In Praise Of The Older Woman

In Praise Of The Older Woman
By Khun Bill

I have been meaning to write this submission for a long time. Although some of the points I mention will have been referred to over the years by others this is, I believe, the first submission on this site which makes the subject of ‘the older woman’ as the main theme.

First an apology. You will find generalisations included in this submission. In my previous submissions I have tried to avoid generalisations but on this particular topic I find it impossible. However, all that follows is written based on 30+ years experience of regular travel to Thailand by a man now drawing his UK State pension who can speak reasonable Thai and who has been happily married to a Thai lady (yes, of course an ‘older woman’) for almost 10 years. In other words, I have some experience of the subject matter.

And secondly a definition...what do I mean by ‘older’? Now for some of you out there ‘older’ means the wrong side of 30, maybe even late 20’s. It is of course possible for men of advanced years to enjoy the pleasures of Thai ladies in their early 20’s, even younger, but this submission is not about short term liaisons. It is about finding a stable long-term relationship leading to marriage and settlement back in Farangland. It is aimed at western men of mature years, say 50+, who are searching for stress-free happiness who wish to avoid the pitfalls one reads about so often on this site. So let’s put the definition of ‘older woman’ for the purpose of this submission at over 40 for a man up to 50, mid to late 40’s for a man up to 60 and over 50 for a man over 65 - there will be further comment about age differential later.

OK, so here goes, in no particular order...and please do not berate me for overgeneralising. There will always be exceptions, and to anyone out there who has made a long term success of settling down with a ‘young’ lady, well done.

Children

If she had her children youngish, as most do, the older lady’s children may no longer be financially dependent. Financing the offspring of another man is something that many find a non-starter. Personally, I helped finance the last few years of my wife’s son’s university education - he is now gainfully employed and not in need of handouts. Being obliged to take on board financial responsibility for your new love’s children, and worse than that the children of her brothers / sisters etc, can cause problems - that is not a generalisation, it is stating the obvious.

Apart from financial issues there is the obvious question of priorities. We all know where we stand in the pecking order and a farang, no matter how ‘jai dee’, will never leapfrog parents and children in that! More about parents later, but is it not obvious that your newfound partner will be more able to devote her time and affections to you if she is not having to concern herself with the well-being of her young children.

If your partner’s children are off her (and your) hands financially, it may well turn out to be useful as the years pass to be able to remind her and them of Thai culture as regards helping out and ‘taking care’ of the family. It should not only be the responsibility of the hapless farang if one happens to be on the scene. If necessary you will be able to remind your Thai stepchildren from time to time that you are doing them a great favour and financial service by ‘taking care’ of their mother.

And on the subject of children, the older woman will probably not want any further offspring, either that or she may be unable. If the latter an added benefit is that contraception is not an issue. For those who choose younger, fertile, possibly childless ladies the question of having children of course has to be addressed and I would suggest that the vast majority of older men do not wish to go down that path having probably been there and done that in their previous lives back in Farangland. Please bear in mind that my comments here relate to older men - the situation would clearly be different in the case of a younger man, maybe not previously married, maybe childless.

Your older Thai lady will be comfortable and experienced doting on your grandchildren which will help in her relationship with your children - see below.

Parents

It is stating the obvious but the older your lady the more likely it is that her parents will be deceased. That may sound cruel, but do you really want to take on the potential of helping to ‘take care’ of your lady’s elderly parents at a time of your life when you yourself are at or beyond middle age, possibly with your own health issues, and when your own parents, back home wherever, may be nearing the end of their lives and in need of support. I stand accused of being heartless here - there may be many of you out there who would willingly assume partial or total responsibility for your lady’s (extended?) family, but be under no illusion, apart from financial and logistical considerations it would be just one further challenge to cope with in your relationship along with all the unavoidable ones such as language, religious and cultural differences.

Do not underestimate the closeness of the Thai family and the duty that a Thai child owes to its parents. They are indoctrinated with this from infancy. Remember your place in the pecking order.

It is often joked that the ideal Thai wife would be an orphan, no siblings, never married and childless - to that I would add that if she was an atheist this too would be a big advantage!

Domestic issues

I hope no member of the feminazi read this - if so and you wish to email me spitting venom do so and it will doubtless simply reinforce my views.

Thai ladies of a certain age regard it as their ‘job’ to look after their man. OK, you provide the means - that is what ‘taking care’ is all about. If you don’t understand the concept of ‘taking care’ go back to ‘go’ and start again. My wife made it very clear at the commencement of our relationship that she does all the housework and all the shopping. It is her job. At the beginning I would on occasion pick up a tea towel or tidy a cushion, make a cup of tea or straighten the duvet...but I was told this was all her responsibility and there was to be no compromise. They talk about ‘the middle way’ and compromise, but this issue was non negotiable. In her eyes she would be failing as a wife if she did not take total responsibility. The quid pro quo is that I ‘take care’ of her, further than that I appreciate what she does and frequently tell her so, I periodically buy her small gifts and I praise her for what she does in front of family and friends - thereby giving her ‘face’. I have become lazy in the house as a result, but it has become an aspect of Thai culture that I am happy to embrace.

Now I have no experience of living with a Thai lady from a younger generation, but I would bet you that today’s 20 and 30 year olds do not have quite the same attitude towards domestic responsibilities and division of labour.

My wife can cook. Thai ladies of a certain age were taught to cook either by their mother or grandmother. I imagine that very few of today’s younger Thai girls can cook or indeed have any interest in learning. They eat out or buy in street food, and a lot of that is western style junk food such as KFC, pizzas, burgers etc - as a result, as is clear to see, they are becoming larger.

So gentlemen (I guess 99% of the readership is male), if you are looking for a long term relationship with a lady who will look after you, feed you, wash and iron your clothes, keep your house clean and tidy...don’t pick a sexy 25 year old from Baccarra, go for someone rather more mature. You may still, even with an older lady, struggle at times when it comes to common interests outside of the home but at least you will be looked after inside it.

Acceptability

Thousands of words have been written on Stickman about elderly western men promenading along Sukhumvit with their much younger ladies. Many of these men clearly do not care about what other people think. They are far away from their original home, they are enjoying life...go for it, maybe they have been working 5 or 6 days a week, 48 weeks of the year, for 40 years or more. Maybe they have been scarred mentally and financially by a relationship break-up back home. What is wrong with wanting to enjoy a little female company in one’s retirement if it is readily available and affordable.

To a degree I am of this opinion myself and when I am allowed a pass out and am able to visit the odd beer bar or go-go alone, or with a friend, I will chat away to the ladies and not worry one jot about what spectators might think. I particularly enjoy sitting at the open air bars on Pattaya’s Walking Street with a lovely on either side enjoying a beer or three watching all the jealous tourists walk by in their tour groups or with their grim faced wives. I wave as they take their photos. And when holidaying with my wife in Hua Hin as we do every Christmas I take great delight in walking around the town with her arm linked in mine, both of us deliberately returning the stares of all the middle aged Scandinavian lady tourists who are invariably shovelling pasta or rice into their already large frames as they sit in outdoor restaurants. Although our age difference is only 9 years she could pass for 10 years younger than she is (and in my admittedly biased opinion is very good looking for her age) so I still get looked at as though I am a paedophile. The look she gets from the male tourists is markedly different however, that is as long as their wives cannot see.

But when it comes to marrying your lady and taking her back to your home country the situation surely is different when it comes to acceptability by one’s friends, family and especially one’s children. Probably a majority of aged 50+ western men in relationships with Thai ladies are divorced but have adult children, maybe grandchildren too, who remain a very important part of their lives. My wife has been made very welcome by all my friends and family back in the UK - would it have been the same had I turned up with a lady 30 years or more my junior...I think not.

A practical point - I guess you will have a much easier time obtaining visas for your lady if the age difference is not unusually large. All my wife’s UK visas from the first tourist visa up to the spouse visa and subsequent granting of permanent residence were obtained without any refusals, without the need for any interviews and without the need to employ a specialist visa consultancy. Would this all have been so easy if she had been half my age?

And a mercenary but real point which might not actually be discussed openly, at least not with you being present, but which could simmer away throughout your relationship with the much younger lady and beyond, potentially long after you have passed away...the question of your estate, your will, what happens when the unavoidable happens. If you have no children, no close family, no problem, you might be more than happy for your new love to benefit. But what if you have children and grandchildren. Take the scenario that you marry your Thai lady in the UK and settle in the UK - the position may well be the same in other western countries, I’m not sure. Your marriage negates any will that you may have previously drawn up benefiting your children. Before you get around to making a new will, or perhaps you never had one in the first place, you die. The law of intestacy kicks in. Your Thai wife in such circumstances could inherit all or a large part of your estate dependent on its size and also a life interest in part or all of the residue. So the bereaved widow is now potentially wealthy, certainly by Thai standards. Not a lot your children can do about it. The solution - you’re not an idiot, you see this coming, you love your children / grandchildren, you certainly don’t want to see all your hard earned assets disappearing back to Thailand to benefit her family, after all you might have only known her for a few years. So immediately after you marry her you make a new will leaving her something but ensuring that your own flesh and blood are not forgotten. Clever old you...but after you’re gone and she learns the content of your will and your intentions she is not happy and her Thai friends give her the ‘phone number of that nice Thai lawyer (with offices in London, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, Sydney and Bangkok) who specialises in challenging wills in these circumstances. You see your wife was ‘dependent’ and the court might just decide that she is entitled to more than you stipulated in your will, and this might be particularly so in cases where your pensions ceased at death without any ongoing widow's pension - as is often the case.

You will still have to tackle the problem of your will and trying to ensure that it is watertight if your wife is an ‘older’ Thai lady but her life expectancy will not be so great and the fact that she will probably have adult children back in Thailand whose duty it is to help support her might be relevant. Your children might be a whole lot more relaxed about the situation if they believe that their father was in a more ‘normal’ relationship, at least as regards age differential.

I am not a lawyer so if anything I have said in the preceding two paragraphs is incorrect I apologise and stand to be corrected.

Maturity

Again, many words have been written on this site and elsewhere about the immaturity of Thais. Not only do the girls in particular often look much younger than their years they generally dress, act and behave in a much younger fashion as well. Much has been written about the Thai education system which produces young adults incapable of independent thought, with a striking lack of personality or character and with limited or zero knowledge of or interest in world affairs, geography, politics...or indeed anything apart from celebrity, pop music, computer games, Facebook etc (sorry, I forgot food!)...you get the picture, and I will bet that 95% or more of you will agree with me.

Now your older lady may not have been in receipt of a better education but she will have had more experience of life and she will not be so dependent on modern culture. She may have travelled a little (with previous boyfriends?) and she will probably have raised children. In short she just might not be a dumb airhead as so many of the pretty young girls wandering the air-conditioned malls of Bangkok clearly are. In recent years I have met scores of Thai girls who come to the UK to study at university in my hometown - I hasten to add that I am not meeting them for carnal reasons or to foster any sort of relationship, I meet them when they are working part-time at the local Thai restaurant in which I used to have a financial interest and where my wife occasionally works. Their lack of general knowledge and the shallowness of their personalities never fails to amaze me...and the quality of their English is a joke. However I am digressing here and one day I plan to write a submission titled ‘Thais in the UK’ to develop this subject further.

So your older lady will of course have a cellphone but it might not need to be the latest Iphone. She will probably not be addicted to Facebook or to filling her ‘phone with countless photos of her friends (all posing in a childish manner making silly hand gestures). She will have the odd long phone call with family back in Isaan or wherever in the same way that you keep in contact with your own family but she will not be constantly engaged talking inane drivel to her large circle of friends as the young girls seem to be constantly doing.

Sex

The physical side of a marriage or relationship is important no matter what one’s age - important to both parties to the relationship. The 50+ male to whom this submission is primarily aimed is probably already suffering some loss of libido and some deterioration in his sexual prowess. This is a natural process of aging, contributory factors being a steady decline in testosterone level, possible blood pressure / circulatory issues, being overweight and generally unfit and of course alcohol consumption. As the man passes 60 the need for sex - but not the comfort and closeness of a kind and loving partner - is for sure diminishing - maybe once a week, but not the frantic lovemaking of one’s 20’s or 30’s. Beyond 70...I’ll let you know when I get there. OK, help of a pharmacological manner is available but genuine 100% Viagra, Cialis or the like is expensive and there are side effects. Indian brands, if genuine, are much cheaper. The stuff on sale on Sukhumvit...surely very dangerous and / or fake. So what about your wife? If she is 20 or 30 years your junior you may have a problem...can you give her a fulfilling sex life? Yes we all know that we older chaps are more skilful, we know all about foreplay and how to excite a woman, but put yourself in her position. She may enjoy irregular gentle and satisfying sex with you but she doubtless would also enjoy a jolly good rogering by a man of her own age with no beer belly and who doesn’t smell like a brewery most evenings.

Your pretty young lady, if she is not being looked after sexually by you, may be more prone to straying. She will in any case be hit on by other men and she may be tempted. Your older lady though may, like you, be experiencing a decline in her sexual appetite and for sure she is less likely to be hit on by opportunistic studs. She will appreciate the kind of sex that you can give her and probably be less likely to need a top up from elsewhere.

Thai ladies who look after themselves can look good well into their middle age and beyond. We all know that they can be much older than they look, and they can and very often do look so much more attractive than western women of equivalent age. Yes I caught yellow fever 30+ years ago and have never managed to shrug it off, but the consensus on this website is that Thai women are more attractive than equivalent western women. We’re not talking models and actresses here, just what you see around the shopping mall on a Saturday. There has been so much written on Stickman over the years on the Thai woman: Western woman debate but I make no apology, for me it’s no contest, a one horse race.

So when you men of 50+ years go for a massage have a look at some of the older ladies on offer, you might be pleasantly surprised at the quality of service you receive. Good looking women in their 40’s are out there, although you probably think a first glance that they are in their 30’s.

The way this can play out is that sex with your older lady will inevitably become less frequent as the years pass, the result of familiarity and the usual physical issues of aging. She will accept this, she might even be glad of it! You can apologise, tell her you’ve been to your doctor about it, it’s normal as you get older. Tell her Viagra does not suit you, it gives you a headache and heartburn (it probably will do, no need to lie) and you don’t like it when people keep saying “Your face looks red, are you ok?” So when you go for a ‘Thai’ massage there’s no inquisition from her, she knows sex is not so important for you any more, right? And when she goes away for a few days to visit her kids in Chiang Mai or wherever, or when you pop down to KL or Singapore for a new visa, she won’t worry that you are playing with the ladies because you can’t get it up, can you?

Conclusion

I’ve rambled on for long enough. You older guys, go find an older lady. She will be loyal to you and take care of you so long as you take care of her. She will be much less likely to dump you and leave you a broken, older and poorer man. You know it makes sense. Think with your big head, not your small one.

Stickman's thoughts:

Seems to me to be a very fair and balanced article and you make a decent case!

The author can be contacted at : khunbill@hotmail.co.uk.
The author of this website, NOT this article, can be contacted at: stickmanbangkok@gmail.com.