive before you go. Terrible body odor, drinking before noon and an inability to listen are turn-offs to women anywhere you go.
I’m a big fan of looking wherever you need to to find the love of your life. I looked all over when I was single, and in fact, Drew was the closest at 482 miles away. But the current economics of travel are making people think twice about starting up the old car or buying a plane ticket. That’s sobering when it comes to finding a mate. What do you think this will mean for your own search for love?
The toll on long-distance love As fuel prices climb, couples choose between breaking the bank and breaking hearts.
By Lini S. Kadaba
Inquirer Staff Writer
Love has its price.
Every few weeks for the last six months, Amanda Sheronas has paid $120, even $180, in airfare to see her sweetie 760 miles away.
But this month, Sheronas, 37, reached her limit.
The $219 cost of a one-way plane ticket to visit Jaime Alvarez, 40, in Jacksonville, Fla., broke the bank.
“I couldn’t afford it,” said Sheronas, who lives in Devon and works as a director at bridal gown company Alfred Angelo in Fort Washington.
Bad enough that the climbing cost of fuel has hurt school budgets, fire companies, and everyone’s grocery tab. Now, long-distance lovebirds are feeling the pinch on wallets - and hearts.
“It’s put a hold on us,” said Sheronas, who is unsure when she and her boyfriend of six months will rendezvous. “We’re seeing if we can wait it out. It’s not easy. . . . We’ve had to dial things down a little bit.”
The couple, like others, is fueling the flame - and easing the financial burden - with technologies such as texting. Others are cutting corners or choosing to meet at a halfway point.
According to an online poll conducted this month for The Inquirer at dating site OkCupid.com, nearly two-thirds of 1,179 clients said they would see a faraway mate less often as a result of higher gas costs.
About 65 percent text, call or e-mail more. More than 70 percent would cut back on extras, like a night out or gifts.
Locally, a philly.com poll posted two weeks ago found that 41 percent of 472 respondents had gone so far as to break up a long-distance relationship due to travel bills.
That might reflect Philly grumpiness more than actual love lost.
Still, said Kimberly Flemke, a couples and sex therapist with the Council for Relationships in Philadelphia, long-distance love, already complex, is “tougher now than ever before because gas prices are out of control. It really does force people to prioritize relationships. Who’s worth the money, the time? Where is my payback? . . . Who do I want to invest in, and who do I not?”
About 3.5 million dating couples consider themselves long distance, according to the Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships, a Web site affiliated with author Dr. Gregory Guldner, who wrote the self-published Long Distance Relationships: The Complete Guide. An additional 3.6 million couples have commuter marriages, the Web site notes.
Experts say the number of LDRs, as they’re known, has grown with the rise of online dating - which increases the likelihood that Mr. Right lives three states away. The average LDR couple lives 125 miles apart, visits one to two times a month, and calls each other every three days for 30 minutes, according to a Guldner study.
As gas prices reach a nationwide average of $4.11 a gallon - more than a third higher than a year ago - nearly 60 percent of OkCupid.com poll takers would look for a match in a smaller geographic area and 70 percent would not date someone more than 50 miles away. The price of jet fuel has soared even more. In the last year, it has doubled, according to the International Air Transport Association.
Ironically, the same weak economy that might force LDRs to fizzle also could lead the number of love commutes to multiply, according to Caroline Tiger, author of The Long-Distance Relationship Guide. As jobs become scarcer, one half might have to move to chase employment, she said.
Jim Donohue and Christia Gordon, both 26, saw the financial stress mount when he left the San Diego area in late 2006 to come East, where he has family and landed a job.
“We don’t have a ton of disposable income,” said Gordon, a publicity manager. Recently, she worked the Web for a bargain to Philly. Fares hovered above $400 - double what she had paid just 18 months ago, she said. “Basically, right now, you could go to Mexico or the Caribbean for the same money.”
Even worse, those bucks go for a too-short turnaround. Donohue, who lives in Media, spent $450 for a West Coast drop-in over the July Fourth weekend - an expense he found “hard to justify” until he considered the prospect of “not seeing her for three months.” (Awww!)
Gordon was ready to quit her job and join him. Instead, she negotiated a deal as part of a promotion: She can work out of Philly for a week once a month, easing the situation.
Martha Blackburn, 29, lives in Marlton. Her boyfriend, David Williams, 25, a freelance TV station engineer, resides outside St. Louis. The couple bridges the 800 miles with video.
“It was his Valentine’s present to himself and to me,” said Blackburn, membership coordinator at the American Association of Teachers of German in Cherry Hill. “He got a little video camera, and we can see each other over Skype.”
The software allows free phone calls and videoconferencing over the Internet. Alas, “you can’t give someone a hug over Skype,” Blackburn lamented.
Ultimately, said Lisa Chase Patterson, a relationships expert at JustAnswer.com, LDR couples need to resolve the distance.
“Love is love,” said Patterson, who has seen an uptick in queries that mention the toll of gas prices on relationships. “But the reality is that you can’t do this for another five years. The person who does most of the traveling is going to get resentful.”
Tiger, the author, has had three LDRs of her own. The last, with Jon Dunsay, 36, an attorney and now her fiance, worked beautifully: He moved from Washington, D.C., to Center City, a block away from her.
“There’s really no substitute for seeing each other,” Tiger said. Besides, “we can use the money we’re saving . . . to actually travel places together.”
Others, in the meantime, are cutting corners to fund road trips and flights.
“We eat in more often and watch movies at home instead of going out as much,” said Katie Delach, 26, a public relations account manager who lives outside Boston and drives - round-trip: $120 - two, three times a month to Morristown, N.J., to spend time with Will Stokes, 24, a management associate with Subaru of America.
If she drives down more than he drives up, they split the cost of gas and tolls. “Sometimes,” she said, “we meet halfway in southern Connecticut. It gets to the point where, as much as you want to make the drive, we’re both starting out, and we can’t afford it.”
“It’s been a shock,” he said.
A few days ago, the couple caught a break (of sorts) on gas. Stokes’ company moved him to Chicago - and spontaneous, frequent drives are no longer possible.
The couple plan to rely on once-a-month flights. “We’re just going to have to see each other less,” he said. “It’s the only feasible, financially responsible option.”
Karlene Lihota, 25, a graduate student at Thomas Jefferson University who lives in Bella Vista, is luckier than most LDRers.
In another year, she’ll complete her degree and plans to join boyfriend Michael Salguero, 27, an entrepreneur, in Boston.
For now, she watches “100 percent” of income from a part-time Internet job go toward travel between the cities.
“You’ve really got to like the other person to do this,” she said.
The United States Embassy in Moscow clearly gets frequent reports about US citizens who are victims of Russian based dating scams. Here’s what the Embassy has put out in response, good advice no matter what country you are dealing with:
Internet Dating Scams
The U.S. Embassy receives reports almost every day of fraud committed against U.S. citizens by Internet correspondents professing love and romantic interest. Typically, the Russian correspondent asks the U.S. citizen to send money or credit card information for living expenses, travel expenses, or “visa costs.” The anonymity of the Internet means that the U.S. citizen cannot be sure of the real name, age, marital status, nationality, or even gender of the correspondent. The U.S. Embassy has received many reports of citizens losing thousands of dollars through such scams. American citizens are advised never to send money to anyone they have not met in person.
The internet dating scams include some common elements:
* Misrepresentation about the costs and requirements of a U.S. visa,
* Claims that they must buy airline tickets only in Russia,
* Use of professional models’ photos gleaned from internet web sites,
* Sudden financial hurdles to leaving Russia,
* Requests to send money only through a specific company,
* A scan of a (usually fraudulent) U.S. visa to prove intent to travel.
Please keep in mind that, while the U.S. Embassy in Moscow does not have the authorization to initiate investigations of these scams, the Fraud Prevention Unit can verify the authenticity of any U.S. visa via e-mail at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). In addition, complete and authoritative information on applying for a U.S. visa is available on the Department of State’s webpage on Visa Information for Temporary Visitors.
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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