This is a story of a woman who spent her thirties waiting to find love, and when she finally did, she poured her heart and savings into a man who was running the same scam on another woman at the same time.
I am 36 years old and I have never been married. I want to say that plainly because it is the reason I found myself in this situation.
In Malaysia, that sentence carries weight. By my mid-thirties, every family gathering had become an exercise in managing other people’s concern. Cousins younger than me had children in primary school. My mother doesn’t tire of asking me if I found someone every time I come home for a visit, mentioning friends’ daughters who had found someone, leaving the implication hanging in the air between us. I had built a good life, a stable career in finance, a paid-off car, savings I was genuinely proud of, and somehow none of it counted as much as the absence of a man beside me.
I was not unhappy exactly, but I was very lonely.
I met Daniel at a friend’s birthday dinner. He was charming and tall. He knew the right questions to ask to get to know me and actually listens to the answers. He was 40, ran his own small logistics company, and when he looked at me across the table, I felt something I have never felt before for someone.
We started seeing each other and everything about it felt different from the relationships I had tried and failed at in my twenties. He was consistent in everything he did.
He called when he said he would and remembered small things I mentioned in passing. I fell for him hard. Over time, we spoke about marriage and the future, and it felt like we wanted the same things in life. I was so happy that I found the one I want to spend my life with.
I introduced him to my family and friends, and everyone liked him, especially my mom who I think was happy I finally found someone.
eight months in, he brought up the business.
He said his company had an opportunity to expand with a regional distributor that would triple their capacity, but it required upfront capital he did not have liquid at the time. He was not asking me to invest, he was careful to say that. He was just sharing something that was weighing on him, it made me feel like he trusted me. I was the one who asked if I could be involved.
Looking back, I understand what he was doing. At the time it felt like my idea. I had the capital and it made sense to invest my money with the man who was going to be my future husband.
He made it sound measured and legitimate. All I needed to do was top up the money and be a silent partner and I will receive a fixed return over eighteen months. He showed me documents that looked professional such as a partnership agreement, projected revenue figures, a contract with the distributor’s letterhead. I was working in finance, and I knew what due diligence looked like and I told myself I was doing it. I checked some things, but I did not check enough things because I did not want to be the kind of woman who could not trust the man she loved.
I transferred RM45,000 in two installments.
For several months everything seemed fine. Daniel gave me updates on the contract, mentioned meetings and shipments, and sent me the occasional document. I had no reason to doubt any of it. I was happy, properly happy, in a relationship that felt like proof that the waiting had been worth it.
Then a woman named Fiona sent me a message on Instagram. She said she needed to talk to me about Daniel and asked if we could meet. I almost did not respond, I told myself it was probably an ex with unresolved feelings, a drama I did not need in my life. But the next message she sent, stopped me in my tracks: “He is not the man you think he is. Please meet me.”
Eventually after a week of contemplating, I decided to meet her at a café in Bangsar. she was 38, composed, and she got straight to the point. She had been seeing Daniel for eight months too. He had told her he was single and also three months ago asked her to invest in a business expansion. She had given him RM30,000.
She had found out about me through his phone when he left it unlocked at her apartment.
I sat across from her and did the maths in my head. RM45,000 from me and RM30,000 from her. We compared notes for two hours. The documents were identical except for the dates. The messages he sent us were near copies of each other, the same check-ins, the same terms of endearment, the same careful attentiveness that had made both of us feel loved.
I was furious and I confronted Daniel that evening. He denied it at first, but after being confronted with the evidence his denials collapsed and he became emotional, he started crying saying that he genuinely cared about both of us and had gotten in too deep to find a way out. He said the business was real and the money would come.
Of course, as the months went by, I found out the business was not real. His logistics company was real enough, registered, with a physical address but it had been dormant for over a year. Fiona had already called the distributor directly after finding me and was told they had no record of any partnership with his company. He had taken our money, and whatever he had done with it, there was nothing left to return.
I managed to recover RM8,000 through a lawyer’s letter that took four months and cost me more in legal fees than I had expected. The rest is gone. Fiona recovered nothing.
What I thought about the most after what happened was not the money I lost. It is how he played on my need to be loved by someone. I was honest with him about my desire to get married and how lonely I have been. I had spent so long being told that a woman my age should be grateful to be chosen that when someone chose me, I could not see clearly enough to ask why.
I am not writing this to make myself smaller than I am. I made choices and I own them. But I also know that what he did was manipulation and because of it, it is hard for me to trust another man.
Since this incident, Fiona and I became close friends, and we often help each other vetting the men we’re dating just to be on the safe side.
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Read also: ‘I gave up my family to pursue my dreams’ Shares 34 YO M’sian woman – In Real Life
https://inreallife.my/i-gave-up-my-family-to-pursue-my-dreams-shares-34-yo-msian-woman/
‘I gave up my family to pursue my dreams’ Shares 34 YO M’sian woman
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