You are all mine – I am a love addict

Melissa Killeen

“You are all mine.”

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“In a few months I will be back and we will meet.”

I talk like this all of the time. With every woman I meet. And with every woman I meet, I fall in love. I fall in love with the fantasy I make up in my head about them .  .  . and me. I love this energy: meeting women, falling in love, and finding the “one.” This energy happens with every woman I meet, and I meet about five of them a month. Sometimes more.

I meet them online. I meet them on Facebook or LinkedIn, not dating sites. Eventually we talk on the phone. This is where my master skills of seduction come in, because I coerce women to give me money. I am a scam artist. But really, I am a love addict.

My name is Phil. I was born in Germany, my parents gave me up for adoption, so I lived in foster homes in the 1950s and 60s. No love in those places. When I was 17, I started living on the streets of Berlin, performing as a street musician and begging for money. Eventually, I was able to attend a German boarding school, which is called gymnasien, thanks to a sponsor. This sponsor was very good to me. He was very wealthy. I was young, handsome and I fit into his fantasy. I gave him sex in exchange for an education. He fit into my fantasy: a savior, a father figure, and a lover. This sponsor helped me to attend the most prestigious university in Berlin for technical knowledge and I graduated with a degree in geological engineering. I was fascinated with the high-risk life in the oil and gas drilling fields. It was just like the high-risk life of living on the streets.

Eventually I went to England and took my masters in geological engineering and started working with an international gas drilling company. Now I find myself in North Dakota, with the most recent gas drilling boom. I act as a consultant to large gas firms. Or at least that is what I tell my women.

I focus entirely on them from the point I finish that story. I tell them they are very smart. They usually are. I know that because I am looking at their LinkedIn profile and can repeat everything that is on their resume. I have researched every online presence they may have from Facebook to Pinterest. Before long, I know their address, I have pictures of their house and their kids. The perfect woman for me is an empty nester, high-net-worth executive, self-employed businesswoman, without a significant other. They are lonely for a male to pay attention to them.

They can see my profile on LinkedIn. It is very impressive, international degrees, prestigious schools, and no way to track. I include photos, after all, I am a hottie. I snag a few photos from an appropriately aged guy’s Facebook page, along with those perfect family shots of my daughter and son. While I am creating a profile, I befriend a few of my woman’s Facebook friends to give me some credibility. I (alas) lost my wife to cancer seven years ago, and I haven’t dated since. I am grieving. My therapist told me I had to get out and meet someone. But I digress, the widow, the photos, the kids, the therapist . . . they are all stories too.

But one thing that is not a story is that I really love these women. I meet them online, I seduce them in emails and phone conversations and I really fall in love with them. I fantasize that “we” have found each other at a turning point in my life. I hope that “she” is the one. She is the one that I will find who will take me away from all this subterfuge. I can’t believe I could be so lucky to fall into this perfect relationship, for she is perfect and I can abandon this life and fall into her arms. From just a post on a group page of wine lovers, theater enthusiasts or Psychiatrists, I have found the one.

Phil’s story continues next week on August 6