Stickman Readers' Submissions October 3rd, 2007

Adventures in Thailand: Happily Ever After?

For those of you who gratefully read and in some cases responded to the Adventures in Thailand: GFE series, this submission is for you. I know I would be curious about how things were going with some hapless westerner and his Thai sweetheart after she had landed. Some have even written and asked how things are going with us. One poor bastard, who I actually felt sorry for, wrote to me and said, “Thanks for bringing another Thai whore to the U.S.”

He Clinic Bangkok


You may ask, “How can you feel sorry for someone who just referred to your wife as a whore?” Well a knee-jerk response such as his always has a reason for manifesting itself. I knew that he had read every one of my submissions the moment they were posted by Stick. So that means he waited with baited breath for the inevitable ending that he has realized in his travels and romantic forays with Thai women. He read each line thinking to himself, “Here it comes. Here comes the let-down.” But true to his past as well as his ultimate future destiny, he was once again disappointed.


My sympathy for him lay in the fact that he is undoubtedly the consummate loser in every way. He has likely had one or two failed marriages in which he was hopelessly in love, but was ultimately rejected by the women in his life; perhaps even abandoned by his mother at an early age. As a result, he loathes women and most especially women to whom he feels racially superior. I’m sure he visits Thailand at least twice a year and wrestles with feelings of both longing for and hatred of the Thai women he purchases every night.


He once felt he could give himself to a special someone, but after many months of emotional cat-and-mouse, his Thai tilak also abandoned him, unable to tolerate his caustic self-hate despite his financial begging. To the gentleman who sent that email to me: Both my wife and I pray for you every night.

CBD bangkok


Enough about him.


After some gentle prodding from other readers, I decided to submit this posting and entitle it: Adventures in Thailand: Happily Ever After?


Anyone who has been in a long term relationship knows there is the honey-moon phase, which can last anywhere from 1-3 years (according to relationship experts) and then the subsequent landing back on earth. It is this landing that often jolts the relationship out of kilter, never allowing it to recover.


Once a couple recovers from the honeymoon phase, it is then that they often display characteristics that were either overlooked (rose-colored glasses) or cleverly hidden. Since Thai girls, in general, are emotion-driven creatures they can often hide undesirable personality traits as long as they do not spend too much time with their lovers, but they are prone to emotional triggers that can cause their facades to crumble instantly.

wonderland clinic


Now keep in mind, my wife and I spent three years trying to decide if we wanted to be together, so we had plenty of time to get to discover each other's warts. One thing I learned about her early on was that she was not prone to jealousy. Early in our relationship, when I was still considered a customer, she invited me to take a break from her and sow my oats elsewhere.


Well, like I mentioned in one of my previous submissions, I first mistook this as a ploy on her part to surreptitiously entertain someone else without coming right out and telling me, but I had misread her. As it turned out she was giving me the opportunity to sample someone else’s delights as a test of loyalty. Imagine that; a bargirl putting a customer through a loyalty test. Well at this point, I was starting to look less and less like a customer to her. But that was the past. This submission is about the present.


So anyway, my wife had proven herself not to be a jealous girl. At least until we had been together for about a year at which point she could display insane jealous streaks with little to no provocation. At first I sympathized with her and even conceded that jealousy in some cases was normal and even expected in certain circumstances. This was easy to do as she was usually a very level-headed and easy-going girl. And in her defence, I admit that I also was prone to jealous outburst from time to time.


Fast-forward to her arrival here: I am sitting in front of the computer at home checking my email. I had received an email from an old Army buddy of mine who, as those of you that have served time in the military know sometimes happens, I had become rather close to. The problem with this particular Army buddy was that she was female. Big problem!


Fa was sitting next to me prattling on about something when she happened to glance over at the computer screen. She realized I was reading an email and in her cunning female way, she scanned down to the bottom to see if she could ascertain the sex of the writer. She immediately locked on the words “miss ya” and “love ya.”


Now I’m no fool and I know these are red flags for anyone who has even the mildest of jealousy streaks; especially women. Of course the next words out of her mouth were, “who is writing you emails with such declarations of love?” Well, she didn’t put it quite that way, but you get the point. I calmly explained who this person was and, as I began noticing what I have come to recognize as suspicion floating in her eyes, I invited my lovely wife to sit down and read the message in its entirety to get a better feel for the nature of the email.


She promptly took advantage of my offer, nearly pushing me out of my chair. Once she had read and re-read the email, she continued to ask in a most accusatory tone, who this “friend” of mine was. It was at this point that I was beginning to lose my cool, because I didn’t see what else I could do to convince her that this was nothing more than a benign email message from an old friend.


There was nothing in this message that could be construed as romantic. She was just being unreasonable. She didn’t buy the idea that I could have a platonic relationship with a female and therefore assigned unmasked suspicion to this obviously cryptic love note.


I told her that I didn’t appreciate her accusatory tone and that if she had a question she should come right out and ask it. At this point she realizes she has over-stepped her bounds and that I am starting to get a little pissed, but she is too far into it and she cannot back-off now without losing face. I abruptly end the conversation, as I was scheduled to be somewhere, so I left.


When I returned she was sulking in the bedroom and we didn’t exchange more than a few short terse words the rest of the night. If I know my wife the way I think I do, I know that while I was away, she was dreaming up some fantastic scenario of me and my Army buddy engaged in some sordid sexual affair years before she and I actually met and here I was maintaining contact with her. The nerve of me!


Well now for the interesting part; for several weeks prior I had been planning a nice weekend away at a marriage enrichment seminar my company was sponsoring. It was an all expenses paid affair at one of the most exclusive resort areas on the island and I, for one, was looking forward to a little sun and surf at a nice hotel that I didn’t have to pay for.


She declares the day before we are scheduled to go that she’s not going with me. Well, I told her that was fine and that she could look forward to spending the weekend alone because I had every intention of going, with or without her. So, as promised, I came home early from work the next day, packed my clothes and left her sitting in the living room.


I drove nearly an hour to the hotel, checked in, took a nap and then got up and joined the 30 or so other couples as if it were a singles event. Later that night I had dinner alone, went to my room, took a shower and lay in a huge bed watching a comedy show, at which point I laughed myself to sleep.


The next morning I got up, had breakfast and sat through a full day of classes that taught me everything I would need to know to enjoy a successful marriage. Meanwhile, I was exchanging text messages with my wife discussing the fact that she intended to leave me and how to go about getting a divorce before she caught her flight to God-knows-where. It was so totally laughable that it gave me a major headache.


One thing you should understand about my tilak is that she is remarkably unlike her Thai sisters, in that she does not subscribe to the sometimes narrow Thai way of looking at things. But she does sometimes have this aggravating way of taking things more seriously than she should and it usually escalates to such a point that it leaves us both thinking, “how the fxxx did we get here?” This was just such an event. Forty-eight hours prior she was sitting in my lap looking at me and swearing her undying love, and now she was trying to figure out how she could gather up enough money for a plane ticket home and enough spending money to survive until she could figure out what she would do next.


Saturday afternoon she called, waking me from a very good nap only to ask me what I was doing. I remained distant and nonchalant as I was not in the mood for small talk. She eventually started to cry and bemoan her tragic situation as I listened in virtual silence, knowing that she needed to get this off of her chest so that she could again begin thinking clearly. I let her cry and talk and then I told her that she should pack an overnight bag and I would drive back to the house to pick her up.


Long story short, we spent that night drinking beer and various hard liquors at the hotel bar before going back to the hotel room for an extended kiss-and-make-up session.


The next day we had a very frank discussion about this latest disagreement. She repented for her attitude and excused her actions as being due to her extreme love for me. I calmly explained to her that what she was describing was in fact not love but more closely related to obsession. We talked about how obsessive jealously can never be healthy in a relationship and agreed we would do whatever we could to change this.


All’s well that ends well. Everything is back to normal (or as normal as things can be with these beautiful and complicated creatures) and I am once again the king of HER castle.

Stickman's thoughts:

She repented? Are you sure she is Thai?!

nana plaza