rlogan

I don't like being a sex symbol.  But I am not going to petition the government or sue people who call me so.  

On 3/21/2021 at 7:47 AM, JFH said:

And maybe stop rushing into relationships and spend time, lots of time, getting to know the other person. You had a fiancé trying to arrange her interview in January 2019 but you broke up and you petitioned for another fiancé 5 months later (with whom you were already romantically involved whilst the first one was arranging her embassy interview). Before the second one even got to the interview stage you suspected cheating. You must have suspected this wouldn’t end well. 
 

I know a K-1 only requires you to have met in person once before filing, but that doesn’t mean you have to file after the first visit. As you have seen twice now, short courtships are not working out for you, you need more time. Slow down! What’s the rush? And if these fiancés are pressuring you into rushing through the paperwork, it’s likely the papers they want, not you. The right one will wait. 

This was always my favorite page on the forum.

I made a really bad choice with my first Filipina girlfriend, other than that she was uber hot. 

Now the OP is in a spot because this person has proven they are willing to do anything to stay.  So expect underhanded, harmful behavior.  Self-protection has to be the top concern.  

Philippines has so disgusted us with their idiotic response to Covid that we have cancelled our retirement move there.

How stupid, you fools.  We were negotiating for a half-mile of beach frontage on a nice island last February.  We had to flee before we finished the sale, and they stopped my wife from boarding because Duterte (who we loved before this) outlawed Filipinos from most Asia destinations.  She made it out on an alternate route but got sick from the stress.  

I am a construction contractor and have already built one house in the Philippines, but was looking forward to employing half a village to build a break-water, a pier, and another larger home.    We built a small experimental fish farm in the USA to gain the experience we needed running one in the Philippines.  We would have employed another family on the farm, but now I have scuttled the whole thing.  All of our resources that would have supported Filipinos - it's all thrown away.   

What they don't understand is that even if Philippines came to its senses and removed all the economy-destroying restrictions, people like us will not trust them ever again.  Come back?  Why should I?   By far my highest priority in the future is which places respected the rights of its citizens.  I'll be in Mexico in a few weeks to get my dental work done instead of Philippines.  More money down the tubes for both the dentists and some young hotties who would have enjoyed my company.  Now the latina girls will be giving my money to their families.  

I would expect Philippines to do exactly as it has:  to continue being a leader in stupidity by being a follower of dictatorial fads.   Governments are eager now to impose "health passports" and other permanent inhibitions to travel.   Philippines will do whatever the most restrictive countries do.  

The money they have handed out created new corrupt and vile Barangay Captains and public health officials.  Giving people power like this is guaranteed injustice and a proliferation of petty tyrannies.

My wife and I had not even bothered to apply for her US Citizenship because we were so intent on moving to the Philippines.   But after this asinine move by Philippines, she got her US Citizenship and we live in an area with no restrictions whatsoever.   People are happy.  They smile at each other and act cheerfully.  When we go to a city that has restrictions, the tension is palpable. It's like your humanity has been removed.  

It's been one continuous droning on of anti-white and anti-male political hate speech since I was a little boy.

All the little boys needed to be punished for someone else's crime in the distant past, even though his own blood line fought to free the slaves. No gratitude for that, just condemnation for the color of my skin. And being male.

This group has origins in the Weather Underground if you follow the principle founders. They were just a Marxist wanna-be revolutionary group that liked to kill cops. Fomenting race wars and wars against the police is not just part of their strategy, but revolutionary strategy in general. Even Charlie Manson, whacked out continuously on LSD figured that out and started murdering people in order to start his big race war. He was going to emerge victorious.

Black Lives Matter did not go astray. It is having the effect it intended.

If you look at someone's face and can't bear the thought of marrying them, that's a pretty bad sign. Romantic love is a relatively new phenomenon in societies, we have that luxury now. In ages past, it was arranged marriages and having no choices but to marry the only other single and eligible people around. They didn't loathe each other - it just was never an expectation to have romantic love. More of a survival partnership. You grew to love each other. But there was no contempt or disgust to start out with.

But you owe the guy not to demand a flight home immediately, wow how cold can you be. You aren't going to die if you wait a little while giving him time to come up with the money. He isn't beating you or abusing you in any way that you have alluded to. You went this far together and presumably have some degree of empathy for him. So give him some time, you don't have to leave right now today.

Well hey, this is the internet age where you can meet someome online, have a fake "dating" and "fiance" period, then get married, and after that actually learn about each other.

It isn't a bad idea to have these threads around because the majority of relationships begin by meeting online and people ignore a lot of the red flags you would see far better if you lived right there to observe their daily behavior, their family and friends, school mates, etc.

Some of the other threads another person posted links to - geez. When you get together it ought to be about the happiest time of your life. Mine works her fanny off for our family and I am very, very grateful for her. She dropped whatever bad habits she had as an immature Filipina teen before we got engaged to marry. Sometimes these teenagers can be a handful for a 50 year old but if they don't behave, just get another one because there are millions to pick from and they make the best wives on the planet.

We had to shop around for a bank that would do it. Some require a social security card. Some don't.

Get to work on that SS# application right away, and make sure the office that is doing it has experience in foreigners applying for them. We went through a two-year nightmare with malicious and stupid workers in the Fairbanks office. Even our Senator and Congressman were incapable of getting them to do their job, and they tried to tell us to change the date of the I-94 stamp, which is a felony.

There is an international treaty recognizing foreign drivers' licenses as a part of the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic, to which the US is a party. But regardless, you can have a cop who doesn't know his rear end from a hole in the ground and who gives you a citation that you are going to beat in court. These international licenses are actually translations of your own country's license, and it is your own country's license, not the translation, that has standing in law. So keep your Bahrain license with you.

Every state has different rules on conversion and time limits to convert. Ours is 30 days. Even though federal law (treaty) says you are eligible to drive, the state law says that you have to get the license in order to establish residency. So you've actually broken a law regarding the establishment of residency as opposed to driving without a license. Who wants to go to court to hash all that out - traffic court can go against you even when international law says you are in the right.

So go to your state's website and look up the deadline and requirements for conversion.

It isn't an isolated case of a few bad apples. Philippine culture is permeated with bad character. The USA has been busy since I was born slaughtering people all over the globe, so this is not to say that the USA is some moral paragon. The topic of this thread is Philippines, and specifically these kinds of predatory behaviors.

In the 1950's Philippines was at or near the top in SE Asia in numerous social indices like per capita income and education. Now, they are at the bottom. Look at Singapore, who was behind them at the time by some measures. Koreans came to Philippines for better work. Now Singapore is top in the world for education and nearly the top in per capita income. Korea is not far behind. The average IQ is 108 in Singapore, and in Korea 106 compared to Philippines at 86. Japan was already ahead, and just widened the lead by a lot. Their countries sparkling clean compared to the ghastly pollution in the Philippines. Filipinos are going by the hundreds of thousands to such countries in order to work as menial staff - and sending the money home because these are top jobs for Filipinos.

Philippines is ranked as a world leader in corruption and murdered journalists. Those two are closely related. If you report corruption, you'll be murdered. If you take bribes to write stories about things like "rescued" prostitutes, you get bribes. The prostitutes are kidnapped from the bars they work in by the busload, taken to a military base, held for ransom, and returned to work the next day after the ransom is paid. It is the police who are involved in human trafficking: kidnap for extortion, and then it is reported as "rescuing" human trafficking victims so they can get moved up on the US State Department list for anti-trafficking efforts. Human trafficking of prostitutes, by the police, in the name of fighting human trafficking. Try writing an article about that in the Philippines. You will be killed.

The airport employees cannot do this bullet scam without the administrative officials not only knowing about it, but approving. It would end tomorrow if they wanted. All they need is CCTV that works and an administration who wants it stopped. The mayor of Labangan and three others were murdered at the airport just over two years ago. They did not catch it on the CCTV cameras because they weren't working. Two years afterwards, and they can't even stop their employees from planting bullets in passenger luggage.

Despite being the laughingstock of the world in so many ways, Filipinos are inculcated from birth with "Filipino Pride". Children are lavished with ostentatious birthday parties with a giant poster of themselves, parents borrowing money to pay for it all - and there isn't a single piece of paper in the home or set of pencils/pens/markers to write and draw with. We can buy 5,000 pieces of paper and three dozen pens for less than an impoverished family spends on a birthday party. Went to kindergarten today? Let's have a graduation ceremony! National narcissism - heaping praise upon ourselves without accomplishment.

The last time Philippines took an international test, in 2003, their 8th graders finished 41st and 42nd out of 45 countries in math and science. Saudi Arabia tested higher in science, which, if you know anything about them is just too incredible to believe. That was over a decade ago and at about the same time less than 1% of Filipino students passed the High School Readiness exam at the target proficiency level. Things have gotten worse since then, despite how hard that is to believe.

Taguig is the national large-school leader at 68% mean score for elementary and 57% for secondary in 2015. The problem is that a 75% score is PASSING. So you have the national leader producing a FAILING average. This is a somewhat decent overview from a outside source (UNESCO) but frankly, there isn't enough frankness and in the face of these appalling scores we have the government sailing off into politically correct nonsense instead of reading, writing, and arithmetic:

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002303/230331e.pdf

In the schools you have parties, balloons, ribbons and medals, parades - anything except study. They mirror countries like North Korea with all the mindless pomp and crowd psychology "We're so great! We're so great!" while millions starve to death. The students are not taught to think critically because the government and elites do not want critical thinking. They want mindless automatons, and the system is cranking them out my the millions.

The envy of the first world and narcissistic justification for their own poverty is aptly summed up in the expression that "Money Grows on Trees" in the first world, It is not industriousness, thrift, scholarship, self-sacrifice, etc. that make a person well off. That is, it isn't VIRTUE. Because to acknowledge so would be to point to the national character and say THAT is what needs to be changed. Not for the President. Not for the airport police. But the entire country.

What does the Philippines lead the world in besides corruption and murdered journalists? Overseas foreign workers and immigration for marriage. The receipts sent home have caused a perverse increase in the growth rate recently. It is not from capital investment and labor productivity. Philippines has a 60-40 rule on foreign investment so that dummy corporations can be set up to skim profits off anyone trying to invest in the Philippines. Government has insane regulations, permitting, and taxes in order to fully employ parasitic bureaucrats. So there is very little foreign investment in the Philippines other than that exploiting extremely cheap labor - so cheap that it justifies the corruption, bureaucracy, and taxation there.

Singapore has no such restrictions, It welcomes foreign investment, has low taxes, and gets out of their way. They were HAPPY to bring foreign companies to Singapore and have them managed by people who know what they are doing. So Singapore residents could train into such positions and gear their educational system towards high-end employment in those industries. In Philippines a high school degree is the equivalent of a grade school education there, and you can get a college degree in how to be a waitress in the Philippines.

Over 400 college programs failed to produce a SINGLE graduate who could pass their very lame Teacher Certification Exam in 2015. You read that right: NOBODY passed in these 400 + programs:

http://www.prc.gov.ph/uploaded/documents/LET0315ps.pdf

How can you have HUNDREDS of college programs without a SINGLE graduate passing the teacher certification exam?! It defies belief! But in a narcissistic culture of pride-without-accomplishment = pride-without-virtue... this is not an exception. It is the rule. They just added on two more years of schooling in the Philippines in order to get a high school degree, which are currently not worth the paper they are printed on. There is a big surge in hiring of... unqualified teachers. Before you add more years to schooling, you need to fix the national disaster in having teachers who do not even take courses in the subjects that they teach.

I love my family in the Philippines. I want to move there permanently. We have built a house. But the kidnap for ransom threat prevents us from living in it, along with all the other problems. We can't start a business there because it is essentially impossible with me being a US Citizen and the staggering quantity of paperwork and bribes involved. Everywhere I turn it is bad character. Until Filipinos look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge the problem is staring right at them, there is little hope for change.

I know, I know - "Not all Filipinos are like that". "Americans are murdering innocent people." Etc. It takes good character to admit you have a problem. Humility is good character, not pride. Despite Filipinos supposedly being so religious, and the Bible emphatically denouncing pride as a deadly sin - that is the national motto! Filipino Pride! A deadly sin!

Our six year old typed this out this afternoon. No copy/paste. No spell check. He just sat down and banged it out. Despite what he's been doing I was stunned. He doesn't even do school now, all he does is piano. But I looked in his drawing book and it is filled with math and chemistry. At the moment he is playing a piece in Ab loaded with minors, 7ths and 9ths. For me, one bad thing after another. I can't even walk right now and need hip surgery.

After the six year old tested college level reading he discovered piano. His teacher is from the New England Conservatory. Over Skype. I have no capacity to judge but he says it is his best kid. That's pretty much all he does now is piano. Only a few months now, and one month with this master instructor. Nothing may come of it and our lives are turning upside down anyway.

Alaska is entering an economic catastrophe. It's probably over for me up here. It's been 30 years of adventure.

But the oil money just up and went. Every day the news is worse. I figure on the worst year I've ever had unless I work out of state.

Common Core is already being rejected by a growing number of states, and the latest Federal Act - the "Every Child Succeeds Act" (lol!) removes the whole enforcement mechanism for Common Core. Although it is already dead as a practical matter, the stupid texts and the tests they are teaching to are still out there doing the damage common sense tells you they will.

The sole mathematician on the committe that gave us this bizzaro-world of common core math resigned over this: It is developmentally inappropriate to force children to learn what base-10 math is before they can add 9 + 2 = 11. It is confusing, tedious, and also unfair to remove the incentive and joy in getting correct answers.

We're doing algebra and calculus at six. You can google teaching calculus at five, there's an article in The Atlantic on that. It's a pretty good periodical as far as popular literature goes, but most of the stuff we read is in peer-reviewed publications you need to get through a University or pay the ghastly fees ordering articles. Our Kindergartner is reading at 8th grade level, the pre-schooler at 4th grade. It has taken a lot of effort but there are more and more of us each year. Kids like this, we're along the same proximate age trajectory:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/10-year-genius-graduates-high-school/story?id=24078913

We followed Common Core closely because even though we aren't subject to it, David Coleman (One of the original Common Core profiteers) on the strength of his "success" at Common Core before it was even written and doing the damage it is now doing - was hired on with the College Board, which does the SAT tests. By the time our kids get that age he will have been long gone, but he'll do some damage in the meantime.

You guys just love the drama

I think there needs to be an adjective here.

Like stupid drama.

Hey folks, we're probably going to save another three years or so for more property in the Philippines. We built a house already on land her family had but we've been looking pretty far and wide over the Philippines for more property and our main concern is this:

If you have looked into property ownership in the Philippines, there is very little of what we call fee simple title land. We are not interested in land in a city, that's the last place on earth we'd live so that puts us out where a lot of the land is in this forest or agricultural status. There's land with so-called "rights". lol. The right to pay taxes on it, anyway. We are definitely going to buy land that produces crops. Even fish farms - I visited a bunch of them last time we were there, in Sasmuan, the fish farming capital of the Philippines. Any transaction we get involved with is going to have a property attorney on our side looking at everything and to be our counsel.

There's just too many incompetent or even crooked people of just about every profession in the Philippines. We don't know a trustworthy property attorney. We would call them real estate attorneys here. If anyone has a recommendation, we'd take a look at him. We just now passed our minimum savings amount to go for it. We are in no hurry - we can sock away more money. But if the right property came along - a plantation at Craigslist prices - we'd like to be able to move on it with professional counsel at the ready.

So you have an open marriage. Open to videoke. Not us, man - no way. This is a videoke-free zone.

We have a couple of real amps, mics, a mixing board and some instruments. We have a mic and amplifier hooked up right now to practice school speeches and do performances. It's homeschool. They are just starting piano. We (the King and his Subjects) enjoy and encourage this use of amplifiers and speakers.

Not all cultural features of the Philippines are worth emulating in my ever humble but always correct opinion. Videoke is one of them. If she brought one home I would leave. Once a videoke groupie, always a videoke groupie. You guys can do your open marriage thing - swingers, with the videoke, anyone jumping up there to sing so bad it hurts. Not us. We are conservative people of faith. Faithful to pitch, to key, and to snappy arrangements with a lot of minor chords, 7ths, and 5ths.

First thing was to see a moose. She did that on the way home from the airport.

Got her on a snow machine the first full day. A skid steer within the week, and a bulldozer within the first month.

Took her on a week-long camping trip in the wilderness in our supercub but have never done it since. When we popped up over the mountains to come home there was 300 miles of black forest fire smoke to navigate on the way home and I decided my days as a bush pilot taking anyone else I valued were over.

When I first met her I had broken my ankle and really ###### up my shoulder crashing a bushplane in the Alaska Range. I had to come back here after the rivers froze so I could go in by snow machine and salvage the wreck. Then I went back to her in the Philippines and built a house over there.

There really isn't a reason to do the extreme stuff I was doing before and no reason to make her live it. Living in a cabin in the woods is good enough.

My wife liked that the bridges, grocery stores, discos, power line towers, and such are not bombed. No hand grenades tossed into wedding parties. No large scale troop movements lobbing artillery at rebels, making waves of refugees. Journalists aren't executed on the streets, remaining unsolved.

It's the little things.

I got mitts and a hat, beaver with marten, value in excess of $400 for ten dollars at a garage sale. Plow truck for a thousand dollars, eight years of plowing for just the gas, a dump truck for $5K I made over 20 thousand dollars with in two months this summer.

Six dollars for jeans at the second hand store. Two dollars for t-shirts. Good sweatshirts for $5. I love America for these things.

My wife came with one suitcase. But after turning her loose on craigslist, garage sales, and second hand stores she was full-up. The one thing I did spend serious money on was a custom-made expedition weight arctic outfit from Apocalypse Design. The bibs and top alone was over a thousand dollars. Brand new bunny boots and a fur hat. Thermal expedition weight underwear, beaver mitts... And promptly got her off eight months pregnant six miles from the cabin at thirty below zero broken down on the trail. Had to walk back, and she never said a word about being cold

. I'm just simply exhausted.

That is a prime strategy of abusive people. Conscientious but naive and gullible people will knock themselves out trying to fix things when it isn't within their power to change an abusive person.

They'll string you along with empty promises and then a pretense of improving when they figure it will manipulate you into staying. Having you exhausted, broken, and weak makes you easier to control, and fall for their bullshit.

So the first thing is to get your mind right about leaving, the decision itself removing 90% of the anguish in your mind. Because the future is suddenly so clear. The steps seem so much less intimidating and the fear fades away. Sandranj has it right, that the most dangerous time is a victim telling the abuser all her plans to leave him. It isn't just that this is the time violence is the most likely, but they pull out all of the emotional stops too, everything from begging on their knees to threatening what you hold dear. Guilt-tripping, victim-playing, shaming, inappropriate anger, the works.

The point is to free yourself from it. Her advice here is really the best to follow.

It just disgusts me that so much of our public takes reality shows, sit-coms, and I suppose most especially the mainstream television infotainment they call "news" as their information portal to the world.

We don't get it. Television, cable, or whatever. There's plenty of free stuff on the internet, and the research you can do on your own in five minutes outweighs an entire season of television watching.

No, actually - people who spend a trifling amount of time looking into the culture of the place they are planning on living for the rest of their lives don't think this at all. That's why they do their homework, which for an educated person certainly ought not include television as a source of credible information.

On the one hand you've claimed to have an open mind, but on the other hand put down a pervasive culture by saying it is half a century behind yourself. I have never said such a thing about the Muslim culture so predominant in my wife's region where we have women in full burka's being escorted by male members - it is the only way they are allowed outside the house. I don't even think that, let alone say so. This is their belief system and it is not my place to judge them.

I knew more about the history of my wife's region than she did before I met her. I read extensively, traveled to six different islands, knew some of the other mixed-race couples - a godfather for one couple's daughter - the culture was one of the strongest reasons for considering a wife from her region. She is not Muslim - but we have a house on the border of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao so it is mixed. We have neighbors on two sides that are traditional Muslim and upon meeting them I could empathize with them about the history of the US slaughters of Muslims in the Philippines; the hundreds that were tortured by waterboarding, the burning of crops and destruction of homes, etc. - so this is why they don't hate me like they hate the arrogant Americans who think the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.

This is just so pervasive in these "struggling to adjust" types of threads - "Oh golly, after doing no research on the place I was moving, I am surprised to find out how little I knew" Well whose fault is that?

Were you to have done a parallel investigation into Texas culture you would be able to talk with them about a hell of a lot more than the weather, like the history of the Native, French, Spanish, and Mexican periods prior to the Republic of Texas - and why the culture evolved as it did. You'd empathize with them in the same way I do with the Muslim neighbors we have, even though I am an atheist. Same thing with Christians. I would never say they are "behind" me because they believe differently than I do.

Look before you leap.

I guess, for me as a British person in particular, you don't realise how huge the cultural differences will be because we're so exposed to American TV/film/music/literature, we speak the same language, dress similarly etc that you think we're largely the same - we're not!

No, actually - people who spend a trifling amount of time looking into the culture of the place they are planning on living for the rest of their lives don't think this at all. That's why they do their homework, which for an educated person certainly ought not include television as a source of credible information.

On the one hand you've claimed to have an open mind, but on the other hand put down a pervasive culture by saying it is half a century behind yourself. I have never said such a thing about the Muslim culture so predominant in my wife's region where we have women in full burka's being escorted by male members - it is the only way they are allowed outside the house. I don't even think that, let alone say so. This is their belief system and it is not my place to judge them.

I knew more about the history of my wife's region than she did before I met her. I read extensively, traveled to six different islands, knew some of the other mixed-race couples - a godfather for one couple's daughter - the culture was one of the strongest reasons for considering a wife from her region. She is not Muslim - but we have a house on the border of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao so it is mixed. We have neighbors on two sides that are traditional Muslim and upon meeting them I could empathize with them about the history of the US slaughters of Muslims in the Philippines; the hundreds that were tortured by waterboarding, the burning of crops and destruction of homes, etc. - so this is why they don't hate me like they hate the arrogant Americans who think the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.

This is just so pervasive in these "struggling to adjust" types of threads - "Oh golly, after doing no research on the place I was moving, I am surprised to find out how little I knew" Well whose fault is that?

Were you to have done a parallel investigation into Texas culture you would be able to talk with them about a hell of a lot more than the weather, like the history of the Native, French, Spanish, and Mexican periods prior to the Republic of Texas - and why the culture evolved as it did. You'd empathize with them in the same way I do with the Muslim neighbors we have, even though I am an atheist.

Look before you leap.

Aside from the abuse, which is a no-brainer, there is no evidence that a green card is worth any effort on your part - in fact it seems to have negative value given your health care system in Canada was treating you and the health care system in the USA is not.

Health, life & safety ought to be at the top of the list unless you are running for a Darwin Award. This disorder is vastly more manageable when you are getting health care. That's in Canada.

Also I found out that I was not the first young lady he tried to marry from my country in Ukraine. She was the lucky one. She told him no that hes weird. She saw passed his lies and I did not.(

When you said he changed after the marriage, that is partially true: people with personality disorders conceal what they can of themselves while manipulating us into a dependency on them. Afterwards the monster is fully revealed.

But the real problem for you is overlooking the red flags this other young lady recognized: excusing away the inconsistencies, the odd behavior, and in particular the abusive nature. Trust your gut instincts - when something seems wrong, it is!

How does Filipino culture differ from the United States, and how can understanding it help our relationships?

First, there is no single culture in the USA. We have religious communes, Native American cultures, inner city slum culture vs. rural farm culture, etc. It makes a difference what we are comparing Filipino culture to.

Filipino culture varies even more than the USA does. Because of its location it has a long history of international interaction - Chinese, Malay, Spanish, etc. - but in addition had several epochs of immigration with ethnically distinct groups. Look at the Aeta of central Luzon for example, and how they appear closer to distinctive African bush tribes than to other Filipinos.

Nevertheless we can make some general remarks, and the most important here is about extended families. Generally speaking Filipinos tend to have closer extended family relationships than people in the USA do. It has straightforward survival benefits and is termed "clan" based social organization. A clan-based social organization isn't automatically good or bad - it can work both ways. We have the Ampatuan clan in Maguindanao for example that likes to slaughter anyone standing in the way of their monopoly on power with machine guns. It's like the Mafia in the USA. Both are real life vicious, murdering clan-based criminal organizations.

But your fiance probably isn't from the Ampatuan clan. And you aren't from the Mafia. You are from a country that prizes individualism. Hers is extended family. So the basic difference is individualism vs. extended family viewpoint. Your fiance is going to care more about her siblings' welfare, her mother and father, aunts and uncles and so on down the line as compared with you. She is much more likely to say "this is good for my family" in a circumstance where you are thinking "this is good for me".

You can be a capitalist economy with extended family units. You see family-based businesses in these economies, that's all. Prices are still set by supply and demand. Products are sold in open markets. It is not a planned economy like the former Soviet Union. People can own land, structures, etc. and are free to chose their trade. But you are more likely to see a mother-daughter team selling at the vegetable market and a father-son team fishing than in the USA. In fact, the US State Department has some perverse definitions of "child labor" that cast the Philippines in an extremely unfair light: by those definitions, Filipino "child labor" is a bad thing that needs to be prohibited. One place the USA makes an exception for itself with child labor laws is in farming. You can work a boy 16 hours in a day just so long as he is from a farm family in the USA. Shouldn't we treat Filipinos doing exactly the same thing with equal understanding?

Their retirement system is much more likely to be family-based than yours. It is a contract for intergenerational reciprocity. It is common for Filipino children to support their parents in retirement. Whether you agree or disagree with this, just understand it. The social security system in the USA is very broad: just about everyone is in it. If she is from a provincial area where large portions of the economy are cash-based, non-traceable transactions: her family is not in the social security system. A professional-class Filipino in Manila with a salary is paying 3% a month into the social security system and can retire at 60. Anyone else is on their own, so it is no surprise to find family-based retirement systems in the Philippines, especially in the provinces.

In extended family or clan-based social settings it is common to see uncles helping harvest your rice and you helping build his house - trading labor with each other. It is easy to keep track of who is a loafer and who is a hard worker when it is your own family. This is not socialism or communism. This is family-based organization. You are eager to help out the cousin who has been helping you back and forth for a quarter century. A cousin who never lifts a finger - you don't help that moocher out. You cut him off.

Into this milieu walks a rich Americano. He is from a country where a taxi driver can make more than a doctor in provincial Philippines. How you conduct yourself - what you teach them - has a lot to do with the traumas that can develop between a Filipina and an Americano. If you come into this relationship sporting your money, don't later turn around and complain that they got used to it.

Your fiance is very likely to view you as how you can benefit her family. Not just herself. Especially if she is from provincial Philippines. If the current family "issue" is a basketball uniform for little Joe Junior, it would be natural for her to ask you to help.

Now we are at the crux of it all: are you going to establish that you give hand-outs, or are you going to participate in the extended family reciprocity system of the Philippines? You want a basketball uniform? Swell - carry these big stones for the rest of the day, with no pay, for a sea wall, and you'll have your basketball uniform tomorrow morning. That would be an example of you, a family member by marriage, reciprocating with another family member. You are behaving consistently with traditional Filipino culture.

On the other hand, if you just buy the uniform - is it not logical for the next needy family member to step forward with their hand out? In fairness, why does little Joe get this freebie and they don't? Now there is a perversity afoot: no more reciprocity. It is a one-way system bound for resentment and bad behavior on the part of the recipients. Then the game becomes how to guilt-trip the Americano into a permanent welfare state financier. But you have no-one to blame but yourself, really. For letting this situation develop. It is such irony too - one capitalist stepping into another capitalist society and creating a welfare state.

Regarding the children supporting the parents in retirement: Do not marry into such a social system unless you are prepared to buck up. It is an intergenerational family-based system and your duty is to support the generation that fulfilled their obligation already. You want a wife that is 50 years younger than you, scorching hot little scrumpet from the provinces you dirty old man? It comes with her parents. So deal with it. Nothing is free, and this kind of deal ought to be a million dollars anyway so count your lucky stars.

Because in her culture, her parents more likely took care of the grandparents in retirement. That's paying into their social security system, so to speak. So in their retirement, your fiance is expected to support them. Whether you are in the picture or not. But once you break into this system, you are the extension of her: the logical person to accept this family duty. If you reject it, there will be friction between you and your wife, or between her and the family. These people aren't moochers. You misunderstand this as welfare if you don't understand her culture.

Yet even then,accepting such things as your responsibility, it is also your responsibility to establish whether you are a frugal sort or a show-off sporting your money. If you have the big pig roast planned for your first visit with balloons, cake, party gifts for everyone in the barangay - lol, best of luck champ. That's a really expensive lifestyle, one I sure couldn't afford. Why are you establishing that as your standard? A millionaire standard.

In a clan-based culture people pay attention to who the loafers are as opposed to the productive family members. Your wife is viewed quite naturally in this way, just like everyone else. If she ends up being the one who brings wealth to the family then she takes on the role that would normally be played by the traditional American father: the family breadwinner. It is a thing that, if treated wisely can end up being quite wonderful to participate in, and if mishandled lead to resentment and dysfunctional behavior.

It is very simple, really: pay attention. Plan. Budget. You don't just act like a mindless ATM. Don't say "yes" to every request for money. It is only natural for this to happen because you are the wealthy one. But learn to say "no" with grace and kindness. From the very beginning, be careful about money relations. Every decision you make, even though you may not intend so, has long term significance. You teach them by the way you behave, so behave as you want them to learn.

We paid for her brother's Merchant Marine college and training. It has been four years of planning coming to fruition now. The purpose of doing it was to fulfill our obligation for her parents' retirement: We put this kid at the top of the pay scale and in return he takes care of the parents. Our obligation is now fulfilled. It was amazingly cheap too, by American standards - a full semester's tuition is about $550. Talk about return on investment.

We built a house. We intended to, and have, stayed there for extended periods - up to five months. I will retire there. It was the logical thing to do. We got "free" labor to build it. But it wasn't free. This was a family enterprise, everyone pitches in. Many send money, without supervision. What outcome can we expect from handing over money and then turning our backs? Building a house is called "contracting" in the USA. Would you just give money to someone who had no experience in contracting and say "you are a contractor now"? I am a contractor. So that's what I did. Her father is a mason and carpenter, an expert in Filipino construction techniques. It was a marriage made in heaven, me and him. We built the house together. It took four months, and we had uncles, sons, extended family members working on it. He did the interior finish work after I left. Tile work is his specialty.

If you are careless, this can develop into the perversity of all your Filipino relatives competing with themselves for your money, and using manipulative tactics to get it. Guilt-tripping and shaming you for the money you pick off trees in the USA. Your wife is in the same position as many Filipino Overseas Foreign Workers. They have gone abroad for employment at higher wages. They are doing so to help their families. But it can turn their families into unproductive welfare cases in the end. The OFW has to be wise about what they are doing with the money. Just sending it home blindly can have bad results: like sponsoring alcoholism and gambling.

It is a lie to say anyone believes money is picked off trees in the USA. Nobody actually believes that. It is the manipulative framing, used to justify being a leech. Everyone knows that the Filipino OFW are working hard for their money just the same as foreign (American) workers do. But if you act like it grows on trees yourself by just tossing it around, you will have bad results.

In sum, this is something that is a general tendency, not true for everyone. The relationship most likely on the Philippines subforum is an older Americano with a younger Filipina. He is wealthy by her standards. We say that he is not marrying her: he is marrying her family. It is likely she has obligations that are very natural in her culture that are very fair if you understand them context.

But they are ones that, if not approached with long term planning can turn your relationships into a one-way street. I know someone who has, over 40 years now purchased a housing complex that hosts 34 people, none paying rent. They have some kind of canteen that sells to other people too, but is where the family eats. It is a business front to pay for their own food. It does not make a profit. He is paying the water, electricity, gasul - he has a whole inner city welfare project going and complains about it. They like to drink and gamble. Smoke tobacco.

After 40 years, where is the culprit to be found? That would be him. For causing a perversion of Filipino culture that we also see perverting our own. We call it the welfare state. In this case you've done it to your own family as opposed to the government doing it to anyone.