I feel silly for giving €8k to a man I’ve never met

DEAR BEL T’M 65, divorced and I’ve done something very silly. I had a good, worthwhile career until I retired, but a difficult marriage to a heavy drinker who had little to do with our children and doesn’t acknowledge our two beautiful grandchildren.

Then for many years I had a wonderful relationship with a man who sadly died from cancer. He was the love of my life.

At the end of 2017, I joined a dating site and got a quick response from an Italian widower who’d lived in America, then relocated to where I live. There was a spark: we shared details and arranged to meet up before he went to Italy for New Year.

Unfortunately I was ill, then went to Australia for three months to visit my daughter and grandchildren, so we never met.

There were phone calls and many messages every day. He was very loving and quickly spoke of us marrying, saying he’d take care of me. I asked him to slow down and stop calling me his ‘wife’ or ‘queen’, as it was too sudden.

I told my daughter and we checked out his address. In March, he went to Abu Dhabi for business. By June, the requests for money began. His card was blocked due to forgetting his PIN and he’d given his cash to a field agent etc. I gave him nearly €8,000 and probably would have given more if my bank hadn’t stepped in to stop the large payments.

My family don’t know. I feel they’d disown me. My daughter is wondering why I haven’t visited this year, but I’m too ashamed to tell her the truth.

My friend showed me newspaper cuttings about people fooled like me, but I wouldn’t listen. I truly believed he was going to be my soul-mate. He kept in touch until April this year, his last message saying: he was coming to whereI live and couldn’t wait to see me. Then nothing.

So he didn’t get any money from me after July 2018, but he was still in touch. I phoned, but the number is no longer available. I emailed, but have heard nothing.

I feel so stupid for being taken in by this man, but I also miss him. Different emotions make me angry, then sad. I really felt that I was going to get another shot at happiness.

I am kind and caring and didn’t deserve this. I feel depressed and worthless. Was he a fraud? Will I ever meet a nice companion? SHIRLEY

WHEN I read a story like yours (and the recent account of how fraudster Mark

Acklom fleeced Carolyn Woods out of her life savings) I try not to be judgmental about women who are defrauded.

‘How could they be so daft?’ asks my inner voice, before a more compassionate self says I have no idea how I’d react if I was lonely, starved of love and attention, and a man asked me nicely to lend him money.

I might even give in, as you did. We should all remember that old saying about walking in somebody’s shoes.

But I don’t understand how you can fall for a man you’ve never met.

No matter how much I try, I don’t get how you can ‘miss’ somebody you’ve never even shaken hands with, let alone held.

Your Italian bloke doesn’t even sound eloquent: calling you his ‘wife’ and his ‘queen’ is just cringe-making. Which is just what your instinct told you at the time. You also felt suspicious, didn’t you? Try to look back and analyse why.

You end your sad, disappointed email with two different questions — one concerning the past, the other about the future.

How you deal with the first will have a direct influence on the second. It’s important you come to terms with what happened, and I think that must include telling your family.

They won’t ‘disown’ you, but they may be shocked, exasperated and ask how you could be so gullible.

It’s a reasonable question and should make you think through why the whole thing happened. Much as you resist the truth, most people will conclude that a man who asks a woman he has never met for cash is dodgy. He always gave a reason to take your money, but it’s hard to imagine what possible reason he could have for dropping you. Yes, he’s a fraud. You must accept it.

Where does this lead? Having lost the ‘love of your life’ to cancer, you have become pretty desperate for male company. It’s understandable and yet you need to reflect on how vulnerable such neediness makes you.

There’s nothing wrong with dating sites but you must be prepared for setbacks — and worse. Any feelings of inferiority a person has could be made worse by such experiences.

So do all you can to make new friends, of both sexes. Try volunteering — anything to get you out and about.

You know your own good qualities, so believe in them.

With all my heart I wish you the luck of finding ‘a nice companion’; at the same time don’t allow yourself to be defined by the lack of — or ‘possession’ of — a man.

Life is short for most things: comets, rainbows, A fall of moonlit snow; one can only be grateful, For the rare conjunctions, for the accidentals, And grace-notes of existence; can only listen, For the once-heard, though never heard again. FROM ACCIDENTALS BY DAVID SUTTON (ENGLISH POET B. 1944)