I'm really becoming amazed at all the recent horror stories. Lately Colombia is starting to sound as bad to me as the FSU. Of course, a lot of the good stories don't get emphasized because the happy couple rides off into the sunset and is rarely heard from again, but then a lot of the nightmare stories go untold because the men are too embarrassed to talk about them-- and my hat's off to those who do have the courage to speak up.
A guy named Art O'Leary, an American ex-pat who was living in Sevastopol, Ukraine, and posting on the Russian board, used to say, "There are no red flags, with one exception: nice girls don't ask for money. If she does, don't give it to her, and get rid of her." While I've always agreed with the "Nice girls don't ask for money" part, I will say emphatically now that there is at least one other major red flag: She gives indications that her relationship/marriage to you is of secondary or terciary importance. And why can't we see this when we're involved with them? How do we get so blinded, so mesmerized?
Example, one of many. No names here, you probably already know the situation: the guy's wife says she wants to go out at night without him. That isn't a red flag; that's more like the time Homer Simpson applied for credit to buy an RV and the red lights started flashing, and the buzzers and sirens started sounding, indicating just how bad a credit risk he was. A Latina who is in love with you would never suggest such a thing.
Another example. The newly wedded wife *insists* upon going to visit relatives in another state before joining her new husband. Huh??? Time to cancel the plane ticket out of Cali, if we had any objectivity.
Maybe it's time to have another discussion about what all the other red flags are, but that's like the time Thomas Edison was asked what advice he would offer to young people. His retort: "Young people don't listen to advice." Neither do otherwise intelligent men who are under the spell of a pretty Latina.
Really, guys who should know better slamming their own fingers in a door: one, a very smart one, gets involved with a married woman while admitting he is breaking his own rules. He winds up bruised and bleeding. Another reconciles with the woman who stole thousands of dollars' worth of valuables on her way out and filed false abuse charges against him. Crossing my fingers here, he seems like a really nice guy...
And how much of this is our own fault? How many of us are looking for a trophy instead of love? How many of us are too concerned about what our "Look what I caught!" webpage is going to look like when it's time to show off the new wife, or what the guys at the Elks lodge are going to think?
This is more of a rant than an organized line of thought, but should we come up with a list of "Ten Commandments", or "Five Ironclad Rules" for avoiding disasters? Maybe the first one would be, "Thou shalt leave thy novia's presence, take a cold shower, write down everything about your relationship as if it were for PL, sleep on it, read it calmly the next morning, and listen to your gut." The second one could be, "Thou shalt obey thy gut, no exceptions."
