Looking for love online should come with a safety warning at the very least

WHAT should be heart-flutteringly exciting and the stuff of endless analysis with friends is actually often fraught with suspicion and can end badly.

I’m talking relationships, sought out online, conducted online and then in person – assuming the pairing moves beyond the digital stage.

What was astonishing in an RTÉ documentary Fools for Love?, presented by journalist Aoife Moore last week, was just how gullible women can be when they sign up for online dating.

Of course, men can be fooled too, but it’s generally women who are sought out to part with their cash as part of so-called romance scams.

The notion that some stranger can demand money at a very early stage of a ‘relationship’ from a trusting woman is bizarre. But proving that a lonely woman and her money are easily parted, we learned from the documentary that romance fraud is one of the biggest money-makers for international crime organisations.

A woman called Paula said that she missed having a partner in her life while everyone else she knew seemed to be happy in relationships. That was “probably why” she went on the dating app, Tinder (you know, the one where you swipe right and in some cases unwittingly initiate misery in your ‘love life’).

Surely, grown women are copped on enough to know that some geezer demanding money after a few online encounters is a dangerous charlatan? Is our self-esteem so pathetically low that attention from a man – any kind of attention – is better than nothing?

Where are a girl’s role models and mentors warning them off addiction to ‘love’? Tainted love, more like.

The only kind of love on offer from the weirdos bashing out lies on their keyboards has to do with love of other people’s money. They often create false profiles and hit on a big number of potential victims hoping that one or two women will bite.

That means a payday is almost guaranteed. It’s just a question of building up trust and ‘love-bombing’ the woman. And then cooking up a scheme or two to get her to send on cash. How stupid women can be.

Paula swiped right on a guy called Jason. Within seconds, they were chatting away online. Jason said he wanted someone to settle down with and marry. Paula revealed that she wanted the same thing.

Then this Jason character said he was a soldier going to Afghanistan and that he’d text her as soon as he got there. Just to whet Paula’s appetite, he said that he thought he was going to fall in love with her and that he’d miss her when he was gone.

All this after five minutes. Not surprisingly, Paula wondered what he was on about. But the bait was the overly effusive declarations, no doubt making Paula feel desired.

When Jason sent Paula a video of himself in a hospital bed having been shot, he said he needed money to get a flight home. He said that she could look after him (hardly a good selling point, I’d have thought) adding “this is our chance to be together.”

When she went to Dublin Airport to meet him, he never showed up. Then he was looking for bail money. And as if there weren’t enough red flags raised, he sent Paula a message saying his little boy had fallen off scaffolding – and died. He needed money for the funeral. He asked Paula to hurry up or he’d never speak to her again.

This emotional manipulation is similar to domestic abuse, said cyber psychologist, Dr Nicola Fox Hamilton, commenting in the documentary. 

It’s psychological destabilisation using coercive control. When the scammer isn’t getting what he wants, he’ll often resort to threats, withholding love.

When Aoife Moore asked Paula what attracted her to this man, she said: “Feeling wanted... It was my escape.” While Paula thought this man was the answer to her prayers, she knew that if she told someone the story, they would just laugh at the whole Walter Mitty aspect of the narrative. She parted with €2,000 before wising up to ‘Jason’.

While the documentary was depressing (and occasionally hilarious), a new RTÉ dating series, Love in the Country, presented by Anna Geary, also kicked off last week. It follows six rural singletons on the hunt for love, having felt that living and working in the country makes it hard to find love and settle down.

This is more wholesome fare than the documentary. The rural dwellers open their doors to potential dates that are willing to give country living a try.

It sure beats the nastiness of the online creeps. As Dr Fox Hamilton said, when people are online, “there’s a reduction in your feeling of public self-consciousness. You can’t see the other person. You might forget they are also human beings with emotions.”