One Guy Meets Two Sisters Online
December 6th, 2005
I once saw and contacted a woman from outside the U.S.; let’s call her Helga living in Big Dangerous City. We traded Hotmail IM addresses and I tried to chat with her, but she was very non-responsive, so I dropped the effort. If somebody doesn’t respond to me, I don’t push the matter. Some guys are semi-stalkers, but I can easily take “no” for an answer. To quote Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, “There’s always a bigger fish.”
A few months later, in April, I saw another woman on Jdate from the same Big Dangerous City. Like the first, she was in a literary sort of work that appealed to me, and her pictures had that shtetl-zaftig look that drives me totally loco. You know the drill; we started to chat and exchanged emails. Let’s call this second woman Ingrid. Ingrid gave me her last name and email address, and it was the same last name and almost the same email as Helga’s! I had to say something, so I wrote I had been in touch with another woman with the same last name and a similar email. Ingrid said they were sisters. I said we weren’t in touch and it didn’t seem like a big deal at the time.
Nothing happened with Ingrid, either, so I dropped the matter. Four months later, in an extremely rare action for me, I tried again with Ingrid and this time we connected much better. I don’t know what made the difference; perhaps she had been involved with somebody before, or she took another look at me and decided I was good green-card material. She badly wanted to relocate to the U.S.
For whatever reason, we chatted a lot, and she invited me to Big Dangerous City. I have had invitations before to visit women in distant locations, and this one came when I was unusually open to responding positively. My post-divorce finances were shaping up, I had vacation time, and the domestic dating scene was in snooze mode. I said yes and agreed on Thanksgiving week.
I started to get inklings of lifestyle differences. We chatted with webcams and she constantly smoked, a turn-off to me. She said she liked to smoke pot, something else that goes against my Calvinistic grain. Then I got her resume, as part of my knight-in-shining-armor effort to help her find a job in the U.S. She entered the work force in the same year that I did. But that made no sense, because based on our Jdate profiles she was four years younger than me (we’re both in our 40s). That discrepancy really rang alarm bells, but I didn’t say anything. I already had my non-refundable ticket.
Soooooo, with friends and relatives declaring I’d gone totally insane, I flew for nine hours to Big Dangerous City. Soon after we met, Ingrid admitted she was really in her late 40s, a year older than me, not younger. She had knocked 5-6 years off her profile and evidently had no intention of telling me. She smoked endlessly. The week was a mixed bag of experiences, with many good memories laced with underlying “what’s next” tension.
I finally met sister Helga on a Friday night, the day before I left, when the sisters’ family gathered for Shabbat services at Chabad (they really are everywhere!). Helga looked far less attractive than her (evidently old) profile photos, and a nasty streak in her personality oozed through.
Saturday night in a pouring rainstorm Ingrid drove me to Big Dangerous City International Airport. We both had strong, mostly unstated emotions about the week and what, if anything, the future might hold. We talked about the sisters’ relationship and Ingrid admitted that she didn’t contact me any more in April because Helga told her I was a pain in the ass who only wanted to chat online.
“That’s not true!” I protested. “As soon as Helga gave me her phone number I called her.” This news stunned Ingrid—she never knew I had actually talked to her sister. For proof of my responsiveness, I pointed out that I called Ingrid as soon as she gave me her phone number. That’s the way I am. How these revelations played out later between the two sisters I don’t know. Something tells me the “pain in the ass” excuse wasn’t the whole story. We shared an emotional farewell at the airport, having talked about her visiting me a few months later, around Passover.
That night in the rain was the end, not the beginning. Another visit never happened. As soon as I returned to the U.S. our chats became much cooler and less frequent. Within two months they ended completely. I sent her a birthday e-card that she opened, but I never got a reply. Ingrid added two years to her profile age, although it still falls years short of reality. For a while her profile said she lived in various beach towns in California, but then she switched back to Big Dangerous City. I suppose the potential green-card providers out there didn’t appreciate her deceptions.
Ingrid, Helga, and I all remain on Jdate. I recently looked at Helga’s profile for the first time in a year and learned that she, not Ingrid, is now living in the U.S.—in the same big city where I work. Helga has not contacted me.
A few months later, in April, I saw another woman on Jdate from the same Big Dangerous City. Like the first, she was in a literary sort of work that appealed to me, and her pictures had that shtetl-zaftig look that drives me totally loco. You know the drill; we started to chat and exchanged emails. Let’s call this second woman Ingrid. Ingrid gave me her last name and email address, and it was the same last name and almost the same email as Helga’s! I had to say something, so I wrote I had been in touch with another woman with the same last name and a similar email. Ingrid said they were sisters. I said we weren’t in touch and it didn’t seem like a big deal at the time.
Nothing happened with Ingrid, either, so I dropped the matter. Four months later, in an extremely rare action for me, I tried again with Ingrid and this time we connected much better. I don’t know what made the difference; perhaps she had been involved with somebody before, or she took another look at me and decided I was good green-card material. She badly wanted to relocate to the U.S.
For whatever reason, we chatted a lot, and she invited me to Big Dangerous City. I have had invitations before to visit women in distant locations, and this one came when I was unusually open to responding positively. My post-divorce finances were shaping up, I had vacation time, and the domestic dating scene was in snooze mode. I said yes and agreed on Thanksgiving week.
I started to get inklings of lifestyle differences. We chatted with webcams and she constantly smoked, a turn-off to me. She said she liked to smoke pot, something else that goes against my Calvinistic grain. Then I got her resume, as part of my knight-in-shining-armor effort to help her find a job in the U.S. She entered the work force in the same year that I did. But that made no sense, because based on our Jdate profiles she was four years younger than me (we’re both in our 40s). That discrepancy really rang alarm bells, but I didn’t say anything. I already had my non-refundable ticket.
Soooooo, with friends and relatives declaring I’d gone totally insane, I flew for nine hours to Big Dangerous City. Soon after we met, Ingrid admitted she was really in her late 40s, a year older than me, not younger. She had knocked 5-6 years off her profile and evidently had no intention of telling me. She smoked endlessly. The week was a mixed bag of experiences, with many good memories laced with underlying “what’s next” tension.
I finally met sister Helga on a Friday night, the day before I left, when the sisters’ family gathered for Shabbat services at Chabad (they really are everywhere!). Helga looked far less attractive than her (evidently old) profile photos, and a nasty streak in her personality oozed through.
Saturday night in a pouring rainstorm Ingrid drove me to Big Dangerous City International Airport. We both had strong, mostly unstated emotions about the week and what, if anything, the future might hold. We talked about the sisters’ relationship and Ingrid admitted that she didn’t contact me any more in April because Helga told her I was a pain in the ass who only wanted to chat online.
“That’s not true!” I protested. “As soon as Helga gave me her phone number I called her.” This news stunned Ingrid—she never knew I had actually talked to her sister. For proof of my responsiveness, I pointed out that I called Ingrid as soon as she gave me her phone number. That’s the way I am. How these revelations played out later between the two sisters I don’t know. Something tells me the “pain in the ass” excuse wasn’t the whole story. We shared an emotional farewell at the airport, having talked about her visiting me a few months later, around Passover.
That night in the rain was the end, not the beginning. Another visit never happened. As soon as I returned to the U.S. our chats became much cooler and less frequent. Within two months they ended completely. I sent her a birthday e-card that she opened, but I never got a reply. Ingrid added two years to her profile age, although it still falls years short of reality. For a while her profile said she lived in various beach towns in California, but then she switched back to Big Dangerous City. I suppose the potential green-card providers out there didn’t appreciate her deceptions.
Ingrid, Helga, and I all remain on Jdate. I recently looked at Helga’s profile for the first time in a year and learned that she, not Ingrid, is now living in the U.S.—in the same big city where I work. Helga has not contacted me.
Original Article syndicated via RSS from JDATES GONE WRONG
