She's The Worst! - First of all let me congratulate you on a excellent site. I have, for some time, thought about how I could communicate my story as a warning for others and you have created the perfect forum already!
I have read many of the stories which describe other people's experiences on your site. As many others have said in their letters, I thought "God, how I wish I had read this before!"
My story begins early in 1998, around January. At this point in time my situation was a little bit unstable (in particular emotionally), been seperated from my ex wife for about 1 year, my mum had taken her own life about 6 months prior, broke up with girlfriend of eight months just prior to Christmas and was starting to date a new girl (not via the net). The separation from my ex-wife, while extremely civilised and to a point amicable, was very very painful for me. My son was only 1.5 years old then, and the most adorable child one could imagine. Not being with him every day was the hardest thing I ever had to get used to. Hence, I was recovering from my seperation, but still very vulnerable, a little bit lonely and quite reclusive. I spent alot of time online in those days, just passing time in the evenings, looking for interesting stuff, and quite by accident came across
ICQ and
PowWow. I installed both and soon was hooked.
One night I was chatting to my best friend (who lives close by) and he pointed out a rather beatiful lady (judging by the picture) in one of the PowWow chat rooms (PowWow allows users to attach pictures to their profile, which can be viewed by anyone in the same chat room). She was 24 (according to profile, it later turned out she was about my age, 32), looked of European descent and lived in Malaysia, and she called herself LS. My friend started a chat with her. A day or two later my friend told me that she had told him that she is thinking of visiting Australia and he had offered to put her up while she was in Sydney. I was a little stunned as my friend is married and asked him how he thought this would work out. He told me some BS about renting an apartment, etc, etc. Now I have to mention that my friend tells many BS stories to everyone around him, so much in fact, that I am certain he has trouble seperating the truth from BS at times. Nonetheles, he has many other fine qualities (inlcuding standing by my side during the worst times of my separation).
By nature I'm a very honest, straight forward person and I tend to do 'the right thing' whenever its humanly possible. I was a little concerned about this girl getting sucked into coming to Australia on my friends invitation, so I started chatting to her to try and warn her that not everything she was told was true (eg. my friend told her he was divorced). I know this might sound a little back handed towards my friend, but all I wanted to archive is to avoid a disaster for L (and my friend, remembering he is married). Man do I wish I had stayed out of it...
L showed obvious appreciation about the warning and we started to chat more and more. As time went on, I felt she was just so perfect; she spoke several languages (including my native European tongue), she has had a terrible experience (truth unkown) in her life when her ex-husband was killed in a motorcycle accident, she had similar interests, etc. I was so excited. It really looked like a perfect match. After about two months of nightly online chatting, she asked me to call her on the phone (remember this is an international call from Australia to Malaysia, cost ranges between $0.5 and $1 US per minute), and she had the most beautiful voice. At that point I was gone hook, line and sinker. We spent anywhere up to 2hrs a day on the phone. My initial gut feel when she asked me to call her is to say "NO" and I told her that, but she talked me into it anyway. Important point here: Follow your instincts, they are often right!.
I did ask her for more photos, but she said she had none, as she destroyed most of them, because they reminded her too much of her late husband. I know what you are thinking... "RED FLAG", and yes, my gut feel again was that something wasn't right. I thought if I kept persisting (and I did) I would eventually get more pictures, but I never did.
Within a couple of months (this is about April / May 98 now), my phone bills overtook my income. I spent around US$10,000 to $15,000 on phone between April and August 98. Yes I know thats stupid, extremely and utterly stupid, but heck, I was so in love, I didn't care. L did ask me to originate most calls, as they were cheaper from my end than hers and promised to send me some money to help pay the bills. She worked as a resident manager at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, this also made it difficult as she had to use office phones, rather than a private line. She borrowed about US$3,000 from her dad which she sent me to pay my bill once, even though that was still substantially less than half the total bill which she promised to pay originally.
She liked me to talk to her dad at times when she was spending time with her parents and she also talked to my sister and friends at work. In retrospect this was part of her process of locking me into a relationship I could not get out of easily, knowing my personality would make it hard for me to break promises. She systematically got me to promise her marriage, children, lifestyle, etc. She was constructing her dream life. I was allowing myself to be steered blindly, so I must admit I am partially to blame for what eventually happened.
She liked to play mind games with me (I only realised this later). In particular, she liked to make me think that other men were after her. One time, she rang me in the middle of night, sounding very upset, and told me one of the guests at the hotel was trying to force her into a date (for dinner). He supposedly worked for one of their biggest clients who rent multiple rooms on a long term basis. He apparently threatened to pull all the business from the hotel unless she went out with him. I told her to report this incident to her boss immediately, which she reluctanly did (well... who knows), claiming she may still be blamed for loosing the business. Her boss aparantly resolved the situation. From that point onward she started to claim that her boss was starting to chase her, giving her expensive presents, etc. I got very jealous, her game worked! In retrospect, it was most likely and almost definately all made up.
I sent her a lot of pictures of myself and my son (as she claimed to really like kids) and even made a video of where I live, my apartment and myself. Despite all this and many more requests, I still didn't have any more pictures of L. In April 98 I made a pre-booking on a flight to Malaysia (as a surprise), to visit her for a long weekend. She was shocked and not happy at all. This surprised me and I started probing. She made up a story about how it may endanger her position at work, her boss being after her and all. I cancelled the flight.
By about May 98 we started to make plans to see each other again. We planned she would visit Australia in August to co-incide with my birthday. At this point I made the most fatal mistake of this whole episode.
As we were both close to broke due the phone bills, I offered L a supplementary Gold American Express card on my account to pay her air travel with. She accepted and used it to buy her ticket. No problem so far.
Just before she came to visit (about 2 weeks), she started to hint that she may have put on a few pounds since that picture I had of her was taken. At that point, I was so in love, I felt I really didn't care what she looked like. I just wanted to be with her. When the day came, I waited for her at the airport. I have never been so excited in my life. I had a huge bunch of roses for her. As I had no new pictures of her I was hoping I would recognise her. I was shaking.
I did not recognise her. She recognised me though (she had real pictures of me of course). Man what a shock, she was huge (extremely fat), and she didn't look anything like the picture I had (I am convinced the picture was not of her, at any point in her life). Now I know this would sound very shallow, especially to some of the larger ladies that might read this, but I was lead to believe something which just wasn't true. As Wild points out quite regularly, people have expectations and criteria for their partners. If these aren't matched, no matter how hard you try, a relationship will eventually fail. This applies to all areas, not just weight, but is one of the more obvious (ie. in your face).
I was in total shock. I still felt love for this woman, alot of it, at first. I know myself well enough however, to realise that this wasn't going to work. She wasn't who she claimed she was and she had lied to me right from the start. Her personality too was nothing like on the phone or in online chat. She used to be so bubbly, smart and lively, whereas in real life she was quiet, very shy and appeared to be behaviourally disturbed.
Lets think about this; I will have to introduce this woman to my parents, friends, collegues. I'll admit it, I felt embarressed. Everyone I knew was expecting the girl in the (one) photo I had. I knew everyone would think I was a total idiot (and I was) when they saw her in real life (and they did!). I stuck to my principles and went through the agonizing meetings with friends and family. L started to promise she would loose weight. After a week and a half, I told her I could not go through with this and that she should return to Malaysia on the earliest possible flight.
She was devastated, as expected. She tried everything to change my mind, telling me she had quit her job to be with me, etc. At this point she voluntarily returned the AMEX card to me, which I placed in a secure place (I thought) in my study. She departed. I felt some relief, even though I felt awful for having to turn her away and for not being with my 'dream' girl. But the nightmare was far from over.
About two days later I realise the AMEX card L had returned to me had vanished. I called her in the evening and she told me had taken it back as a 'souvenir' and whether I mind if she kept it. I said 'NO you can't ' and asked her to cut it in half. She agreed. As it was late at night and for some reason I believed she would do as she promised (stupid I know), I left the call to cancel the card till the next morning. When I talked to the AMEX operator to cancel the card, I also asked him to confirm that no transactions had been made (which he did) and that no more transactions could be made in the future with the card (which he also did). I breathed a huge sigh of relief, but the horror was only just about to start.
About three weeks later I get a call from American Exress asking me whether I would be paying my statement on time (ie. it was due, but not overly late). I felt this was a bit unusual so I enquired why I was being called. The operator explained that it was a bit more than usual and they wanted to make sure it got paid on time. The balance was over US$7,000! It appeared after some investigation by AMEX and myself that L had spent this money between the evening I talked to her and the morning when I cancelled the card. AMEX said that I would have to honor this even though I had cancelled the card and the transactions weren't reported to me at the time of cancellation, some BS about processing delays... But it got worse, a couple of weeks later I was told a further US$45,000 (yes, thats fourty-five thousand dollars) had been charged by L. I asked how this could happen after the card had been cancelled for several weeks and was told that as long as she held the card she could use it. I told them they would hear from my solicitor, thats all the BS I could handle.
I didn't know where to turn. I went out and found myself a solicitor who, by a stroke of luck had a bit of experience with dealing with AMEX. He sent them a letter which literally stopped them in their tracks. They took a step back and reduced their demand from me to the original $7k spent prior to the cancellation and further that they would endeavour to recover the $7k from L first. I gave them all the contact info I had. The last I heard about 6 months ago was that she had left her old job and that they couldn't find her. So I still have the $7k hanging over my head.
As you can imagine, that sort of turned me off the internet chat scene for a while and I returned to a more normal life. About 2 months ago, I loaded up the old chat software to have a look around and to my great surprise I found L online with the same picture she had used previously and was sucking guys in by the truck load. I managed to warn some of them, with limited success, they didn't want to believe me.
I met a wonderful lady (NOT online), who I've been with since January this year (99). I do think that some people can be lucky with finding partners on the internet (please note that this was never an objective I had, it just happened, which also made me more vulnerable, as I had not thought about possible pitfalls and consequences, prior to the experience), but I concur with Wild by saying that it is a long shot.
Also keep in mind when reading other letters on this site that in a lot of cases relationships started on the net will fail due to common reasons; eg. looks, personality, family / ethnic background, etc. Hence, the reason alot of these fail is not due to fact that they started on the net. However, in most of the same cases these relationships would never have started without the net in the first place!
A few hints from my point of view; If you really want to do the internet relationship thing.... expect the worst and you will never be dissappointed.
Chatting with people all over the world is really cool and I'm all for it. If you start getting attracted to someone, meet them in person as soon as possible if you can. If you can't, don't get too attached. Long distance relationships will invaribly get expensive, painful and will make you a recluse.
Trust your instincts; if it looks bad, smells bad, it probably is.
Use common sense; eg. a model type of beauty will not be using the internet to find a partner.
Don't give anyone any money. If you feel you really really want to or have to, only give as much as you are willing to loose without a return. Never ever give anyone full access to your account or credit card(s).
Don't pin your dreams, hopes, feelings, etc on someone you have never met in person. You have a 99% chance of failing miserably.
http://www.wildxangel.com/frames.html
