If it makes you feel better you are not alone in this. Who needs to be ashamed is him. Not you. People fall victims of crap all the time. All over the world. Smart, educated, decent people. Get lied to and scammed and life goes on.

I am a victim of romance scam. Trust me, it’s worse than your story. Police and FBI told me that I can’t even imagine number of people falling victims of it, educated smart people, all the time.

What I found helpful was to laugh about it. It’s pretty funny if you put certain spin to it. Laugh at it. My brother told me that it’s not embarrassing to be trusting, it’s embarassing to be a$$holes and/or criminals. Not embarrassing to be decent people falling victims of something. Makes sense. You did nothing embarrassing.

Well now I used word victim in criminal sense. In Other sense you shouldn’t feel like s victim. By being ashamed of what happened you allow yourself to think like a victim. Thing happened, you got out, learned something and moved on. You can also think that it could always be worse. You got out on time. Before you got into any legal commitments. So pet yourself on a back!