daisy Posted December 5, 2009 Posted December 5, 2009 Yesterday, during our ELCI monthly meeting, I have another chance of listening to the kind of relationship my fellow Filipinas have with their Expatriate husbands/partners. We did this because of our 5 new members, who attended the meeting for the first time! Everyone seemed to be happy and fulfilled in their role .However we almost l have the same cries, our very own people tend to believe that all we are all living in comfort and luxury because of the dollars/money associated with them! Very few have raffle ticket sold because their own friends will just tell them, "why not let your husband buy it for you?" :AddEmoticons04230: for us! Anyways, most of the time a "desperate" Filipina who is coming from a failed marriage or extreme poverty, when they will know that we are married to foreigners, without even knowing us that much, she will have the guts to say, "please give me a foreigner". Is this true among foreigners too? Why is it that most of the time our kind of partnership is always equated with money? With comfort and pride one gets from the other? Why not love and compatibility? It is so sad that this very challenging and beautiful relationship will always be merited as a partnership for convenience? I truly believe without each other's utmost understanding and patience, this would never last longer than 2 years.:lol: Thanks for bearing with me in my :bash: .....just the romantic in me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMason Posted December 5, 2009 Posted December 5, 2009 (edited) Its just the way of the world Daisy. My nephew's Baptismal was today and 2 different women asked my wife if I had a single brother/cousin/friend. Despite protests to the contrary, foreigners ARE rich. We may not be wealthy in our home countries but every single one of us wealthy in the Philippines. My wife and I live a very modest lifestyle and have a budget to match. Even as simply as we live, our monthly budget is 3 times the salary of a teacher and 2.5 times that of someone working for minimum wage. As you know, very few people are fortunate enough to earn the minimum wage here. Most expats have monthly budgets far exceeding what I spend....so when expats spend money like that, its not reasonable to expect people not to think we're wealthy. If you are living on 8-12k pesos per month, you're still better off than most Filipinos. If you are living on 30k or over, sorry, you are wealthy and just don't like to think of yourself that way.I think most people assume that if you had wanted to, you could have found a Filipino and had a loving and caring relationship with him. That scenario is common and familiar them. Since you decided to marry a foreigner, they think there must have been some other reason than love and a good relationship. Money is the obvious something else. As to the reaction of other foreigners when they meet my wife, I can't really say since my only expat friend in the Philippines is also married to a Filipina and my wife has not visited the US with me yet. However, I can tell you the reaction of my family when I told them I was moving to the Philippines and marrying a Filipina. I got 4 basic responses....A) I'm so happy that you found someone to share your life with.B) Good move living there, that way you know she isn't scamming you for a green card.C) Are you sure she's not just after your money?D) You want a slave, not a wife.Thankfully, most of my family reacted with option A, but there were more B, C, and D reactions then I thought there would be. If people that have known me to be a responsible, level-headed man all my life thought those things about my wife, I suspect strangers will do the same.Your comment about how hard it is to make a cross-cultural relationship work is dead on. People not married to a foreigner just don't understand the unique challenges that we face. The stereotypes and perceptions I just mentioned can be very difficult to deal with. However, the hardest thing for my wife and I is that we think we know what the other will say/do/think based on our experiences with how people from our own coutnry would react. We often misunderstand each other's motivations because we think they are acting like an American or Filipino would act. We have to make a conscious effort to ask questions and clarify things in order to avoid misunderstandings. When we don't take that extra time to make sure we're communicating clearly, we end up in a big fight. Edited December 5, 2009 by TheMason 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Lee Posted December 5, 2009 Posted December 5, 2009 Yesterday, during our ELCI monthly meeting, I have another chance of listening to the kind of relationship my fellow Filipinas have with their Expatriate husbands/partners. We did this because of our 5 new members, who attended the meeting for the first time! Everyone seemed to be happy and fulfilled in their role .However we almost l have the same cries, our very own people tend to believe that all we are all living in comfort and luxury because of the dollars/money associated with them! Very few have raffle ticket sold because their own friends will just tell them, "why not let your husband buy it for you?" :AddEmoticons04230: for us! Anyways, most of the time a "desperate" Filipina who is coming from a failed marriage or extreme poverty, when they will know that we are married to foreigners, without even knowing us that much, she will have the guts to say, "please give me a foreigner". Is this true among foreigners too? Why is it that most of the time our kind of partnership is always equated with money? With comfort and pride one gets from the other? Why not love and compatibility? It is so sad that this very challenging and beautiful relationship will always be merited as a partnership for convenience? I truly believe without each other's utmost understanding and patience, this would never last longer than 2 years.:lol: Thanks for bearing with me in my :bash: .....just the romantic in me! Daisy, welcome to how it also feels on the white dudes side. :lol: As challenging as you find it, I think it is much harder on our end and here is why..... There are many single Filipinas who would gladly take a foreigner for a husband but there are not many single foreigners who would gladly travel great distances or in the case of an American half way around the world to live or meet a lady from a third world country or to jump through all the hoops to bring her back to their country....Believe it or not, and I am not patting myself on the back, it takes a pretty special person (like your husband) to jump through all the hoops and go through all the challenges that a multicultural relationship will put on them and especially in this day and age of forums where they can read and ask about all the challenges that they will have to face....I did not have the benefit of forums when I met my wife and if I had and known how hard it was all going to be then I might have chickened out, but on the other hand, I sure am happy I did not. :yes: On my end and ever since I met my wife her friends and family keep asking me to find them an American, sort of like pick them off a tree...... :o People in the Philippines who have not been to the states or traveled to other countries do not realize just how hard a request that can often be to try to fill.......First there are not that many good men who are single in the states that we know because people tend to hang out in the same circles, so if you are married as we are, then we usually hang out with other married couples, yet at parties or at work we can often run into an unattached guy..... Some friends have single or divorced sons but they really do not wish them to marry a foreign lady and while many may praise my wife, they have also voiced things that tell me that deep down inside they think or thought I was crazy, and in retrospect maybe one does have to be a little crazy to do what I and others did and continue to do, but I am so very happy that I did. :yes:I have to wonder if most ladies in the Philippines realize just how far away the US is? I know that none of my wife's family or friends did until we told them in terms they could really understand, it would take us two months or more by ship to get from the US to the Philippines or visa versa.... All they knew was we get on a plane and within 24 hours we are there and they often do not understand a world map or the time zone differences of the added 12 hours, and to this day we still get texts in the middle of the night from supposedly educated family and friends and I think it is just easy to forget that day is night and night is day when the sun is shinning there and that we are most often sleeping here. Anyway I could go on and on but TheMason covered many of the points that I would also cover about just how hard and cruel family and friends can often be when we marry a lady from a world away. :yes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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