Getting Set Up with a Foreign Bride in Your Home Country

[MrMan]

I spoke with American man who was in his 50's. He'd been married to a Korean woman in her 40's for a few years. I asked how they met.

He wanted to get married. He asked a Korean pastor if he knew of any single women. Sure enough, he had one in mind to match the guy up with. In Korean and Japanese culture, a leader of some sort might try to match you up with others. In Japan, the manager might try to match up co-workers, or so I have read. (This was many years back that I read this.) I have heard of a case of another Korean pastor trying to encourage a marriage with a dating couple also.

Korean college students will get matched up on multiple dates by an older student, going on three-person dates until two meet that like each other, then they date. A Freshman (at least in the 1990s) might go on several dates a week while starting college until he or she finds someone to date. So it is the culture there. Those who do not meet spouses through friends like that eventually go to matchmakers or their parents, aunts, uncles, etc. try to find them matches.

Indonesians are probably less into matchmaking, but parents still do try to arrange marriages or suggest and encourage matches. My wife has shown her cousin's Facebook profiles to single men from church who were interested in marrying when we had people over for dinner, like if we had singles over for a holiday meal. My wife is pretty so the men probably thought if she had cousins who looked like her, they might be interested. We never found a match with a cousin. One of the men tried to call an Indonesian friend's daughter, who was rather pretty. He was in his 40s was insisting on phone calls instead of Facebook chats at first and seemed to expect a relationship with an recent college grad in her 20's to just happen and work out without a lot of effort. She might not have been all that serious about having a relationship at that point. My wife had tried to set him up with a relative, but she wanted a young man her own age.

If you want to marry a foreign woman, expats from that country may live near you now. You might be able to find a Korean or Filipina who lives in your own country, or some of the ones who live there might be willing to match you up with some pretty young relative from back home.