Hi Wingman182,
I think now I understand better your previous post, I thought that you wanted to express something personal, but I didn´t want to push, so it´s good that now you wrote it yourself, I appreciate very much your honesty. In your previous post it sounded like you were blaming social pre-programming for the scam, but now it sounds like your confession of being shallow before the scam, or maybe the emphasis is on your choice to give chance also to women who were different than what your idea was. It sounds also a little bit like you were blaming yourself of wanting a 25-35 years old woman, like it was insolent and the scam was a slap in the face for that. I don´t think that you were too old for rollerblading and I don´t think it was too daring that you wanted a partner who is similar to you in sports. But maybe it´s not that big probability that you find somebody like that, and that´s not the most important thing in a relationship to go rollerblading together. Is this what you wanted to say? It seems that changing your attitude was profitable, that you really found a women who you could love! So it proves that your decision was right.
By the way I knew the movie and now I saw it again after you mentioned it

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I will be honest too. I perceived the scam also as a slap in the face, but for a different reason than you. I had a radical change of attitude to men in my life too, but much earlier than the scam happened. It was when I was in my early 20s, after my first big disappointment in love. I found the reason for my suffering in the book of ROBIN NORWOOD „WOMEN WHO LOVE TOO MUCH“, it´s about women who love men who don´t deserve it and can´t return it. I found out that men who I instinctively fall in love are emotionally cold, it was explained that it´s because these women are from unhealthy families where the family members don´t talk openly about problems and so they fall in love with men with whom they repeat the behaviour patterns from their childhood. In that time I believed the book so as the book suggested I started to allow to think about relationship with men who I wouldn´t choose instinctively, but whom I felt good with, felt that I´m „OK“, relationship without manipulation, without stress, without the „stone in stomach“. I learned and then believed that this is how normal relationships look like. Then some years later I met a man and my feelings were totally different, I didn´t have to ask myself, if I want to meet him, if I want to try a relationship with him, if I love him, if I want to stay with him for the rest of my life, I naturally wanted everything with him and I realized that this is the true feeling, this is how it should be when somebody enters into a relationship and my previous attempts of relationships were false. Very soon he turned out to be emotionally very cold, he hurted my feelings very much, he was very quarrelsome and bad to me and manipulative, I never understood what he wanted and why he did something. I was learned from the past so I tried to distance myself from him all the time, but still I spent another years with more or less suffering because of this man. I´m able to be with not manipulative men in relationship many years, neither me nor my partners were quarrelsome so we had a very quiet relationships together, but I don´t have the feeling that this is how it should be, I´m bored in some way. I´m not bored intellectually, and we were always friends and trust each other, but something is missing, some feelings that push people to get married and these things. I don´t know how to explain better.
Then came the scammer, I had very bad feeling about him from the beginning. Although this was different, because with the man who I loved the bad feelings came later, in the beginning I had fantastic feelings and I didn´t think anything wrong about him. Unlike the scammer, because about the scammer I thought he is stupid and liar. But I thought that I was „bored“ so many years with „good feelings in relationships“ that maybe a „bad feeling is what I need“. I wanted to explore what kind of person is that crazy liar. I found out that he is a completely different person than me, as the man who I loved was completely different too and I didn´t understand him. I thought that if I learn to understand the scammer, than I get answers to my questions about the man I loved. He (the man I loved) always accused me of something and I didn´t know if I made a mistake that many times I couldn´t oppose him enough so he couldn´t have respect for me, or I opposed too much for his taste, I don´t know. But I know that just the fact that I´m asking these questions proves that it was not a good relationship for me, I´m aware of this, and I don´t want to live a life like that, that I´m always asking what I´m doing wrong, that was so much stress that I couldn´t live a normal life because of that. But I want to understand so much what was the problem with that man and what he felt to me and what he wanted and why did he do those things I didn´t understand. The scam ended very quickly, so I didn´t learn much about this, but at least something: about psychopaths, and I learned much about myself.
Now as I understand it I´m attracted to emotionally cold men, which is a psychopathic trait and that´s why there is a big probability that if I meet a man like that, it will be a psychopath who hurts others´ feelings and painfully manipulates and I can´t be in a relationship with him because it destroys me. Maybe there is a man who is „emotionally cold“, and if he is authoritative and wants to set the rules in the relationship, then those rules will not be bad and painful, and would have respect to me, because mutual respect is one of the most important things in a relationship for me. So at least this was a little step in understanding of that „relationship“, maybe that will be a whole life work for me to understand, but at least I just would like to know if it´s possible to live a really happy life in a normal and long term relationship for a „woman who loves too much“, without a background feeling that „it is somehow not that right“. I remember that there were stories of women who were happy in normal relationships after they healed from their previous unhealthy relationship, but if I remember well, those relationships were not that long yet. For a few years that woman can think that she is happy in a relationship, but I don´t believe she can lie herself for 10 years. I really would like to know if a woman with that experience can live happy in a non-problematic relationship for 10 years, if she really can "heal" and change what attracts her?
That´s why the scam was like a slap in the face, like somebody wanted to say bad feelings are bad and I should be happy with good things that life brings, that somehow I´m damaged and that´s why I can´t have a complete perfect relationship (or at least it´s very little chance), but life always offers me the best that is possible in my condition.
Although our stories and shortages are different, I saw this similarity in your confession, that as I clinged on the feeling of being in love, you clinged on a „rollerblade woman“, but that is not what destiny prepared to you to be as happy as you can in life.
I don´t know if I see all this right or wrong, maybe I´m mistaken, if so then I would be just happy if somebody explained to me what I understand wrong.