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Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

SocietyAugust 17, 2023

Help Me Hera: My friend has fallen victim to a romantic scam

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

My friend met a guy on a dating app and he keeps borrowing money from her without paying it back. How do I convince her she’s part of an emotional Ponzi scheme?

Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nz

Dear Hera,

My friend met a guy on Bumble.  It was great and pretty “normal” for a few weeks, but then he started asking her for money. There’s always a valid excuse or reason, but the requests just keep coming.  She says “he’s just going through a lot” or “he’s having a tough time right now.”

It’s been about eight months now and he hasn’t paid any of it back, and is still asking her for more. She won’t tell me how much but I know it’s a lot. He’s in his late 30s, employed full-time.

He won’t tell her his address, so has never invited her to his house. He says he wants to take it slow as he’s been hurt badly in the past. They’ve only been physically intimate once, as he doesn’t like to stay over at her house.

He rings her at least twice a day but he gets moody and short-tempered if she says the wrong thing. The most innocuous things seem to wind him up and she has to apologise before he’ll talk to her again.

She vacillates between worry and frustration at what’s happening and guilt that she’s not being “understanding enough.”  She doesn’t seem like she’s having any fun, on any level, and yet says she’s “falling for him.”

My advice to her (apart from saying he seems lame and she needs to dump him) has been this: relationships require reciprocity. At a basic level, no matter what the nature of your relationship, you need to be getting something positive out of it, whether that’s hugs or S&M or whatever. But she’s not getting anything except anxiety and financial distress, as far as I can tell.

How can I get through to her and help her get away from this parasite in the form of a human man??

Best regards, 

Or Should I Just Mind My Own Business?

Dear OSIJMMOB,

I wouldn’t worry if I were you. This is actually how I met my current partner, Bjorn Fakenamison. He lives in Iceland, and we’ve been together for almost 10 years. We’ve never met in person, but he’s planning to visit just as soon as the portable aquarium business I’ve been helping him bankroll takes off. 

To be honest, at this point, I’m not even sure if what your friend has technically qualifies as a relationship. Is a relationship a relationship if it’s also transparently a scam? It’s not just the money – after all, many historically successful marriages were based on the redistribution of capital. But it sounds like this guy isn’t even remotely interested in your friend, beyond what’s left in her bank account. 

How do you convince someone their relationship is an emotional Ponzi scheme? The reality is there might not be an easy way to get through to her. Trying to help a friend when they’re caught up with someone you know isn’t good for them is notoriously fraught, and often futile. 

I don’t mean to belittle your friend’s choices. Hope is a powerful and intoxicating thing. Obviously, this guy means something to her if she’s willing to overlook so many glaring warning signals. Perhaps he has a lovely phone manner. She clearly has a lot invested in this, both emotionally and financially, which means she’s likely going to be resistant to hearing her boyfriend is a human pyramid scheme. 

She likely already knows this guy is bad news, and is clearly ashamed about lending him so much money, although I think the word “lending” in this context has an unearned optimism. But the more she invests in him – time, hope, money – the harder it’s going to be for her to cut her losses and admit she was hoodwinked. She’s suffering from a terminal case of sunken cost fallacy. 

Your friend may be gullible. But this guy is obviously a good manipulator. His moodiness and short temper aren’t just character flaws. They’re strategies. He’s purposefully making mountains out of molehills in order to keep her on edge. If all her energy is directed towards minor things, like worrying about saying the wrong thing over the phone, she’s unlikely to have the courage or energy to call him out on the big stuff, like not knowing where he lives, why they never sleep together, and when he’s going to start paying her back. 

That doesn’t mean your friend will appreciate your input. How hard to push when it comes to expressing concern about a friend’s partner, depends a lot on your friend’s personality, and the level of trust in your relationship. Can you talk about difficult things? Will she retreat at the first sign of confrontation? Could you encourage her to talk to a therapist or counsellor? She might be more receptive to hearing she’s dating a dirtbag from a licensed professional. 

If you push someone too hard before they’re ready to acknowledge a painful truth, you run the risk of annoying or embarrassing them so badly you inadvertently push them deeper into the relationship you want to see them out of. But it’s also no good standing silently by as your friend decimates her life savings in order to fund the lifestyle of some guy who won’t even tell her where he lives. 

If I were you, I’d do some basic investigating on your friend’s behalf. Eighty five percent of the time, if you’re “dating” someone, but you’ve never been to their house or met any of their friends and they won’t stay the night, it means they’re married. And even if they’re not married, it’s not like the other 15% of scenarios are looking any better. Can you verify his identity? Does he have a social media presence? Has your friend ever met anyone who works with or knows him? She might consider you playing Nancy Drew a breach of trust, but the only thing that seems even remotely likely to change her mind, besides bitter experience, is evidence he’s lying about some fundamental aspect of his identity. But even if you find proof, it doesn’t mean your friend will thank you for it, or even necessarily break up with him. 

This is obviously an exasperating and upsetting situation, and it sounds like you’re doing the best you can. There is no perfect course of action here. Sometimes the best you can do is express reasonable concern, try and remind her what a healthy relationship looks like, and otherwise be patient. It might take her time to hear the truth of what you’ve been saying. But sometimes the best thing you can do is just stay in the picture. A scammer’s best strategy is to isolate his victims. So keep checking in with her. Let her know you care, and are there if she needs you. Hopefully she’ll snap out of it, before she’s well and truly bankrupt.

Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzRead the previous Help Me Heras here.

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Image: Supplied / Additional design: The Spinoff
Image: Supplied / Additional design: The Spinoff

SocietyAugust 16, 2023

In praise of the holiday villain

Image: Supplied / Additional design: The Spinoff
Image: Supplied / Additional design: The Spinoff

The northern hemisphere summer has produced its usual rash of columns about holiday group etiquette. But those who violate those norms play a valuable role.

It’s peak travel season in the Northern Hemisphere, which brings with it a rash of columns explaining travel etiquette for both population-level groups (this quite patronising FT piece) and smaller gatherings (this “avoid friendship disaster” guide from the New York Times). Both are emblematic of a wider column brief which is basically seeking to make you and your type less annoying to one another, and to people who live in the places you’re travelling to.

They set out an ideal travel companion. The FT keeps it contained in advising that you “wear shoes”, and “put your phone on silent”. This sense of wariness is backed by the New York Times. “All your friends are not travel friends,” as travel influencer N’dea Irvin-Choy says.

The whole reason these stories exist is because the inverse also exists. We all have holidays defined by someone who just cannot assemble on time, mysteriously disappears to the bathroom whenever the cheque arrives or has important work to do only during clean up. In fact, this is hardly isolated to holidays – it’s a defining trait within any group, whānau, flatmates, colleagues, reality TV contestants. 

I want to describe the four basic typologies of bad holiday companion, whether within a family or friend group, and define some classic characteristics of their behaviour (note: people may fall into multiple categories – once you are comfortable violating one unspoken law, you’re already on the shitlist and might as well bundle them up for extra value).

The shirker 

It’s typical to split holiday tasks according to some form of formal or informal rotation. The shirker makes sure to avoid the task by any means necessary. The most reliable technique tends to be just disappearing. They sense a cleanup coming and vanish for its duration (typically the messiest guest’s approach), or need to answer some urgent emails (at 11am on a Sunday). Alternatively they just let their task slide until some other group member just picks it up, thus leaving plausible deniability about whether they were just about to do it (they weren’t). There are lots of different ways of shirking, but so long as someone else does the job, the shirker has won.

The cheapskate

This is not the same as not having much money. When part of your group is struggling, there’s a natural way for generosity to surface, through the benevolence of older siblings or friends without children. What we’re discussing here are people who can perfectly well afford the activity or to split the bill, but would simply prefer, on balance, that you pay it.

I had a friend once who, when we were about to go out for breakfast, insisted that we give  him what we intended to spend on our meals, then went to the shop, bought ingredients and cooked for us. Perfectly acceptable, except that he made around a 50% margin on the transaction, and the breakfast was mediocre, as well as late.

If you’re taking turns paying for meals, watch the cheapskate leap to pick up breakfast over dinner, or the first round when half the party has yet to arrive. Others check early whether it’s an item-by-item or evenly split bill, and ratchet up and down their order accordingly. There are dozens of different ways to duck your share – the cheapskate is happy to use them all.

The four basic typologies of bad holiday companion (Image: Supplied)

The complainer

The shirker and the cheapskate have material negative impacts on the time and money available to their companions. But the complainer might be worse, somehow, perhaps because they are never responsible for the thing they’re complaining about. The complainer who fixates on a particular aspect or aspects of a situation and makes it their core content pillar. They direct all conversational traffic back to the lack of air conditioning (guilty!), or the lack of a toaster. 

Invariably this has the effect of making whoever made the booking – never the complainer, who is always a full passenger on the trip – feel bad about their work. The complainer will find fault with the selection at a supermarket, the route taken by a driver, the general vibe of a location, always safe in the knowledge that they had no role in its selection, therefore cannot be held responsible. The corollary being that the person who did the picking got to do all the work of finding the thing, and has to wear the guilt of it being imperfect in the complainer’s eyes.

The footdragger

Perhaps the mildest of all the modes of the holiday villain, they nonetheless play a crucial role in creating the “travel amoeba”. This is defined by the New York Times as “an excruciatingly slow-moving blob of people that doesn’t really get anywhere”. The foot-dragger is never there when the people bus is leaving the station. They arrive ten minutes late, but without their hat, which they only remember as someone is stepping into a taxi.

The footdragger has the role of being the last person to leave, effectively defining the velocity of the whole group. Bookings are missed, venues are full, the heat comes in, all because the footdragger cannot get their shit together. Worse is the impact on parents, who have somehow managed to get three kids ready to leave somewhere on time, but when the footdragger finally appears, one of them invariably is hungry, or needs to go to the bathroom. The footdragger ultimately means you spend approximately 15% of your holiday waiting in a lobby.

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How to think about the holiday villain

I’m only listing four types above. Everyone I’ve ever travelled with probably could come up with three more Duncan-specific types on the spot, while also bundling me into multiple categories (I’m definitely a complainer). Basically, tag yourself, you’re in there somewhere – and if you’ve never thought about any of them, surprise: the villain is definitely you.

There’s also the opposite: the holiday hero. They make every booking, are always carrying sunscreen and are forever asking if you want anything from the shop. The thing about the holiday hero, though, is that they make you feel bad. All those good deeds when you’re trying to relax? Just calm down, please! 

The holiday villain, on the other hand, provides perhaps the most essential service of the holiday: a unifying conversation topic for all the rest of the group to vent about. This is actually an incredibly important job unto itself – after the catchups, what is there to talk about? The holiday villain provides a steady stream of petty, low stakes annoyances which others can recap to pass the time. The shirker even gets out of the way, so that those doing the big clean can roll their eyes and really unload, while the shirker is safely out of earshot, hiding from the job.

To be clear, there is a limit to this. Most people are both hero and villain at different times, and anyone who really digs into any of these archetypes is in grave danger of being ejected from future holidays (sadly this is harder to accomplish in family groups, which is why these holidays can really get heated). Additionally, you need a mix of heroes and villains – the unruly tourists were chiefly famous because they were all holiday supervillains, with no redeeming members. Still, to be fair, they gave a whole country something to complain about, so on balance, a win.

The point is that while holidays naturally give rise to a combination of different roles, both assigned and assumed, it’s not fair to discount the role of the villain. So long as they keep their offending at the mild end of the spectrum, what they provide in terms of content is easily the match of what they take away in terms of time, money and effort.

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