This blog has been on my mind for a while. I wanted to post it before Valentine’s Day yet life took over. Maybe it is better that way.
Love is funny and people do all kinds of things for it. Most are harmless because the majority of us have a moral compass, ethics. But there are always those who don’t and they will do almost anything for love. Like have other people finance their romance. I know because I have seen it numerous times. Here’s an example.
A few years ago, I met a well read and an intelligent woman. She is a bit older and had more life experience than one would think. And she could think up the fastest ways to do things. Figuring things out was her specialty and she had a pretty good network of people to help her. Money, as I understood, was something she struggled with. Her apartment was small, tidy and her furnishings were modest. Her clothes and most of her opportunities, again as I understood, came from her network. It was like she had a foxhole for every need. And she actively exercised every opportunity to visit each.
As time went on, we did more things together. The more time we invested in each other the more I began to notice that, even though she was still investing in herself, it appeared that she was investing a lot of time, energy and money in someone she met on the Internet, someone she never met.
Furniture, prints, curtains and anything else of value was being sold online or at yard sales. Her apartment was emptying faster than a drug addict empties their pockets. She was in love and they were going to met and live happily ever after is what she told anyone who would listen. I would nod and smile never thinking too much about their relationship. There was no point. She was addicted.
When we would go out, she never had any money, or never enough. Since I enjoyed her company, I didn’t mind buying her a coffee or a sharing a small bite to eat. After all we had fun. It stopped being fun when I quickly started to get the feeling that she expected to me to pay for everything.
My thinking was, if you have money to give to someone you never met, then you have money to pay for yourself. If other people wanted to be her ATM, and trust me there was an endless supply, that was their business.
People are people. If they can get away with something, like having someone else finance their romance or their love of money they will and they will do it as many times as they can. As a human it is my job to look out for myself.
If you follow the money, you will see that people aren’t as hard done by as they make themselves out to be. Some people empty their apartments for love while others max out their RRSP, TFSA, buy up every stock option and whatever else for the love of money. And that is the point of today’s blog.
I can’t stop anyone from being financially abused but I can stop someone from financially abusing me. People will say and do all kinds of things for love and the love of money. If you don’t pay attention, you will be in the poor house because you have allowed someone to build their wealth on your back.
If you don’t know what I mean, you can always read, The Couple Next Door, by Shari Lapena to get an idea. Here is the link to my latest post about, The Couple Next Door, on A. Rebel’s Rant,
Thank you for reading, Behind the Blog!