Picture a senior, an American man. His name is Mr. Smith. He is retired. A widower, living alone with his dog somewhere in a nondescript suburb.
Most nights he slept in a recliner with the TV on, and his dog, “Elvis,” faithfully slept in his lap. His knees creaked walking to the mailbox. The letter he’s been waiting for never arrives. He was waiting for test results to determine whether he had Alzheimer’s.
While he awaited news on the fate of his health, there was more on his mind. He tried to come out of his shell. So, he tried dating.
His desire for a new life partner became front and center. There’s being alone, and then there’s living in a vacuum. A type of solitude that plays tricks on the mind. How long could he hold out talking to his dog like it was a human?
Widowed after 23 years, he had become isolated. There were matchmaking opportunities, such as singles dance nights at the local VFW. He had the time but not the inclination.
Armed with the hope that he wasn’t dreaming about finding a new life partner, he put his new laptop to work. There were over one million online single women in the United States and only one email away!
His sister met her husband online.
So, he thought he could too.
It couldn’t be that hard. He saw on TV that 280 million online users of dating services were forecasted.
He had doubts.
Filling out an online dating profile is a tedious task. Interview, qualifications, and a psychological evaluation rolled into one. He hated it but did it anyway.
There were issues.
He had pursued various callings in the Arts, which imbued him with knowledge and character, but a calling with the muse left him with meager assets.
What were his chances that the algorithms would match him with a woman with an old arty fart like him?
He filled out his profile, posted it, spun his old Led Zeppelin records, and waited for the results.
He was slim, medium height, single, and a homeowner.
He met his first wife playing in a rock band. She became a groupie, and one thing led to another.
As he read the many Lonely Hearts Club Band profiles of American women seeking men, his optimism shrank. He found it awkward to reply to a set of compressed “About Me” questions.
Wanted: Spartan Man, 6’2” jock, breadwinner, must be honest, handsome, brains optional.
To introduce himself, he winked, waved, emailed, and did anything else allowed on a dating site.
The results were disheartening. Was he undesirable, weird, or too old? Or did he know what he wanted—like them, unrealistic, too independent, and too picky?
In the first week after joining HeartThrob dot com, his inbox soared to 488 hits.
Nothing happened.
After a year, no one could say he didn’t try. He resigned himself to a whatever-may-come philosophy.
He was super solo for good.
He knew a guy, Ronald, who was overweight and had other significant health issues. Dare he add not good-looking, not too bright, and a low-income wage earner?
Despite his shortcomings, Ronald found a wife from the Philippines. She appeared to be a nice lady. He assumed they got along. A year later, she divorced him after she got her Green Card. He has since married another Pinay.
After sharing his failed dating stories, Ronald gave him the link to a Filipino dating site called Cherry Blossoms dot com. He said it would solve his love-life problem.
He joined the site and was inundated by young Filipino women. Regardless of age, as long as he was American and single, they all loved him. Not much else mattered. He went from a rejected recluse to the world’s most sexy man in a mouse click.
He met Nancy.
She was a fluent English speaker and a licensed Filipino dentist. She was pretty, polite, half his age, and she was funny. He talked to her for two years online.
After getting a soft spot for her, he started to send her money via Western Union. Believing he knew her and trusted her, he wanted to meet her. So he made the long journey to Mindanao, Philippines.
On his arrival, he was shocked by the amount of available, single young women. He could scoop them up with both arms. No dating site was needed there.
The women must have outnumbered the men 20–1. He saw many Western men older than him with a 20-something girl in their arms. To each their own, he reasoned, and with his creaking knees moved on in the tropical heat.
Nancy lived with her early-60s widowed mother and her 10-year-old son. Nancy’s mother was closer to his age. Her mother’s house was good by Filipino standards. It had an indoor bathroom and a yard with roaming roosters.
Nancy spent her time online in a bedroom while her mom supported them. A career as a Filipino dentist paid beans, and to make matters more difficult, she couldn’t afford a clinic and had nowhere to practice.
Mr. Smith learned her dental clinic went bankrupt (as many do) due to the lack of money. Where she lived, teeth were far down the priority list. Regardless, Mr. Smith decided to put up the money to start a clinic.
After he funded the new clinic, the business didn’t last long.
Mr. Smith had to think hard about the cost and responsibility of immigrating Nancy and her son to America. And the other big question: did he want to be a father?
He thought he vetted her before popping the big marriage question. Well into the process, he learned she had been married before, and to annul that marriage was going to cost more money.
In addition, she confessed to losing her first clinic because of drug abuse. She wasn’t being entirely dishonest, but not honest either.
It was a red flag, but love blinds the heart.
Mr. Smith was an easy-going man. He had a big heart, but his memory wasn’t what it used to be.
When he explained his plans back home, people called Nancy a mail-order bride.
She was from a developing country, but he did not order her from a catalog as men did in the old American frontier.
He ignored the criticism.
She was nervous about marriage and immigration but finally accepted. There were snafus along the way. Based on a mental assessment, the Department of Filipino Immigration declined her visa.
Filipino women who had marriages before get red-flagged.
Once she reached the States and settled into Mr. Smith’s house, there was a complete change in her attitude.
Her humor was gone. Politeness gave way to boundaries. Nancy didn’t want to work. She showed no signs of culture shock, but became withdrawn and moody.
The other Pinay she met worked, but she didn’t care. And she didn’t get along with the other Filipino women. She explained that was not unusual. He wanted her to make friends, but she explained the other Pinay came from different parts of the country and spoke different dialects. It was stereotyping to think that because they were all Filipino they would jell.
Her complaints piled up.
What bothered her the most was she accused him of trying to make her a slave. He explained it was normal for American married couples to share an income with a spouse for the common good. She thought it was a bad deal.
He was committed to taking care of her and her son, but she wanted nothing to do with sharing in his bills. Nancy wanted to be a stay-at-home wife.
He didn’t know how this misunderstanding occurred after years of conversation about living together, especially considering what he had invested to change her life, which included college, learning how to drive, health care, and the list goes on.
When it came time to have a courthouse wedding, she was reluctant.
After the marriage, she acted bored. He didn’t know what she wanted. The boy seemed content. Lost in the video games, he never left his room. The only time he left his room was to learn how to play baseball and go to school.
One night she didn’t come to bed, and Mr. Smith caught her online. She was in a live video sex chat room with another younger man. She was watching him masturbate.
He didn’t place any blame on her. He pushed the relationship forward despite warning signs. He paid for everything. No one made him do it. He took her out of her comfort zone based on assumption and thrust her into a new reality.
The relationship was a fabrication of Mr. Smith’s dwindling memory and lonely heart. He had constructed an imagined version of Nancy during their two years of online communication.
He told her it was best she went home. He got the divorce papers. She signed without a fuss. She asked him to ship her boxes of clothes and sell the wedding ring.
He never heard from her again.
The mail arrived, and inside the mailbox was a letter from the doctor. He took it back into the house and set it on the table.
He didn’t open it.