All Articles Tagged "romance"
Now That You’re Over 30, Do You See Love Differently?
When you were a child, love was based solely on what you saw in Disney movies and other fairy tales. In high school you learned through crushes that sometimes the feeling wasn’t always mutual. And in your twenties you realized that maybe love isn’t always so sweet. Now, that you’re 30 (or over) what lessons have you learned about love? Has your prospective changed?
Find out what this woman realized about love and relationships once she hit the big 3-0 at Your Tango.com.
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Single Ladies Beware: Romance Scams Are On The Rise
When the loneliness gets too hard to bear, many people seek comfort from the Internet. But be careful— romance scammers are waiting. We’re not talking about the kind that try to steal your heart and turn out to be just as trifling as the ones you met in person. We’re talking about the scammers that are simply out for your money. Reuters reports that romance scams are “long-term romantic relationships that thieves cultivate with a potential victim.” In the midst of the holiday season, they’re on the rise.
When it comes to romance scams there is no discrimination: victims range from 18 to 81 and come from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Although scam artists make it difficult to give romance scams an exact number, Western Union reports that these scams are one of the top five customer complaints. Since November, the company has observed a 30 percent increase in romance scam reports.
Barb Sluppick, who was almost a victim herself, tells Reuters that “if you are on the Internet and you have an email address and you are open to having a relationship with someone, you can become a victim.”
She founded the support and awareness internet group Romancescams.org, and has had more than 48,000 people join her site since 2005. 1,165 people on the site have disclosed how much money they lost to scammers lost with a total of $14.1 million.
The scam starts off simple enough with a friendly and innocent meeting on a dating site or forum. After weeks and sometimes months of communication over email, phone calls or instant messages, a trust begins to form between the two budding lovers, so that strong that they can begin to ask for money. Sometimes the person needs money to help pay for travel to see you, their newfound love. Sometimes they tell you they need help paying for holiday gifts or for a series of unfortunate events that have happened recently.
“I am not an ignorant person. I am educated and intelligent,” Jan Miller said to Reuters. The registered nurse and mother of three thought she had found a wonderful potential mate in a guy she met online who claimed to be living in Seattle.
“I told myself he has to be real, because why would anyone spend that much time talking to someone if they were not real?”
Her internet “friend” asked her for money after he had run into misfortune while on a business trip in London. Miller obliged and when it didn’t seem as if he was coming back to the US, she slowly began to realize she had been scammed, and found out he was part of a team of scammers in Nigeria.
According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, most of the scams derive from Nigeria, Ghana, England and Canada. In most of these international scamming cases, the money is never recovered and the thieves are hard to shut down.
Perhaps it’s best this holiday season to enjoy your singleness and your money. If you do choose to chat with someone online, keep in mind that until you’ve met this person, he/she doesn’t deserve a dime of your hard earned money. After all, we are still in a recession.
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Common Dealbreakers That Shouldn’t Be Dealbreakers
While most single people have a list of things that they are looking for in a mate, far too many folks will let a good thing pass them by because they’ve got one (or three) too many ‘dealbreakers’. If you’re looking for love and turning up short, consider re-evaluating your standards if you’ve been too rigid about the following:
Just Say “NO”: Men Who Are Always Off Limits
Love should be free and blind and all that good stuff. However, you can’t bypass common sense in favor of rose-colored glasses, even when it comes to matters of the heart. A man can be fine, kind and just your type…yet totally, totally wrong for other reasons. Take a gander at our list of ‘banned’ men and keep your hands off!
Fantastic First Dates
Too many people think that dinner and a movie are your only first date options. There are plenty of other great destinations for you and your latest love interest. Check out our list of date destinations and let us know where some of your most memorable first dates have taken place!
A Peek at the Business Side of Online Dating
(AdAge) — Internet wisdom shows that the number of people scrambling for romance via online dating starts growing in November and peaks at Valentine’s Day. ”People realize sitting around the Thanksgiving table with their family and think, ‘Hey, I don’t have my other half’ or ‘My sister’s married and I’m not,’ so it’s a cyclical event,” said Mark Brooks, dating industry consultant at OnlinePersonalsWatch.com.
Dates that Won’t Break the Bank
(Bankrate) — People on a blind date and longtime married couples alike are finding ways to date for less. In fact, having a frugal mindset could save money while helping you make a positive impression. ”They’re not (avoiding) dating anymore because of money; they’re just doing some clever and some inventive things,” says Whitney Casey, author of “The Man Plan” and a contributor to online dating site Match.com. “It’s cool to be frugal in a recession.” Cheap and even free dates can be just as memorable, without taking a big chunk out of your paycheck or creating credit card debt. There’s no evidence of a correlation between how much money you spend on a date and the kind of memory that’s created, says Jeff Yeager, an author based in Maryland whose books include “The Cheapskate Next Door.” ”Never hide or be shy about your attitude toward money, even when you’re first dating,” he says.
Michelle Obama’s Valentine’s Day Advice
(News24) — Here’s Michelle Obama’s advice for couples this Valentine’s Day: laugh with your partner. She says it’s what she and President Barack Obama do, and it seems to be working. Their marriage, although tested throughout the years by his political ambitions – for the Illinois Senate, the US Senate and later the presidency – is going on 19 years. ”I think a lot of laughing,” the first lady said at a White House luncheon with reporters who asked about the Obamas’ union. “I think in our house we don’t take ourselves too seriously, and laughter is the best form of unity, I think, in a marriage. ”So we still find ways to have fun together, and a lot of it is private and personal. But we keep each other smiling and that’s good,” she added. It also helps that Obama is “very romantic.”
Nine Signs You’re a Jealous Lover
Okay ladies. You’ve found someone special. He or she is making your heart flutter and your toes curl on a regular basis and they seem more than happy doing that. Yet you just can’t quite relax and enjoy the feeling for fear they may be participating in some…extracurricular activities, if you will. Here are a few signs of a jealous lover; if you find you identify with too many of them, it may be time to change your ways or change your partner:
Where on Earth Is Your Prince Charming & His White Horse?
As young girls we visualized being swept off of our feet by our Prince Charmings. Oh how times have changed. Now we’re lucky if our Prince Charming even arrives, let alone whoo or wow us. While the hope of finding love isn’t a far-fetched notion, the beliefs that we shared as young girls are fairy tales that have been replaced with the somewhat harsh realities of what being in love really entails.
As we’ve grown out of our naïve anticipations we suddenly realize that those fairy tale love stories must have been reserved for fairies only, because real love is sometimes far from what we could have ever imagined. While love isn’t always a fairy tale, we still hold on to the hope of finding and sustaining real love, just as we did as young girls.
Now as adults we don’t necessarily have to let go of the ‘fairy tale’ love stories completely, but for the sake of not being naïve, we should re-mix these beliefs with doses of ‘real life’.
