Confession time. Let’s skip the fake remorse and start with the truth:
I’m a scammer.

Not some weepy, misunderstood grifter with a tragic backstory. No. I’m a specialist. I provide a premium service. Companionship with emotional flair. For a price. Sex and money. Sometimes one, sometimes both. It depends on the mark.

I charm. They disarm and are open to my racket. That’s the equation. Simple math..

And let’s get one thing straight right. There’s no wounded crying inner child. No broken home, no shadowy uncle, no addiction in the family tree. I had two stable, loving parents who packed my lunch, kissed me goodnight, and told me I could be anything. I had a golden retriever childhood. Big backyard. Siblings who didn’t hate me. I passed the marshmallow test for delayed gratification. I would have waited five hours for the second marshmallow. Please…. I have it in aces.

School? I did it all: sports, rocket club, debate club, model UN? Check, check, check, and absolutely.

So no, I’m not a broken man looking to fill a hole. I’m a man who sees what women want and give it to them in the exact currency they crave. Attention. Intimacy. The illusion of safety. The hope of everlasting commitment. And I take my fee like a professional.

Romance internet scams were my early portfolio. Sweet messages. Gentle flirting. Tailored promises of forever. Some I bedded. Some I borrowed from. All believed in my sincerity, until I ghosted them. I never felt bad. If anything, I felt noble. Teaching them a lesson: never trust too quickly, never believe in the Wizard of OZ.

But then the amateurs flooded in. Idiots with bad grammar and fake military IDs. They ruined it. Too obvious, too greedy, too soon to snare. The six figures I’d grown used to started evaporating.

So I pivoted.

Christmas dinner lit the match. My brother’s girlfriend mentioned she was in recovery, something about twelve steps and finding serenity. She spoke like it was church and therapy and family all rolled into one. I feigned empathy and extracted everything I needed: meeting formats, the “Big Book,” slogans like “easy does it,” “one day at a time,” and this delightful gem: “normies”—the word they used for people like me.

Except I’m not a normie. I’m their Higher Power.

I’m the First Step they never saw coming.

Alcoholics Anonymous. Goldmine. Women there are raw, cracked open, starving for connection. They’re taught to be honest, to trust, to work the steps, and to confess in front of strangers. They practically hand you their playbook of vulnerabilities.

I infiltrated. Sat in the circle with my most remorseful face. I shared “my story”—all fiction, perfectly paced. A few tears, a fake DUI, the “moment of clarity” sloppy drunk in a parking lot behind a gas station. It worked. They welcomed me like the prodigal son.

Now I’m hunting. Quietly. Respectfully.
I tell them they’re beautiful when they don’t feel it. I listen more earnestly than their ex-husbands or partners ever did. I know when to touch a hand, when to back away. I speak their language. I study them. I’m patient before I pounce.

They think I’m their savior. But I’m just collecting payments.

There’s no guilt. No shame. No need for therapy or jail time or a higher purpose. This is a business. My business. And business is good again. I waited patiently for two months.

Then I roped in my first new member. Easy peasy.

She was overweight, eyes red from crying, shoulders permanently slumped like she’d spent years apologizing for existing. Perfect. The kind who’s starved for kindness and hasn’t been truly seen in years.

I sat next to her in three meetings before saying a word. Just long enough to make her wonder if I might. On the fourth, I complimented her sharing, gently, respectfully. She gave me that puppy dog look. Hook set.

I played a long game. Walks after meetings. Long walks on the beach with deep, soulful eye contact. Museums, because they made me look sophisticated. Cozy romantic restaurants. I told her she was fascinating. That I loved how real she was. That her pain made her radiant. She had never been called radiant before.

When we finally had sex, she cried. Said it was the first time it felt like someone wanted her. I made it the best night of her life, slow, attentive, enough to pass for love.

Thirteenth stepping.

It’s an unwritten rule in AA: don’t date new members. Don’t prey on people just finding their footing. It’s not official doctrine, but it’s sacred. The group thrives on safety, trust, shared vulnerability. Break that, and you taint the whole well.

I didn’t break it. I bent it. I asked her to keep our relationship secret, too sacred to share with others.

***

3 Months later

Hooks set and I was reeling them in. The next months I was juggling three relationships. Not in the same group meetings but meetings far enough away not to slip up. I used the old borrowing con. Money was again flowing into my coffers. Sex was a bonus.

I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t count on women blabbing to their sponsors. You may have guessed by now that my perfect scheme unraveled.

I found out too late.

Unbeknownst to me, word had gotten around that a con artist had been preying upon AA members. Women I had previously courted—read: seduced, drained, discarded—compared notes. The pieces clicked, the anger boiled, and they formed a plan. They brought in a ringer, a woman who knew exactly how to play a man like me.

Her name was Delilah.

I know. I know. You can’t make this stuff up. The irony practically sweats off the page. Delilah was a professional actor. Older than she looked, younger than she acted. Gorgeous in that old-school Hollywood way: red lips, perfect posture, and a dynamite figure. She didn’t stumble into AA. She descended like an angel.

At first, she did the rounds like any new member. She sat quietly in the back, clutching her Styrofoam cup. But when it came time for cookies and punch, she stood out. The dress hugged her curves. The room of thirsty men, all dry from booze but parched for something else, circled her like moths.

But she had eyes for me.

After the meeting, she casually strolled over. She tilted her head and smiled just enough.

She said, “Let’s go for coffee. I’m dying for a cigarette.”

Coffee and cigarettes, the standard high for the AA losers.

Over the next few weeks, she let me believe I was running the game. She cried once during a share, about abandonment, about needing protection. I stepped in like a knight. We went on long drives, even a meditation retreat. She never let me touch her, said she was Catholic and saving herself for marriage. I thought it was a quaint boundary; one I could eventually bulldoze.

But here’s the thing: she had already bulldozed me.

While I was busy fantasizing about what would happen when she finally “gave in,” she had already gained access to the one thing that mattered to me: my online banking. She didn’t ask for it—no, she acted like she needed help setting up her own finances. I volunteered. Then she “accidentally” logged in on my phone. I had left it unlocked just long enough.

By the time I realized I’d been had, my accounts were drained. Every cent I had milked from my previous conquests was gone. The withdrawals were all legal. My passwords had been changed.

I still loved her. I tried to call her. Number disconnected.

She wasn’t at my next AA meeting. I looked around the room—sponsors and sponsees chatting, sharing, sipping coffee—and for the first time, I felt what my victims must’ve felt.

Naked. Duped. Powerless.

Delilah played me better than I’d ever played anyone. She didn’t just take my money; she took my delusion of superiority.

But the story doesn’t end there. Not even close.

I was exposed, humiliated, stripped of my pride, and left with barely enough to pay for a bottle. Then I did what most cowards do, I drank.

I drank until the sound of my own name made me wince. Until mornings came with tremors and nights came with blackouts. Until I found myself slumped behind a gas station dumpster, half-conscious, my pockets empty, and my pants wet. Call it karma, divine payback, or just gravity pulling me to where I belonged.

That was my bottom. And it was darker than anything I’d imagined.

The next morning, I attended the nearest AA meeting. I didn’t say a word that first day. Just listened. I hated everyone in that room. The earnestness. The chipper sobriety slogans on the wall. The way people clapped when someone said they’d gone thirty days without drinking and got a stupid chip, as if it was an Olympic medal.

But I kept going.

Week after week. Something about the rawness in their stories, their pain. They just… spoke it. And they listened. No one flinched when I said I’d manipulated women, stolen from them, lied about love. No one excused it either. They just kept saying, “Keep coming back.”

One of the old-timers who looked like he’d been carved out of a Camel commercial took me aside after a meeting. “You’re not unique,” he said. “Just sick. The good news is sick gets better if you work the steps. But only if.”

I started working them. I went back to school. Social work, of all things. I figured I should do something useful. I should try to help people I once saw as marks. I volunteered at the local domestic violence shelter. At first, the staff wouldn’t let me near anyone. I just filed papers and cleaned bathrooms. Fine. I deserved that.

But it was Step 9 that nearly broke me.

Making amends. Not just saying sorry but doing the work of apology. Owning it without asking for forgiveness. I spent weeks tracking down names I remembered, numbers I wasn’t sure were still good. I made lists. I prepared speeches.

One woman screamed at me before hanging up.

Another called me a sociopath and reported me to her therapist.

Only one agreed to meet me at a diner. She threw a glass of water in my face the moment I sat down. She said, “That’s for who I was when I met you. That girl deserved better.”

Then she got up and walked out. I never saw her again. But something in me changed that day. I didn’t feel vindicated. I didn’t feel punished. I just felt clean for the first time in years.

And now?

I still go to meetings. I still listen more than I talk. I sponsor a few guys who remind me of my old self.

Sobriety hasn’t made me holy. But it’s filled a hole.

Most days that’s enough.

Dr. Weiner has over 40 years’ experience as a clinical psychologist who
specializes in trauma recovery and anxiety disorders. He enjoys using stories
to help readers harness their resilience within to aid them on their healing
journey. He has been published in a variety of professional journals and
fiction in magazines. His psychology books include Shattered Innocence and the
Curio Shop. Non-psychology publications are Across the Borderline and The Art
of Fine Whining. He has a monthly advice column in a Portland Newspaper, AskDr.Neil.