Stickman Readers' Submissions May 31st, 2006

A Good Wife Is Hard To Find

These thoughts were inspired by an old submission “Why I would not marry a Thai”, many previous and subsequent submissions and personal experience.

What I find a bit disturbing about the submission and many of the experiences Westerners express about Thai women on Stick’s site, is the fact that everything negative expressed, every example given, applies equally to American women. It is always problematic to attribute qualities to an entire culture as there are always many exceptions; but I do believe many cultural generalities are accurate.

He Clinic Bangkok

What the writer of “Why I would not marry a Thai” and many of you reading this are looking for in a spouse is basically what I myself was searching for over the years. I would like to share a couple of observations based on thirty-five years of my personal relationships with American women and what I have witnessed first hand with friends and family as well as some cultural trends reported in the media.

Since I have been reading Stick's site three thoughts keep coming to me:

  1. How interesting it would be to read a similar site where farangs chronicled their relationships with farang women.
  2. Are these Thai cultural issues or universal gender issues?
  3. Is Thailand a third world country moving toward becoming like America or is America moving toward becoming a country like Thailand. Thailand (also India and other countries) have been dealing with over-population, a lack of natural resources and poverty for a couple of thousand years. America, with an abundance of natural resources has been around a couple of hundred years. Our middle class is disappearing (one of our sources of strength) as we move toward a culture of rich and of poor. Yankee ingenuity has not come up with any solutions to homelessness or poverty as it increasingly manifests itself in America. The educational system is broken, prisons are overflowing, property and human rights are more frequently abused as we move to a more authoritarian federal system of government, routinely asserting precedence over our States rights.

It is not my intent to bash women here. I have three daughters in their late twenties and I remember quite well the experiences of my mother and the tens of thousands of other women who did fit the mold you describe and had the attributes you value. They raised the kids, kept the house, often worked, some putting their husbands through school and after twenty years of marriage, the husband dumps them for a younger woman, leaving them with zero job skills and devastated self-esteem. This was the situation for many years, before men had their turn and started getting the shaft in America’s bureaucratic nightmare of a family court judicial system.

CBD bangkok

The educational system churns out an incredible number of people who cannot read or write. Drop out rates are high. In higher education, the focus is on landing a well-paying job, cheating is rationalized as routinely as if we fit the misconception Westerners hold of Thais. Our organizations are filled with individuals who have the title, dress the dress, but are essentially clueless. An American classic rationalization is "Everything's okay as long as you don't get caught". Witness the lack of ethics in our corporate and government leadership.

The women who come out of the higher education system with marketable skills and a head on their shoulders are not looking to play housewife.

I read a survey recently that 70+ % of Japanese young women are not interested in marriage.

The rest are looking to marry a beast of burden. The majority of the uneducated women, the very ones whose security depends on finding a husband and sealing the cash flow deal with children have no interest in learning the skills to operate a successful household. Most do not know how to cook, clean properly, sew, garden, nurture children or feel any obligation to nurture or support a husband. The court system and welfare system in America assures that any woman that can pop out a couple of kids… will either receive substantial spousal financial support or support to include housing, medical care, food assistance, a monthly check and legal services. This state support is at a level which may be far higher than the father could afford at his job, is then extracted from him by garnishment, social stigma and sometimes jail. This father often has no parental rights to be a part of his children's life.

wonderland clinic

So, a girl can have a child at 14 or 15, be given the resources to move out of her parents' house, have a couple more at the state's expense and by 18 be essentially retired. That's if she hasn't found some chump to marry her. This system perpetuates itself assuring an ample supply of predators for generations. This is disturbingly similar to a society with no safety net, where economic conditions and poverty assures an ample supply of young women with few options gravitating to the sex industry, who ultimately just want someone to take care of them.

Thai Huntresses? Amateurs! Good-looking American chicks, with good lawyers, routinely make hundreds of thousands of dollars and retire at twenty-five having one or two divorces under their belt. A fat, ugly American starfish can and does; take a man's house, car and 401K during soap opera commercial breaks. I suspect that the punters, who whine about losing $10,000 or $20,000 to a beautiful Thai woman half their age, wouldn't be so bothered if they hadn't already lost everything they own plus payments to some devious fat American broad.

Let me share this tidbit from the news a couple of years ago:

A female medical doctor had oral sex with a male medical doctor. She saved his semen from her mouth, impregnated herself, and then went after him for child support. He tried to sue her for theft and fraud. Bottom-line; he pays. Have you seen any Thai girls that devious?

The following is a list of things I have personally experienced in thirty-five years of relations and marriage to American women.

  • 1st wife said she was pregnant with my child. I married her. She knew it was my brother's child. She managed to collect child support for 18 years.
  • Went to Planned Parenthood to get on birth control with gag (good American girl), slept with her for one year before finding out she never took the pill. No, she wouldn't have married me, she said she would make her old boyfriend marry her who was off at college and who she was sleeping with once a month while with me. (even if it was my child, she said)
  • Another "gag" said she couldn't have children without an operation, should I have asked for paperwork? Wished I had…turned out to be an evil wife.

· Infidelity…yes, with almost all of them.

· Leave me with the kids and take off? Yes, one left her child from a previous marriage as well.

  • Our own business…wife embezzles tens of thousands of dollars, and then goes on welfare????

· Put family ahead of me and our marriage, giving them money we needed…every one of them.

· Lie, cheat and steal…yes, yes and yes.

· Say or do anything to hurt me if money was involved? Yes!

There seems to be a misconception about the propensity of Thais to lie as compared to Westerners. That is patently ridiculous. Westerners are accomplished and expedient liars; especially when pursuing any agenda. Americans in particular are adept at appearing to take the moral high ground while twisting the facts to suit their ends. I see this manifested in most individuals and certainly as a cultural attribute.

I see Thais, especially women, often deliberately saying something untrue; but usually not in a conscious effort to deceive someone, but to avoid tension. In their innocent wisdom their response to your queries and you wondering why they lie in a Western translation may be… ”Because you already know the answer and you are only asking to make a point, which will lead to an argument and frankly, I don’t need the grief!”

I personally have endured all the tension I care to in this life and find the Thai people’s penchant for “expressing their own version of reality” to avoid conflict endearing.

I believe I am part of a transitional generation. I was raised with the values that viewed Ward, June, Wally and Beaver as the quintessential family. A moral, reasonable father with a supporting valued spouse, partnering to instill in their children, character, trustworthiness and honor. In those days, one wage-earner could garner a slice of the pie, a piece of the American dream…a home, a family, a car, the opportunity to educate one’s children to a level assuring success and even the occasional holiday.

I embarked on my journey into manhood dreaming of a home and family of my own, confident in meeting the expectations of being a good provider, a good husband and father, a good citizen. However, there was no June Cleaver out there for me. I found no partner willing to sacrifice self-interest, to endure even minor discomfort or hardship to accomplish mutual goals.

The whirlwind of cultural change from the times in which I was raised through to the “me generation” and the bureaucracy’s social engineering left me dazed and confused, unsure of my role as a man, as a husband and as a father. I became prey. Did women do this to me? No. Society evolved, gender roles changed and some believe we are poorer for it. I certainly am.

Is it any wonder individuals like me are enamored of Thai women? I have experienced more compassion, kindness, affection and joy with Thai women in a few short years than in all thirty-five years of my relationships with Western women. I find their approach to sex as a natural part of life wonderful. It contrasts with Western women using sex to emotionally manipulate and control.

Many of us Western men bring our emotional baggage to Thailand in our search for happiness and the perfect spouse. We would be better served to leave our unpleasant experiences and comparisons back where we came from. Celebrate and experience the differences; then you may discover that…

Thailand is the perfect place to find a wife.

If any of you intend on finding a NW European, Calvinist / Protestant spouse with the qualities described in the submission “Why I would not marry a Thai”, I agree, do not marry a Thai girl. If you plan on finding that spouse in America…get yourself a time machine and go back 149 years.

A good wife is hard to find. In Thailand or anywhere.

Stickman's thoughts:

Excellent submission.


nana plaza