Can You Trust Dating Sites? Part 2. Stories of Marina and Helen

My affectionate and gentle Internet

Online dating brings a lot of unexpected and interesting things. The main thing is to be able to properly filter this entire shaft of information. Well, let s continue our research …


Can You Trust Dating Sites? My affectionate and gentle Internet. Part 2. Stories of Marina and Helen

Can You Trust Dating Sites? My affectionate and gentle Internet. Part 2. Stories of Marina and Helen
Photo: Depositphotos

Go to the previous part of the article.

All the names in this life story, except for Tatyana s, have been changed for obvious reasons. Tatyana, on the other hand, agreed that her real name should appear.

Our absentee potential suitors kept silent all, gradually and it is absolutely not clear why. We also met with this phenomenon later: they write-write warm, even love letters, with a bunch of promises like “tomorrow I’m flying to you, Darling” – and suddenly a break, nothing …

For our women, this has always been a shock and severe stress, they were still trying to figure out what and why, but these were just humiliating attempts to which no one answered. The only decent person turned out to be our Nigerian German, who honestly wrote that he “met another”, probably on the open spaces of some other site, and maybe among the same American Singles. But this was an isolated incident.

Marina s story

Can You Trust Dating Sites? My affectionate and gentle Internet. Part 2. Stories of Marina and Helen
Photo: Depositphotos

Marina settled in Tatyana s office as a hostess long before she began to visit, and then I firmly settled down. Her presence and chatter undoubtedly helped Tatyana while away the long winter hours of sitting in the office. Over time, I realized that Marina considers herself a real estate agent, but since she started e-mailing with her Swede Rolf, she has not made a single profitable deal.

But first things first … Her status in the office remained unclear – either an employee or a client. If the employee – she did not receive any salary, if the client – she never paid for our services. But it was she who became a vivid image of how not to act in our delicate matter. Subsequently, we even frightened the “novice” ladies: “Look, don t turn into Marina!”

Two people who live in different parts of the world responded to Marinin s questionnaire: one from Tennessee, the other from Sweden. The rich (at least, he described himself that way) handsome Bill, of course, attracted us more than the fair-haired, dried-out Swede, similar to the actor Albert Filozov (the latter, I really love very much). Marina did the right thing by starting to correspond with both of them at once.

After a few nice entertaining letters with the indispensable “I almost love you” playboy, Bill, like many others, “fell off.” With all the more passion, Marina pounced on the remaining Swede Rolf. Perhaps I would even feel sorry for Rolf, who had to endure almost every day a flurry of all kinds of emotions in the form of exclamations, bewilderment, confessions and reproaches, but our imperturbable Scandinavian himself turned out to be a tough nut to crack, but rather a slippery eel.

He added fuel to the fire of Marina s passion, while maintaining his eternal Swedish neutrality, without saying “yes” or “no”, without giving details about his life, without giving a postal address. He soon knew everything about Marina, starting from her toddler age. How he had the patience to read about her hobbies and manage not to open the curtain of his personal life even a little bit – and to this day is for me a secret and textbook example of male impermanence.

By the way, I want to emphasize that you need strong motivation to learn any foreign language. And the desire to find your soul mate somewhere “out there” is one of them. So even if your searches are unsuccessful, knowledge of the language will contribute to career growth, and simply increase self-esteem.

Can You Trust Dating Sites? My affectionate and gentle Internet. Part 2. Stories of Marina and Helen
Photo: Source

Marina had her own approach to the English language: she simply stringed words like a shish kebab on a skewer exactly in the order in which they appeared in the Russian sentence. By the way, her memory for new words and stable expressions turned out to be phenomenal. And what is the bottom line? Ralph began to perfectly understand her letters, and then they exchanged messages in a “free flight”, bypassing me, Tatyana and our long-suffering computer.

History of Helen and VtiFr

It s a strange word, isn t it? The fact is that very often we called our correspondents by their name, which is in the email address before the @ sign, by login. That is how we began to call a certain Frank from near Detroit, who responded to my questionnaire under the pseudonym N. However, after learning his age and estimating how much I had lost to myself, I decided not to miss such a chance … and to transfer the candidate to ours and Tanya to a common a divorced friend living in another city and only came to visit her relatives for a couple of days.

Due to our ignorance of the conjunctural market and the requirements for the “bride s” questionnaire, we wrote her a rather gray biography (by the way, this is exactly what this biography was). Due to the clumsy and tastelessly drawn up questionnaire, she may not have been lucky. And then we figured out what we could offer to the serious, as it read in the letter, to the widower VtiFru (this was an abbreviation for Frank and part of his surname).

Can You Trust Dating Sites? My affectionate and gentle Internet. Part 2. Stories of Marina and Helen
Photo: Depositphotos

So what if Helen has two daughters from her first marriage, and one child is announced in my profile? So what if her eyes are black and mine are gray? So what if she works as a secretary at a telephone company, and not as a university teacher? And finally, so what if her name is not at all?

Having fogged up, we convinced the poor fellow that Helen was me, just as a child I was called by an abbreviated name. With the eyes, it turned out quite simply: a photograph of Helen, scanned for writing, was compressed and blurred so that the question of eye color did not arise at all. Although our VtiFr immediately admitted that she is a real “beauty” and that he loves her very much.

It was worse with the children. I sat at the screen for a long time and painfully wondered which of Helen s two daughters to light up. On reflection, I made, it seems to me, a wise decision: if the older one passes, then the little one will slip. So Lilya was legalized.

After a very short time, the dearest VtiFr already wrote how he loves us, that is, both of them – Helen and Liza. Apparently, it was VtiFr who turned out to be the most positive, serious and actually tuned in to a strong relationship man. I became very attached to him – after all, I wrote letters on behalf of my friend! And he clearly fell in love – with her photo and … my letters. (Isn t it Cyrano de Bergerac of the Mtsensk district?)

Soon there were unambiguous hints, and then persistent requests to invite him to Ukraine! I was full of confusion and mumbled something sluggishly from letter to letter. And our friend, who did not understand the situation, worked serenely in her city and only occasionally asked how her amorous affairs were going. Apparently, they did not really interest her.

The letters from this N. (to her, to me?) Came in very detailed, sensible and so often that soon all the “girls” got used to the fact that with almost every mail a long message comes from “our” VtiFra, which I printed out and wound up on her hand like a roll of toilet paper, and carried her home. At home, I sorted letters by date and periodically mailed Helen in huge envelopes. I m still not sure she read them all. The “girls”, who were not as lucky as our Helen, sighed and envied a little: such a decent groom was not needed.

VtiFr turned out to be a descendant of the revolutionary, after whose name the square in Hungary was named. He himself was a leading engineer in some kind of electrical industry and sent (Helen, me?) A gorgeous booklet describing his company, a business card and a bunch of photographs: his own, which depicted a very well-fed man, his two red-haired and also plump sons , cars and front and back views of the house and courtyard.

And only then did I feel ashamed. I realized that I couldn’t wait any longer, I wrote another vague letter, where I said that Helen had moved to another city and was waiting for letters from VtiFr at a new email address. Of course, she apologizes in advance for her modest English, because a friend helped her with translation in the same place …

Their correspondence died out almost immediately after it was transferred to the warm Crimean soil. Either the friend did not want to make any efforts, or her letters were already too different from mine, but the fact remains – VtiFr disappeared. At Tatyana s office, everyone was really upset – after all, we are so used to him! And most importantly, his letters gave hope to other women.

We remembered for a long time our detailed, neat, well-fed Detroit: “Oh, what a man he was – a real fan!”

To be continued…

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Article published in Issue 12/04/2018

Updated 07.21.

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