Response To Hitman
It’s been quite some time since I penned a submission. When not busy, I still try to read through the articles and your Sunday contributions, but Hitman's article is one that needs some commenting.
Hitman, I appreciate your enthusiasm to help your fellow man and offer advice, but your lack of life experience is apparent with your article. Your life is still “black and white” and we live in a “gray” world.
I say this because you cannot fathom what it is like to be 50+ at the ripe old age of 30. Hell, I am only 40 and cannot imagine it yet either.
You talk of understanding loneliness because of periods without a girlfriend. What about a 20-year marriage down the toilet? What about 20 years of marriage where the wife gave you no sex for many of those years? What about a 20-year marriage
with a wife as big as 3 Thai women? 20 years is just arbitrary and can be 5 – 30 with 1 or more wives of course.
What about having both of your parents dead? Or an ex-wife who has made your children hate you? What about having never been married and been looked down upon your whole life? The possibilities are endless to different scenarios. True loneliness
to someone can be beyond your imagination.
The point is that trying to see a different perspective almost requires you walking in another man’s shoes. We see things from our own morals, values and cultural upbringing. Trying to figure out why a man would choose to love a bargirl
may be way outside your own thought process and you can only relate what your current mindset tells you. Our culture has such a huge stigma on prostitution that it is not even fathomable to you why someone may choose that path in life.
If I told you that I just slept with my neighbor’s wife? The typical response may be “Is she hot?”, “Was she good?”, or some minor negative response. If I told you I just slept with a prostitute, the number
one response ingrained in people is “Do you think she has AIDS?” You see it’s mindset that is hard to stand back from unless you take a step back (your advice in your article) and try to see things objectionably.
What about when we see a hot woman with an absolutely out-of-shape older guy in our country? We almost unanimously say “He must have money?” Does he love her? Is he happy? Is she probably a complete high maintenance nightmare?
Yet we want to tell men in Thailand to not want the same thing for a fraction of the price.
Also, remember that a majority of all the stories you read are people complaining. Sadly, we rarely get the happy stories because simply, they are boring. Who wants to read “I love my wife, she is awesome!” and that’s
the submission? We revel in the drama of others. It is just our way and difficult to appreciate the happiness of others. How often do I hear people say “He seems too happy, there must be a problem we don’t know about?” I will
tell you it’s endless. We cannot or will not accept the fact that others, their situation being different than ours, can possibly have little or no problems and feel a genuine happiness.
So, if a man was happy for 3 years with a bargirl, then it went south, can he appreciate that he was happy for any time at all? And, if so, does he then go back looking for that type of happiness again? How many men start a strictly business
situation with a bargirl and then end up falling for her? Sometimes their charm can get the best of us.
Since you have spent no time in Thailand and only read stories or watched some YouTube videos, I would say you need to come see it for yourself. Spend one month in Pattaya going to all the bars and watching the behavior of Thai women and
the customers. See if you can even imagine being that age and having those types of women vying for your affection, even if it costs you money. No 55 year old can hit the local dance club in their own western city and receive this type of attention.
Comments range from “Whose dad is that?” to “What the hell is the old pervert doing here?” Snapshot to Thailand and it’s “Oh a customer, I will make him happy tonight!”
How many men from our culture from Senators to politicians to the everyday man spend time with prostitutes or call-girls, better yet, that are married and that we do not read about? Yet for some reason we need to keep the men in Thailand
to some higher standard than what is placed on our own countrymen?
As you may have read, many long-term residents of Thailand are still completely confused when it comes to Thai thinking and their ways. We don’t even understand our own western women, but come here and think we can figure it out. Unless
you grow up in a culture, you can never truly understand it as your own culture is so ingrained, it is basically impossible. Try and put your foot in the shoes of a foreigner coming to the US and you do not understand why they think or do what
they do or cannot accept our ways. In that same sense, you try to put a bargirls’ frame of mind in the only mindset you can think of and that’s of your culture.
We grow up in a culture that tells us the priority in a relationship is love, trust, honesty and communication. Thais may grow up thinking the only thing that matters is security. How can we understand when the priorities are different and
how do we rise above our own arrogance that we have it all figured out and not judge other cultures for their differences?
I do agree that getting involved with a bargirl is not a good plan. And it’s not the typical “You can take the girl out of the bar, but cannot take the bar out of the girl!” thought process. I believe having to deal with
all the men for so long has such damaging and lasting effects, which many can never recover no matter the great opportunities presented to them.
We men naturally grow up understanding our role is to take care of our family. With that attitude naturally comes the idea that if we meet someone in a bar that has had a rough life and we somehow see a potential, we want to “rescue”
them and show we are a man and take care of them. It’s a self-reward we relish in, but in the end it usually fails for the common reason that they did not have the appreciation we had of doing this act.
Lastly, it is important to try to understand the Thailand economy and the average income of the population. Growing up poor with no real opportunities is difficult. Being in a class system and somehow breaking out of the lower end is ideal,
but does not always happen. This also follows my last statement about the “rescue” part. We immediately put our values to the situation and assume because we send them money, they will automatically want to achieve success. Very
few have done that, with a majority failing hard.
In summary, the entire world is a monstrous “gray” area where people do the unthinkable. There are more common sense, logical, and statistical approaches to relationships, but people rarely follow these processes. No matter
the advice that is given, we men, being the stubborn folk we are, will pick the path that we feel best suits us regardless of the potential disaster. In order to offer real advice to people, you need to be able to have had walked in their shoes
for some period of time otherwise it will just fall on deaf ears.
Take care gang,
Steve
Stickman's thoughts:
One big grey area indeed – and in Thailand it seems that there are even more shades of grey than elsewhere.
