ExistentialInquiry

saakura, thanks for the supportive reply, appreciated. I suppose I am quite "old fashioned"; I've just become increasingly disillusioned with the way that technology often seems to be disrupting rather than improving communications between people/between sexes.

 

theguyfromanotherforum, well, thank you for your candour. Suggesting my post is written by someone with a 15 year old mentality seems unnecessarily derogatory, since I did expressly ask for opinions as to whether my expectations etc. were unrealistic, which is hardly the type of open minded questioning prototypical of a teenage mindset who already assumes he knows all of the answers beforehand.

 

Despite your tone, I do take what you have said under advisement, and certainly am prepared to admit that you may be correct, or at least partially correct. However, do not infer that I'm a 36 "shelf stacker" due to lack of effort or application. For your information, I was a personal trainer for 4 years and put everything into building that career. Ultimately, however, I simply wasn't/aren't a good enough sales person to really make it happen. Or perhaps I simply don't have the confidence in order to sell myself well enough, which amounts to the same thing. Unfortunately, the collapse of that career also ended up destroying the relationship with the woman I loved and lived with at the time.

 

Your question is a good one. My response is this: "Do Thai women generally have the same value system as UK/Western women? Do they treat all potential matches in the same way as shopping for, say, a new fridge? Has Thai culture changed in the same way that British culture has changed over the last few years?" My impression was that a lot of Thai women still held to more of a Buddhist type value system, which is quite dramatically different from the typical Western value system. If this impression is incorrect, please do enlighten me - this is precisely why I'm asking.

 

My observation is that the cultural change in the UK in the last five years is significant. It pretty much corresponds historically to the rise of Tinder. Incidentally I have nothing whatsoever against people "hooking up". My issue is that a biproduct of this is that absolutely all interactions seem to have been infected with a viewpoint of "disposability".

 

You say you spent 10 years researching before you moved to Thailand - good for you. I say I spent a few hours reading this forum, and I am asking these questions precisely to get a gauge of what the situation is. How am I supposed to learn if not by asking questions of people like yourself who know far more?! I am asking precisely because I don't have a clue and am trying to become less clueless, so your criticism is precisely what I am attempting to address.

 

Obviously not all of us are as world wise, confident, or successful as you are; I'm not sure why some people feel the need to respond with such aggression in online conversations. Anyway, thanks for your input.

Hello everyone.

 

I have probably spent a good couple of hours reading various posts in these forums over the last couple of days, and there has been some interesting discussions and some good advice from men who clearly have plenty of life experience and are pretty savvy.

 

At the moment a war is going on between the rational, cynical part of my mind, and the imaginative part that wants to believe in possibility.

 

Here's the rub. It's difficult for anyone to speak "objectively" about oneself, but I will make my best attempt.

 

I am 36 years old. Looks are "average", I would say. Decent teeth, not particularly tall (5'8"). Clean and tidy. Shaved head as my hair genetics aren't great so decided to eliminate it entirely rather than have thinning bald patch! Physically I look after myself, so I'm in well above average shape, in terms of being lean and slim (I am a cyclist, former PT, run, and lift weights etc.), though I'm definitely not a chunky bodybuilder type physique. 64kg. Overall I'm someone you wouldn't really notice at a party, though people do remark (genuinely) that I look younger than I actually am.

 

So in the world of online dating, I tend to just completely disappear into the morass of other men. I am literate, well spoken, intellectual and a "bookish" type. Relatively quiet but not a total doormat. Not your heavy drinking loud alpha type. In fact I barely drink at all, though occasionally I do enjoy a decent Belgian beer etc.

 

I've been single four years. I do an unremarkable retail job. I am not particularly career focused as I'm not particularly materialistic. I value other things in life more.

 

It is proving extremely difficult to meet women here in the UK, and furthermore I have to say I've noticed a massive change in particularly the last 5 years primarily due to the social effects of technology and all the endless dating apps like Tinder/Bumble etc. People here in this country are increasing turning into drones permanently attached to their 5" screen on their phone. Women seem more interested in having a virtual relationship in their head, on their Instagram feed and Facebook accounts, than anything real world. I would very occasionally get into decent conversations on WhatsApp etc., but the stumbling blocks appears to be that no one can ever be bothered to actually prioritise any time to ever meet up and even allow the possibility of any relationship to develop or flourish. Almost all of the people I know who are in a decent relationship met their partner through work. You can exchange a million messages online but I am of the firm belief that unless it is backed up with substantial face-to-face contact it is largely ephemeral. The illusion of "infinite choice" one finger tap away has paradoxically had the opposite effect of turning everyone into individual islands. Because no one is willing to actually invest sufficient one-to-one time with one particular person, you never get any depth, so as a result the temptation of the immediate better option leads to an endless cycling through of zero progress. People end up making decisions based on completely illusory notions about the other person. This was never a problem some years ago. People only used their phones in a limited manner such as "Are you free Tues?"/"Yes, can do 8pm"/"Great, see you for a coffee then" type conversation. It wasn't an end in itself like now.

 

People around here in the NE of the UK seem incredibly inward looking in terms of being so heavily invested in the narrow white mono-culture (this is a heartland of Brexit "yes" voters...). I am a very global person in that other cultures fascinate me and I'm always looking to expand my horizons.

 

Essentially I want something that is actually real, involving two people physically interacting, not some online/virtual relationship.

 

This has led me to consider the possibility of a Thai women, and I have seen that there are marriage/introduction agencies, of the old fashioned type in that they actually put you in contact with people face-to-face. These forums are littered with cautionary tales about avoiding women who are primarily only interested in scamming the man out of money.

 

So I am trying to look at it pragmatically and evaluate what the likely success is. I am not a Buddhist, but the philsophical and value system of this religious/spiritual system holds a great deal of attraction to me. I would think a woman that genuinely held Buddhist type values would be potentially a good match.

 

To be clear:

 

1. I am 36 in good shape, looking for a woman 20-35. So I am not the cliche of a 60 year old man trying to get a 20 year old woman draped over his arm who probably has absolutely zero physical attraction to the man. Since I'm certainly not bad looking, I would like to think I could meet a woman who genuinely did have actual physical attraction toward me also. Obviously I want someone who is attracted to me for who I am, but some initial physical attraction is at least part of that.

2. I recognise that inevitably there is a financial component involved, and though I am absolutely not a high income earner by UK standards, this nevertheless still makes me incredibly "wealthy" by Thai standards. This at least gives me advantage compared to over here where I am just one man among many.

3. I am not looking for a subservient sex slave doormat type woman, but it would be nice to be with someone who is a bit more traditional than the situation we now have in the UK, where everything has dissolved to such an extent that even women will admit they have no idea what it is they want from a man, and everything seems such a pointless time waste where nothing happens.

4. I'm looking for someone who wants to build something in the real world, rather than someone who is almost permanently tethered to their mobile phone.

5. I'm looking to build a loving genuine relationship, so I am happy to support her, and support her family to some extent, since I would like to become part of her family.

6. I know that compared to the life of a lot of Thai women, my life is comfortable and easy. I work far less hours for far more money and a better standard of living than they have, particularly if they come from a rural area.

 

So the question is: What are the odds of actually being able to build a genuine relationship in this manner?

 

My hypothetical route would be this:

 

1. Go on holiday to Thailand, visit introduction/marriage agency, arrange to meet as many women as possible over the first few days/week for initial meetup/conversation. From these, select a couple of the most promising options, go on a couple of "dates". Hopefully filter down to one woman, spend as much as possible of remaining holiday time getting to know her (and not just chasing sex!).

2. Keep conversation/contact going, and arrange to come back to Thailand fairly soon after (say couple of months later), spend holiday time with her, see if there is a real foundation. If so...

3. Bring her back to UK on a "fiance visa" and see whether it *actually* works living together, and whether she can cope/be happy with the cultural acclimitation. Intention is I'd help her with English, learn some Thai, do everything I could to try and help her make some female friends over here so she isn't completely isolated/housebound.

4. Near end of visa, marry and live happily ever after (one can dream, lol).

 

To be clear. I'm not after a woman who I expect to do nothing else that cook and clean and be some domestic servant. Her happiness is important to me. I realise that transplanting to the other side of the world is a highly difficult transition. However, imagining myself in the reverse situation, if some 40 year old woman in a high-end job whom I found at least decently attractive and I felt I had a genuine connection with, offered to say take me from the UK back to Canada with her, upgrading my circumstances by the same degree, and in exchange I'd basically be the stay-at-home domestic guy that'd cook for her, etc., whilst we had very comfortable existence, that sounds like a good deal. I'd be able to spend my days writing and doing other fulfilling activities rather than a shitty monotonous job. So I would like someone who still believes that a relationship is built by deliberate effort, some pragmatic choices, not just someone who thinks they can do a few clicks on a screen and everything is going to happen entirely at their whim and convenience auto-magically. It seems to me that many people here under 35 now have a very immature attitude to relationships - as if it is all going to happen perfectly and smoothly, without any effort, without any discussion, etc.

 

So what do you think. Is my pragmatism based on some realism, or am I deluding myself into a fantasy? A lot of the posts here seem to think that bringing a Thai woman back to the UK is a bad move. But I'm not looking for a bar-girl, I'm trying to find a genuine woman whom I have a connection with that extends beyond the physical. I am not naive. But it is impossible for me to determine whether to dismiss what I'm after as being almost impossible is rather me being too cynical. So can and does it work? The agency I looked at went to great lengths to empathise its women were not purely there for money; but obviously they would stress that for business purposes. Trying to separate truth from fiction is hard.

 

From a physical point of view, I find a lot of Asian women more attractive as they don't eat the junk processed food garbage diet like over here. Rates of obesity here in NE England are incredible. A lot of the Thai women don't seem to suffer from that, currently, probably because they don't live in a toxic food culture based around endless snacking/consumption of garbage food. So whilst I am not some chap that looks like a model by any stretch, I am in good shape, and consider health to be important. So I'd like someone that does keep themselves in shape. I don't think that is an unreasonable expectation.

 

I find it very hard to start/get anywhere with relationships. But when I have managed to get over the initial stumbling block, they have been highly successful. I was with a Swedish woman for 6 years, and a British woman for 4 years. Both relationships were brilliant whilst they lasted, overall. Life, overall, was richer in experience and happiness than my life as a singleton.

 

Anyway, thank you if you've taken the time to read this long winded post and if you are able to offer any comments or advice. I'm quite keen to hear from those of you that have genuine success stories and have built a long and lasting loving relationship/marriage with a Thai woman, and as to how you went about it. It seems that among all the horror stories, there are some people that have had tremendous success with the so-called "mail order bride" route and ended up with something that brings immense happiness to both people.