Video chats will weed out the weirdos, liars

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This article was published 11/05/2016 (3798 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I was talking online to this intelligent man who lives out of town. He suggested I come to visit him at his spot on the lake, near where friends of mine live. I was worried about going there without having ever met him in person before, so I phoned and asked my friend to check around for me. She and her husband did more than that: they went right to his place and pretended to be a little lost. My friends even went inside, on the pretext of needing a bathroom.

The guy turned out to be pleasant enough, but looked 20 years older than he said he was, and was an old-fashioned bachelor. His place was a wreck, with a kitchen you wouldn’t want to cook or eat in, and everything smelled of cigarette and cigar smoke, and garbage. He drove a beater of a truck and didn’t appear to have a real job (they tried to get it out of him). He did have a Bachelor of Arts degree on the wall. What if I had gone myself?

— Learned a Lesson, Winnipeg

Dear Learned a Lesson: No matter what he turned out to be like, it would have been a big mistake to go out in the country to see a guy alone as a first date. It doesn’t matter how nice his view of the lake is! The majority of people on online dating sites are harmless, but some aren’t, and you can bet they will be extra sweet in order to get you alone with them.

This particular guy might have been intelligent, but he was also a liar — about 20 years worth — right off the top, so who knows what else he was lying about? That’s what good friends and relatives are for: safe snooping. I would like to suggest more people use the six degrees of separation thing and ask around until they find friends or relatives of the people they have met online, and check them out first. See the letter below for another online experience.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I let a guy fly up here to meet me from a city in the northern United States. He had sent me a photo of himself with a full head of dark hair. He got off the plane and was much older than his picture and only had a few tufts of grey hair — he looked like Grandpa Moses. I said, “You lied about your age!” and he said, “Doesn’t everybody?”

I had wisely suggested he get a hotel downtown, not stay at my house. I took him to his hotel and left, but to be polite, I met him later for dinner as planned, with another couple in tow. The online guy kept groping my thigh under the table and I kept slapping him away. Finally, the bill came and I stood up and said, “Well, that’s it. Enjoy the rest of your stay in Winnipeg,” and left with my friends. He didn’t have my last name or phone number and I blocked him online immediately.

— Shocked by Long-Distance Liar, Winnipeg

Dear Shocked: You never really know who you’re finally meeting, so you have to be careful and use Skype where you can see the person on your screen and talk together that way, especially before you let them fly in from another country. It’s the same whether it’s a man or a woman. They could be crazy, tell lies about how they look and be totally weird when you first meet in person, face-to-face. So meet everybody on Skype or a similar program first, and don’t be sweet all the time. Bring up challenging issues to discuss and see how it goes in terms of real thoughts, values, religion, politics and temper.

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6

Miss Lonelyhearts
Advice Columnist

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