Charlotte

Charlotte was one of the first people I started regularly talking with from AdultFriendFinder. She lost her husband 3 years prior and was ready to find a good guy to be her friend with benefits. She specifically says she doesn't want to get married again because "she's too old for that nonsense." I think she is in her 40s. We began talking offline from the website using text messagaing sometime in July and have been talking ever since.

Charlotte is a real enigma. She and I have discussed everything you can imagine from our past pains to our current struggles, and finally our future hopes. She talks about sex, but not in the typical way you would find from the scammers. She is interested in hooking up with a man but doesn't talk dirty or try to entice me like so many others have. She wants to meet up some day and spend days together having fun and loving each other, but she has never once said she loves me. She does not display the typical traits I've seen from the obvious romance scammers. I have been perplexed as to whether to trust her but so far, I have been.

I have done the usual background checking and found almost nothing, but I have found her business website in a small town. What is weird is that it uses stock and stolen photos, and the pictures that feature people are apparently matching a woman I found on Facebook who lives in Poland. Ok, that set off some alarms. But unlike some of the other scammers, she tells me she's not going to try to explain herself because she knows she's legit and a hardworking independent small business. So I'm not sure....

But then the weird thing happened. She got an offer for a big business contract and had to travel to Florida for a business meeting. She asked to "borrow" $1000 to help her make the trip. And of course, the account she wanted me to send the money to was someone who studied computer science in Africa, and now lives in Lithuania. She claims he is a business partner who helped her with the website and sometimes helps her with things. I'm suspicious of course, but this whole business of online dating seems to be a gamble anyway. How well can we really know the people we are sharing our lives with across the Internet?

I did have her send me a short-notice selfie with a clock in her background to verify the time and she did that. It was definitely her and she looked normal, not posed and made up like a model shoot, so I'm left guessing what I am wrong about, if anything or everything.

I am still talking to Charlotte and I did help her with her trip, only because it was a loan and she promised it back (yeah, I know).

Will it ever get any easier? I don't know,  but stay tuned for updates...