A Valentine Reality.

Let me start this by saying I’ve been married for over a quarter of a century. My wife and I met way before we had dating sites online, and we didn’t even get the internet until 4 or 5 years after we got married. On a completely unrelated topic, the first scam email I ever received was almost immediately after I first joined the internet connected world. That’s by the by though. Let’s discuss love, romance and scammers.

I buy my wife flowers on a semi regular basis. I’m a romantic guy – kind of. The reality is though that my wife and I both understand that paying bills and keeping the pantry full is more important than flowers, chocolates or jewelry. Romance scammers however don’t have this reality block to deal with.

Scammers can promise a person the Sun, Moon, stars and everything inbetween as they know they’ll never actually have to deliver. Words are cheap, false promises even cheaper. I (and the rest of the site volunteers) have baited enough romance scammers to know and see through their lies. Not everyone can though, and it’s for those people we post up all the details of any romance scammers we deal with. We want people to see that the scammers can and do use every trick in the book to convince people they’re genuine. Those tricks are easy to spot if you know what to look for, and know how romance scammers work. THAT is the tough part. The pretty lies the scammers tell make it incredibly hard for us to break through to some people. The fantasy world the scammer weaves is something people long for, and don’t want to believe is fake. Real love isn’t perfect. Real love is accepting a person’s flaws, not being convinced by them that they don’t have any. Scammer love is and endless display of promises that never happen and never will happen. Real love is much more gutteral, more earthy, more REAL. There’s a song I love by The Kinks that perfectly describes what real love is like. It’s not perfect like a scammer will try to convince you it is. It’s an uphill struggle that requires the both of you to work at each and every day and doesn’t require one person to constantly send money to the other one. That’s not real love. Real love is a two-headed transplant – a “labour of love”. Don’t be fooled by scammer love, and never send money to someone you’ve only ever met online, no matter what they promise you in return.