Hello fellow travelers on the road. Thanks for reading my usual ramblings about life and my own personal focus here. I try to look back occasionally on my own blogs and those of others both men and women. I had to read John's blog post twice because it seemed to be written almost exactly like one of mine. It would be arrogant of me to say that it's exactly what I think and have written but it is and my bet is that it's on the pulse of what most men feel here. #1 to add to John's post contrary to what many women from the former Soviet states think Western men are NOT an endless well dug into a bank with a Rolex and a Porshe. It would indeed cost a small fortune for us to answer all the mail we get. I wonder if men with a bad photo or no photo get messages like the ones John and I and the other men get? #2 to summarise about the degradation that is a clear and obvious strategy by the people that compose them, the ladies that send those emails or should I say the people in the photos, are usually insanely HOT! FLAWLESS in fact! My guess is as I said in a previous post, there is someone writing these emails that is not the lady in the photo. These are easy to smoke out with just a few simple questions in the chat room....mainly as the site admin advises we men to do-ask to see the person live and one on one with their camera on. The answer most often given- "you do see me, you see my pictures!" WOW! Such an encouraging answer from such a serious person seeking love. It's a real shame and let down when we get those answers. Men...move on and block that lady. #3 to the real ladies here. A real lady here that wants to talk just to you will ask and will not just give you a blanket time of say 2pm Eastern standard time in the USA but she will ask or at least you both should agree. I have been online more times than I care to remember only to see the lady I was invited to chat with chatting away with multiple men. That seems 100% irrational to me. John do you want to feel like you have a woman's undivided attention? I do! Ladies...do you want to have a woman's undivided attention? In my experience you do and in fact sometimes come to jealousy easily. What happened to making someone feel special and wanted, desired and loved, just you, just them? A good woman will want you my friend and she will want just you. She will want to chat with you and only you and will get down to the reality of life, work, school, kids, family, future, MEETING! And all in practically that order. I have been fortunate enough to have met 2 ladies online since 2009. Before that I was married. These ladies and I got along great and the only reason we split was a lack of preparation with their children and their ex husbands. Men that didn't want to be in their kids lives suddenly had interest and simply would not sign for the child or children to leave to come to the USA. I will be 100% honest. My first thought was to just offer money and invite the ex husband to visit the USA once a year and to maybe even help sponsor him to live in the USA. Why? I have gone through child custody battles in court and deeply miss seeing my son like I used to see him....every day! Now it's half as much. I don't want it on my conscience that I kept a child and parent away from each other. I offered the man $10,000 cash to sign a legal document for the child to move. He didn't pay child support anyway and was a deadbeat but was also jealous. He refused even though he was an absent father. I went to my Russian friends(brothers really) with grief, frustration and tears. They called him and he was very rude. Again with full disclosure one has an uncle that is abit old school and Uncle Pasha was ready to go and have other men threaten to break the man's legs or indeed do it. Uncle Pasha calls me son. My family has no blood link to Russia at all buy my bond to my friends Alec and Kostya is deeper than that of my own older brothers. My son calls them uncle and their children call me uncle. I did not agree with breaking the man's legs but uncle Pasha did send some men anyway. They did call me with the man right there, with him begging for no harm to come to him. I couldn't harm that man and I knew they were there for me and my girlfriend. I couldn't harm the father of the 2 kids I had grown to really love. So instead those men made the father of her children promise to pay child support and to be a real father to his kids. I couldn't believe what I was hearing on the phone.....a man being basically threatened to physical harm to just be a dad and do the right thing. The woman and I split in the end because I could not ask her to leave her children, just like she could not ask me to leave my son. Still back to the point....we made a plan and from the start did not linger on her physical appearance, and did not focus on any of that trivial stuff. Again back to my point, we moved past all that stuff John mentioned early on in our communication. Anyone real and serious will quickly move past all that to the real stuff. LIFE, WORK, EDUCATION, FINANCES, CHILD REARING, FAMILY, AND A REAL MEETING. Anyone else reading this, if you are bothered by my story about my Russian friends and their attempts to bring happiness to my life and the life of my then girlfriend and her wonderful children, understand that they are my family and they did the right thing. In the end their faith in me was right. I was good for her and her kids. We were really a great match. I should have had faith and trusted their judgments about a man from their own culture. As it turns out the father of those kids did the right thing for about 4 months then disappeared. My ex girlfriend did not find happiness and struggles now to this day. Again the point being that we must find a place where we trust SOMEONE SOMETIME! I should have trusted my friends, and men you should trust that some here look for your wallet and some look for your heart. That is NOT just this site by the way. It's actually the real world good ol' Western culture USA! In the USA however it's just closer, and that's all. If you see a wonderful woman that tells she she is ugly or fat, and she clearly is not, DUDE....BE REAL...she is not really serious or it's not her at all. Wow....is anyone else tired of these long blog posts? FYI...most blogs are long like mine. So don't be too harsh on me gents :) Thank you John for your posts and I look forward to reading more.