The rebirth…

I like being married and started the process of looking for a new wife after filing for divorce. For me, that filing wasn’t a threat to my now-ex, it was a conclusion. I immediately started to move on. Alas, one driver was my desire to have a larger family. At the time, I was almost 45 years old, and this made things difficult:

1) I wanted a compatible partner
2) I wanted a woman who could safely bring new children into the world without extreme medical help
3) I wanted them to be of my genes, so adoption was out

QED: I needed to find someone about 15 years younger than I was.

I tried the Match.com, Yahoo personels, etc. and rapidly got depressed. Either the ladies considered me a “dirty old man” for looking for such a young woman, or it became obvious they would bless me with their presence so long as I would pay all the bills, or they outweighed me by 60+ lbs once I actually met them (amazing what you can do with a camera). Although hardly athletic, I’m not obese, and didn’t want such a partner. Did find some beautiful, younger, women on the sites – just to discover they were Russian or Ukrainian scammers.

Still, beauty does tend to get attention, and this lead me into the complex world of oversea dating.

My lawyer had promised me the divorce would be complete by September of 2004, October latest, and I despretely wanted to get out of town. So I spent a LOT (3-4 hours a day, 10 on weekends) of time trying to learn how to tell sincere ladies from scammers. I focused on Ukraine for a few reasons: Its small enough to get anywhere in a day (unlike Russia, that is 11 times zones from end-to-end), and there appeared to be almost as many ladies registered as in its much larger neighbor. Finally, it wasn’t a problem to get a 5 year visitors visa, something virtually impossible for me to get for Russia.

So… off I went to Kiev in mid-December, which turned out to be in the middle of their Orange Revolution. It also turned out to be a week before my actual court date. Oops! Anyhow, the trip was educational, and I learned more about scammers.