Uni Thai Girl In The UK
I started to enjoy reading Stickman's stories when my relationship with a Thai girl started going pretty strange a while back. It was after I started wondering why is it that we always seem to get our debts increased regardless of how much money I make and don't spend. I do appreciate how much is done in the last comments of Stickman's to try to even things out and be quite neutral, I will tell you about my personal story as I am now moving forward with my divorce here in the UK.
I met a Thai girl at uni, without knowing a thing about Thailand, Thai women, or even its significance in the world sex trade/tourism industry.
I fell in love with her, like I would with any other girl in those circumstances – we were young, studying together.. as far as I was concerned, she was just your typical girl, not a "Thai girl".
After being married to her for 3 and a half years and having a son getting close to his second birthday, I must say, I feel disgusted with every second I spent with her, even if she did fall for me in the beginning. I see that it had its expiry date set from the start. The relationship broke down after I saw she was never going to get rid of debts that started off as being usual start-of-life-as-a-couple debts, but didn't seem to go away as both our careers progressed. On the contrary, it kept growing exponentially. I then decided to look after my own pay and have paid all debts in months. She still has hers growing. With a personal net income of 1000 pounds a month for herself alone, I find that quite strange, given that I pay all our bills including food, transport and extra pocket money I USED TO give before I realised how stupid I was being.
I am convinced that a Thai woman cannot be without her good sum of cash, and all the love she might have put into a relationship will fade away as soon as that same cash/profit comes under threat. Our relationship broke down because I work for a living and since I'm still quite young, as successful as I am, I can afford to buy a house here, one in Thailand (almost did buy, thank heavens I didn't), have the kid in an expensive crèche etc. But since she is working full time in a job she loves, I would expect her to share some of her income towards the bills we hold together. A Thai woman will only be happy with a much older man who does nothing but give her money while she spends her time looking after the house buying stuff for herself and her own side of the family. Any change in those 3 sacred pre-requisites, and you can find yourself with her behaving strangely (daydreaming even).
As far as she or anyone in her family is concerned, to have her pay any sort of bills other than her family's in Thailand (even there, they find me to be kiniaw (stingy) if I don't suggest paying those too), regardless of her income is absolutely out of the question, she's making about 1000 pounds sterling a month after tax, none of that is towards this family here in the UK. I understand sending some of it abroad back to her pensionless dad and sister, but to not even be able to bring the "option" of ever contributing to nothing at all on this end of the planet has in the end showed me what Thai brains think like.
Every other aspect of Thai culture I very much enjoy, but please gentleman, make your pre-nups, don't tell them your income, but best of all, do not get attached if you can.
I do not need her to pay for anything at all, but her emotional contribution faded since I first thought about it aloud, and hasn't come back since. I am now divorcing her on the grounds of strange behaviour, and I feel used, abused but on top of it all, a lot more equipped to work my way around that sort of people. I am against all sorts of racism towards westerners, Orientals, blacks or any other group of people on the grounds of colour race or creed, but from my experience it seems to me that these stories occur way too often, as I said.. this wasn't your average bar girl, she was studying at a London university when I met her, and has a respectable job which she got after we left uni.
When I tell this to other Thai people, including women, they all say how unlucky I was, and that isn't supposed to happen, but even they agree that it happens all the time regardless.
One girl told me that as far as she could tell, "all Thai women will tend to divorce for money reasons" and on her experience "100% of Thai women she knows who married farang (especially younger ones) will divorce leaving him with nothing but tears and bills, the number drops a bit when they marry Thai men, but it will still be quite high if she is a first wife or he is still young."
I appreciate there can be other factors, I told you the ones in my own case, even if men can be quite horrible and it's men here that will mostly comment, thus us seeing men's side of the quarrel. Surely there is something quite dangerous in letting yourself fall in love with a Thai woman. It seems to me that it's not just the bar beer girls who are quite dangerous, it's more a question of how much money you have and how much money you are willing to give to keep her and her family loving you.
Since I have a Thai son now, and am quite enthusiastic about enjoying/knowing about all things to do with the rest of Thai culture, I will most definitely have to keep an open mind about all of this, but these are my current thoughts and feelings, hope no-one got offended. Hope even more that someone will listen to what I tried to say and have all this in mind when deciding to start a relationship with a Thai. They should change the country from Thailand (land of the free) to gin ngun (want money) LOL, innocent joke.
Ric
Stickman's thoughts:
I think it is important early on in a live-in relationship or marriage between a Western man and a Thai woman to clearly lay down what each person’s respective responsibilities are. If the man has a much higher income then yeah, perhaps he will pay all of the bills. But if this is the case, then would it not be fair that she does the lion’s share of the housework? This is after all how things were in the past? Of course, if she is working full-time and is unable to do everything in the house, then she should be contributing to some part of the bills, even if it is a nominal amount. Of course if each partner is earning a similar whack, then perhaps they should contribute a similar amount to shared expenses?
I see a lot of problems in marriages involving Thai women and Western men where, unfortunately, she is as your wife was – not making a decent contribution. This is going to be a recipe for disaster as resentment will develop on his part very quickly indeed.
