My Turkish Romeo

Submitted by Natalie (United States), Aug 23, 2016 at 18:08

Hello ladies, so I like most of you met someone I now believe was trying to take advantage of me. I told him this week that he needed to forget me because we didn't have a future. While I was preparing myself to have that conversation, it very much helped me to read all of your stories so I'm sharing mine. Even though I'm sure I made the right decision about not having any more contact with him, it is still hard. These men sure have a way of worming their way into our hearts!

So I met my romeo about 3 years ago in Turkey. He worked at a hotel I was staying at. He's Muslim. I'm not. We are both in our 30s, but I am a few years older. He told me he was single. We hung out after he completed his work shift but did not sleep together, although he tried and I said no. Casual sex really isn't my thing and I was honestly taken by surprise about how persistent he was. After I went home, we communicated via Facebook. He didn't say he loved me but did say I had his heart and he was mine. Over the next year and a half, I visited Turkey a few more times and usually saw him and eventually we had sex. He asked me for money a couple of times and even wanted help to buy a car once and I always told him no and that I would never send him money so if that's what he wanted from me, we should stop talking.

Of course, he immediately denied that's what he wanted and said he didn't need anything from me. The frequency of communication varied -- sometimes I wouldn't hear from him for a couple of months and other times it would be all day, every day. One day about six months ago, he wrote me and said he was going to marry a local Turkish girl. I was surprised but told him congratulations. He used to tell me that in Turkey, people only marry once and are faithful to their spouse so I was even more surprised when the communication continued and he said that him being married wasn't a problem. I used to live in a country were it was totally acceptable for men not to be faithful to their wives so I overlooked it. I told myself that we were only texting so it was okay.

But it was still a red flag for me. And I overlooked the red flags that went up when he asked for money because I was enjoying communicating with him. No man has ever said the things to me that he did and I admit, I enjoyed the attention. Even though I knew he wasn't being sincere, he still was able to make me feel things for him I shouldn't have been feeling. Being bored truly causes problems.

Fast forward to the present when I find out that my company is sending me to Turkey for a long term, temporary, work assignment. I told him I was coming, because as I said I did enjoy talking to him and as odd as it sounds, I felt like we had a connection. His messages always made me smile. But then things got a little uncomfortable for me. He was telling me he'd never leave me alone and that he loved me, etc. Messages were once again coming all day, and while at first, I enjoyed them, but they did start to bother me.

Finally, I decided that although I don't know the circumstances of his marriage (perhaps arranged by parents, I'm not exactly sure), he's still married and I don't want to be with someone I know is married. Emotionally or physically. It crosses a line I never in a million years thought I'd contemplate crossing (and I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider it). So I told finally told him I wanted him to forget me. It took a week of back-and-forth messages for it to finally be understood though. But now I'm preparing to live in Turkey for a while. I'm still relatively young and single (never been married, no kids) so of course I will want to date while I'm there. But after my experience and reading all of the stories on this site, I'm really worried about being scammed. If anyone has any tips to avoid that happening, please let me know! I'm afraid I'm going to be so untrusting I won't be able to have a real relationship, if the opportunity even presented itself.

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