Reached the end of my time in the Philippines, lost a lot of romantic notions and gained a healthy dose of cynicism

[Will N. Dowd]

LOL!

I remember when you used to make fun of people like me and other members for sleeping with many pinays, while you had married an almost perfect pinay and their was nothing in the world that could possibly ever go wrong with your life choices.

Now you admit to separating from her and doing the exact thing you used to make fun of other members for.

Perhaps in the future you'll be posting here how the one you are with now also wasn't who you thought she was and how she changed after you made the mistake of bringing her abroad and she emptied your bank accounts and broke your heart!

The one you are with now is not the one, it's just your turn with her, just like it was your turn with your ex wife when you thought she was the one.

[Spencer]

Good man for come clean truthing even go gainst self egomania for now you follow wiseton way the humilty path and walk to direction manhood and this not first time you do like this so you show self to be worth aborder and emerging realman and i herby acept you apologizing

many aborder know from day one you make mistake try live poverty province with short darky girl who fake hi status for fool young dumb westerman

back then you not need forgo normal country even in other asia country where easy find white tall nose girl like dime dozen and not make this style girl feel entitle like such girl feel in philipine

philipine fit elder aborder wit bad eyes site and wilful self delud for acept make big compermise for he self elding and his facebody sexly repulsive for beger not chose so we never understand you waste youth in bacward chatic dystopialand when can go real asia that have hot oriental dimes for dozens not needle in da haystac philipines

beter late to never and why not go back holand for so wonderlan magic country wit honesty kind hi status girl left right center and good peoples

[Shemp]

Good man for come clean truthing even go gainst self egomania for now you follow wiseton way the humilty path and walk to direction manhood and this not first time you do like this so you show self to be worth aborder and emerging realman and i herby acept you apologizing

In German speak dey got big word "schadenfreude" and now i sit here eat peanuts and scratch my hed and wonder if dis Spencer really mean what he write or maybe he have that schadenfreude feel inside.

I write more later. I be hike in mountains and dem big thunderstorm come soon.

Edit: Given my own chaotic personal life, I am in no position to voice any opinion about that part of Marcus's update. But I knew from the start that he was treading on thin ice in trying to earn a living in the Philippines. At least PublicDuende had/has a workable plan: arbitrage between high paying foreign clients and cheap local labor in the booming IT outsourcing industry. Whereas I never got the impression Marcus had such a solid plan, nor do I think he had plans for something like covid lockdowns to interrupt whatever business he was in lfor several years. Anyway, good luck back in Europe.

[gsjackson]

beter late to never and why not go back holand for so wonderlan magic country wit honesty kind hi status girl left right center and good peoples

And the Dutch farmers need all the help they can get. Take up arms (or manure piles) against the fetid, globalist government, if need be.

[Spencer]

Marco you need still manup bigtime put concom on it or keep in pants for you make baby left right center and not suport same deadbeater poverty province triker man but you know beter you firstwolrder man no excusings

child no suport = future begarboy or make momy turn trics for survivals so better on you take $ from new job for suport your 6 or 7 or howmany kidys you make over decade

if you not suport yr kidys then you perpetate poverty in country you go take take take from then fulon abandoment pls do right not make new genrational problems in so broken country

[Shemp]

Marco you need still manup bigtime put concom on it or keep in pants for you make baby left right center and not suport same deadbeater poverty province triker man but you know beter you firstwolrder man no excusings

Dem girls gonna get demself with baby wif or wifout Marcus. You post silly neckbeard photo on your website and say dat Marcus photo, but I gonna take Marcus word, which is dat he good-looking Dutch guy, and dat his mixed race chirrun is good looking by Philippines standards because dey tall and has light skin. Plus da mama was intelligent and we know intelligence is mostly inherited from de mama, especially for boys (because Y chromosome very short, and most recent human evolution on XY chromosomes), so it not matter that Marcus not sharpest tool by European standards. By Philippines standards, his chirruns is probably genius level. So dey healthy, tall and good looking by local standards, genius level intelligence by local standards. Wat da problem? Dey ain't gonna starve. And why care more about dem than all da other single mama babies in dis world?

Responsible peoples is going extinct because dey afraid to breed, because no positive incentives, and feeling of responsibility is negative incentive because den you got to support all yo babies instead of make childless chumps like me and you and @Cornfed support dem via tax dollars. Future belongs to fast-breeding irresponsible baby daddy - baby mommy R-selection peoples, not dem slow-breeding responsible K-selection peoples.

So what is your real agenda in scolding Marcus?

[Jackfruits]

Marco you need still manup bigtime put concom on it or keep in pants for you make baby left right center and not suport same deadbeater poverty province triker man but you know beter you firstwolrder man no excusings

child no suport = future begarboy or make momy turn trics for survivals so better on you take $ from new job for suport your 6 or 7 or howmany kidys you make over decade

if you not suport yr kidys then you perpetate poverty in country you go take take take from then fulon abandoment pls do right not make new genrational problems in so broken country

you got a very big point here..... so that means no change from old you, unless you do not change ways and go support your baby kid.

[Jackfruits]

yeah i also dated an impulsive girl in PH; supersweet but sometimes really quickly angry for the smallest thing. Later figured out why she left her last boyfriend cuz he didn't cook her food when she demanded it (kinda weird). But with me she got angry as I didn't want to go spontaneously visit Bohol out of nothing. I blocked and moved on. She had her first child at age 13 from a foreigner man she left at her parents to move on and always be someone's girlfriend, never in her life worked since leaving primary school. She was 21 when I met her, and she did have an 80k Instagram following and her last few boyfriends were from her following.

[Spencer]

It's kind of funny how everyone just jumps to the conclusion that the girl I impregnated is poor and low class... she isn't. Her father is a local politician and businessman with fourteen years of elected service. Her family is respected in the area. She's far from broke. Cute, relatively tall for a Filipina and more pale-skinned than Morena, she's fairly popular in the area and had a ton of suitors before me. Also, kind of crazy. That's the thing with dating, sometimes someone seems alright at first but the longer you spend together, the more you travel, or stay under one roof, the more cracks appear in that image of 'perfection' and sometimes, you're left with nothing. That's what happened.

I dated around, and had a few short-lived relationships. The longest of these was with the politician's daughter, and lasted about three months, max. She's not "some little brown girl from a poor broken family living in an abominable shithole town" who I knocked up and abandoned... she's a reasonably well-off girl with mental health issues (possibly bipolar) who just packed her stuff one day, deciding she wants nothing to do with me and went to another province to stay with an auntie and that's... the end of that. It was wild. But she always warned me she was "impulsive". Well, she sure showed me!

It's kind of the opposite of the usual "girl baby-traps foreigner and immediately demands money"; when I offered her, she flat-out refused me and said she wanted zero involvement. Oh well. What can I do, at this point? A little after, I met someone who was the real deal. Referred to me through a close and trusted friend who could vouch for both the girl and her family. That's how its done. If you're out on your own, trusting your own judgements and gut feelings without any backup, you're taking a pretty massive risk.

Not yet for you give aborders how its done advisings cus your story on money girl kid always continus evoluting to oh last year i make big mistaking but now i final figure how its done then 2023 say oh no was wrong again but now i know and so on so fort and leaving path of kidys you not support grow to 6 or 7 already in philipin also europe for pass $$$ burden on others for exploit poverty or socialistism

so make same to lo class deadbeater philipin beer drinker love em to leave em trikerman

but we see lites of hope in you make admitings on past bads but now you need now ask self am i making moves away from trying impres distopia broken philipin society girl standard for eschewing egomania and become real man that stand to plate for progenys in all your atentings loves and moneys

[publicduende]

I've always been among the most overly optimistic people on this forum when it comes to living abroad. Especially when it comes to the Philippines in particular. Oh, how wonderful it is! Such a great little slice of evergreen heaven on God's green earth...

Guess I needed to do a little growing up.

I'm a few years older now. And things haven't always gone my way. I made decent money but I've had some ups and downs. And I learned a few things. One thing I learned is, the Philippines is a lot of fun IF YOU HAVE MONEY. And it takes quite a bit to be truly comfortable, especially if, like me, you have children and tend to be fairly extravagant when it comes to trips, food, holidays and such. I kind of suck at spending. As a result, whenever things don't go my way, financially, I suffer. And I hate that.

This is a holiday destination, and a fine one, but in many ways a poor choice to live unless you truly have the amount of "f**k you" money needed to not have to worry about finances at all. I didn't have it yet, and I suffered the consequences.

As for dating and marriage, Filipinas are overhyped.

You can find hotter women in quite a few other nations. There are gems, however, true gems. Girls with a little bit more of the Spanish ancestry. More "Barcelona", less "Chicken Adobo", you know? But they're rare.

My former wife and I... we parted ways. I always bragged about how smart and brilliant she was, and she was. But intelligence in a woman is a two-edged sword. I valued it a lot, and all it did was hurt me in the end. To someone truly intelligent, you're somehow disposable. I guess I was, too. For a year now I've been single and sort of slutted around town. The "chismis" is horrible, "Marites" everywhere, the Filipino equivalent of the dreaded Western "Karen" often referred to online by the young ones. Date more than a single girl of quality in the same place and you'll soon find yourself the talk of town. At which point, your value on the dating market plummets. The only alternative is to go for cheap whore-ish looking ladies which never quite tickled my fancy.

After all these years of relative domestic bliss, I found myself at a point where I had to once again re-enter the dating market. And it wasn't easy. I struggled quite a bit in fact. Living longer in the Philippines I found that my tastes had drastically changed. I no longer see the appeal in the type of girls that typically end up with a foreign fellow, not at all. I wanted pale skins, tall noses, fine features, big eyes and sculpted eyebrows. I wanted "Mestiza" more than "Morena" and abhorred pug-noses. If my next lady would be the type of girl a local dude would scoff at, what's even the purpose? No, I wanted... more.

So I searched, and searched, and dated around a fair bit. Got some gorgeous ladies, but just because a girl is gorgeous doesn't make her attitude stellar. Some had mental disorders. Some were just, weird. One seemed promising enough, but her father was a local politician... a powerful man. She got pregnant. Didn't want anything to do with me, but I sort of had to pre-emptively flee the area because I'm really not taking my chances with vindictive older men in positions of power if ever I would be "found out".

Long story short... I eventually found The One. Pale skin. Thick eyebrows. Big eyes, thick jet-black hair and a tall, sharp nose. Twenty one years old and favors the actress Andrea Brilliantes quite a bit. I'm going to go far away with her. To Europe. Already have a new job lined up that will earn my easily four times the money I made before. And I'm... so, so relieved. I'm relieved because even though my life in the Philippines is more or less in shambles, I learned a lot. And now I just yearn for the freedom only money can buy me.

I'll still be returning, from time to time. Carefully avoiding certain areas, certain people. This is still one hell of a place to spend vacations in. And a place well-worth looking for when it comes to eventual retirement. But as a young man, with a family to feed, responsibilities? Nah. It's just not really worth it. I feel like I gained more than I lost, in the long run. The magic sort of died, for me. Not sure if it'll ever be revived.

Hi @MarcosZeitola

Thanks for the heartfelt account of your last few years in the Philippines. Having lived in this country continuously since 2015, I have been through the same challenges and struggles, from finding a stable income platform to keeping my relationship with C afloat, to navigating in a place where - you know - 1 person in 10 is barely worth your trust, and that person is usually a fellow foreigner.

The tropical warm, friendly and welcoming Philippines YouTubers talk about belong to three categories of people:

• casual tourists who come here for a few days, a few weeks at most, and spend their time (and savings) island hopping, eating fresh seafood and enjoying the poverty porn they can see in that beautiful yet relatively poor area they visit
• foreign men - young and less young - who come here to enjoy "girl hopping" for the same amount of time and, after going from incel to 3-girls-in-3-weeks, start talking with their hormones and wax lyrical about the whole place and experience
• the rare, very rare men who don't have any money problems - they're highly-paid executives seconded there, crypto millionaires or former founders with a successful exit - live in the Bonifacio Global City or Rockwell social bubbles, swing by $150-a-pop restaurants, go to fancy gyms and hang out with fellow expats.

I could also throw in the fourth category of retirees on (very) modest pensions, who end up marrying one of those uneducated girls from the deep province and live in the deep province, perhaps after building a small house on the girl's family land. In the past, I would have considered them as living a blissful life, until I started to meet and talk to a few of them and realised that, under the veneer of that placid life, they are every bit as grumpy, disillusioned and cynical as they could have been back home.

The idyll of a simple rural life will have worn out after a couple of years, they see their brown kids growing up in an environment devoid of cultural enrichment and job opportunities, they are one health event away from bankruptcy, their families and neighbours keep pounding them with requests of money and favours, and even the sex with their pudgy petite wives isn't that great anymore.

So, in the long run, it's not so much fun in the Philippines, anymore.

I applaud the fact that, like the best of us Philippines foreign residents, you tried as hard as you could to find a good source of income. You probably smashed against the same walls as I did - the bureaucracy of opening and keeping up with a new business, the unreliable target markets, the modest returns, the flaky workforce.

You will have realised that, for all intents and purposes, the Filipinos are their own worst enemies.

The vast majority of them, even the relatively well-educated and well-travelled ones - simply won't see past their noses. Before they start something, anything, they first ask themselves how can they maximally profit from it. If they like the prospect of making thousands or tens of thousands of dollars with minimal work, they do it. Otherwise, they drop it, looking for the next easy opportunity. This is why they are so gullible and keen on any promise of getting rich quick. What for most of us is a red flag, for them is a way of life.

No wonder the Chinese community, one of the few subcultures that - at least over the past generations - was capable of working hard, being frugal and building their wealth with discipline and patience, have been running circles around Filipino society and they practically own everything here. And, after being historically hated by the Filipinos (crab mentality, another wonderful side of them), they now repay them with the same currency, and with interest!

About finding (and keeping!) the right woman, I can't agree with you more. Unlike you, I understood pretty soon why local men of some socio-economic worth would steer clear of the uneducated girls from the deep province we foreigners usually (and easily) get. The problem, at least until I met C, was that those fair-skinned, tall and gorgeous ladies appeared off-limits to people like me. Reason being that those girls usually hail from upper-middle-class or upper-class families, who have their own money and cherish their own network and have no need to interact with 40-yo divorcees from a Western country.

I eventually found C in a tiny business network that hailed from Manila (she was with the British Chamber of Commerce, of which my then Davao company was a member), not Davao. It took me 6 months of courtship to convince her that I was worth a shot. And if she hadn't had a thing for Italians, coupled with a little bit of a daddy complex (her dad passed away when she was a teenager), she would have probably not wanted to be with me anyway.

And, as you say in another one of your posts, I had to pay the price for being with her. I immediately lost all of my so-called, quote-quote "friends" because of the scandalous fact that I hooked up with a girl 19 years my junior. Those "friends" wouldn't have minded me hooking up with the usual poor morena from the countryside. But damn, that I got the kind of pretty, educated, smart and young girl they themselves, or their sons, would have wanted to date, that was unforgivable to their eyes!

Finally, "crazy" is something I also noticed in young people. All those absentee parents working abroad to support their kids' studies, all those guilt trips from living with corrupted dads who can give them anything but a good role model, the devastating routines of long commutes on sweaty jeepneys, graveyard shifts and pot noodles. The pressure from their families, who ask for half of their earnings as soon as they start working and can finally feel in control of their own destinies. All of this is taking a tool on their poor brains.

I am starting to realise that, maybe, the best thing to do is what you're planning to do. Find the One, or who you think is the One, and leave the Philippines at your next opportunity. I made the mistake of building a golden cage around C and myself, in the shape of a business relationship with a local client (a large and well-known conglomerate) which is now my main income stream, and multiple assets in Manila and Davao, which I would have to sell before we move on.

I mean, life isn't too bad so long I don't have to pay rent and have $2/3K of disposable income every month. My relationship with C has ups and downs. Filipina or not, it always takes patience and love to sail on the marriage boat. Yet, if I had lined up my cards better, I would have probably left this place a few years ago and wound back to London, maybe the US, the only location where software developers tend to be overpaid.

So, long story short, I saw what you saw and I am happy you managed to find new happiness away from the cordilleras. I wish you nothing but the best with your new place, your new job, and your Andrea Brillantes lookalike love interest. As they say, Time is the best teacher of them all, but only to those who bother to listen.

[publicduende]

Thanks for the long and thoughtful reply, @publicduende. Always appreciate those, a real treat as usual. The Philippines really is a fine place, in many ways, but it's also a cesspool in just as many ways. Above all, its a bottomless pit where you can just keep throwing money in and get very little out of it in return. Well, yes, experiences, pleasure, fun, but not much when it comes to a return on one's investments. I had all this youthful optimism where I was so sure I'd be the lucky one who would somehow "crack the code" and manage to do what so many others failed at, succeed where they hadn't, and then return here to brag about it... well, I couldn't crack it, anymore than most others could. I stumbled, and I fell, and it's been rough at times but at least I can say, I learned from the experience and grew from it as a person.

Always a pleasure engaging with you, @MarcosZeitola.

In a way, I also came in with those sky-high expectations. I was freshly divorced but without the burden of kids. No spring chicken anymore, yet with a few years of productive professional life in front of me. Not rich, yet with enough savings to start a business and try to establish myself.

In any other first-world country, my business-building efforts would have paid off substantially more. Yet - who was I fooling? - I also chose the Philippines to heal from a nasty personal experience I had come out of in London, and have the hope to find a girl I could fall for and love again.

Just like you, I can say my results were a mixed bag. The first iteration of my consultancy company in Davao basically went nowhere, mainly because I delegated too little to the wrong kinds of people (most Filipinos qualify as "the wrong kinds of people"). Then I rebooted it here in Manila and got much better success and much more money.

I had drunk up the "noble savage" myth and convinced myself that I could find a perfect girl to be with in the vast pool of poor, uneducated girls from the rural depths of Mindanao. Then I rode the first opportunity to date a city girl, with a proper education, a proper job, and proper looks, and found out how far off the mark and naive I had been.

From what you told us in here, your now ex-wife wasn't that bad looking and hailing from a family of culture, more than money. Teachers, especially public teachers, will never be well-off in the Philippines but they indeed are respected members of their communities. There's not much anyone can do about that short, dark-skinned Ilocano look LOL. Their genetics is good at 2 things: spend most of their days under the sun farming rice, and fight rival tribes.

Being young and still having many relatives in Europe, I simply got a little homesick. A collapsed marriage was bad enough as it was, but going through all that pretty much by myself, that was hell. Kept to myself a lot, just trucking on, never mind my issues. But it comes back to bite you in the ass, sooner or later. It always does. And you reach a point where you have to ask yourself... do I want my children to grow up, in what I now consider to be quite a cesspool? Do I want my ridiculously attractive offspring to fall in the hands of some sort of predatory Filipino version of Harvey Weinstein if they get inevitably "scouted" by some talent agency one day when they're out with their friends in a mall? It's kind of bleak, really. And while provincial life with an above average income makes for a pretty magical childhood, the future looms and I want to be able to offer them... more. More, than the Philippines could offer them.

I may have never revealed it on HA: one of the major blessing of being with C is that neither or us want to have kids. Although we will never know how our mestizo white children will look like, this decision will write off any trouble related to what you just said: giving them an environment where they can be intellectually stimulated from an early age and grow into perceptive, smart kids and tomorrow's professionals, or who knows, maybe artists.

Since it's always a mix of nature and nurture, and since the "nurture" comes as much from the family as the outer environment, we both know how devastatingly empty a life in the Philippine countryside can be. I wouldn't be too worried about your kids being caught into the net of a pervy "talent scout" of sorts...if they are even half as smart as I believe they are, I believe your kids may get a shot at Internet success just by using TikTok or whatever platform will be trending at that particular moment.

But sure, agreed, nothing beat a European (Dutch, Italian...) public education, in terms of value for money. The only alternative would be for them to study at one of the few good international schools available in Manila or Cebu (Davao has none), then spend their college years in the Netherlands or, finances permitting, in Singapore, or the US, etc.

Living in the Philippines, with a Filipino spouse, for as long as I have, I cannot also claim I am immune to judgements anymore. Yes, my former wife had certain facial features more akin to a Latina, but she was also dark-skinned, and very short. She wasn't "a catch" by Filipino standards. Maybe in Manila, if she found a dude who is into brains and impressed by her fancy degree, but in the provinces, she was just another 'exotical'. Now I see her, leaving me, as somewhat of a blessing in disguise. It allowed me to widen my net, to expand my horizons, experience new things, new girls, with all the ups and downs and issues that come with it. Now I have someone who can turn heads and I like that. It strokes my ego. I'm not as naive anymore as I was in my early twenties... now, I'm in my thirties. I value my status more, my reputation, the way people see me. I want quality over quantity.

Above all, I just don't want headaches anymore. My ex gave me my fair share of headaches. We're still friends, and she's still great... as a friend. But only as a friend. In a way, Duende, you were more free than I ever was back when you first came to the Philippines, because you weren't just a single dude, you were a single dude without kids. Me, having a family already, an ex-wife and all that comes with it, it cost me some valuable opportunities. In one instance I was dating this absolutely gorgeous girl in the mountains. She wanted to be a flight attendent, tall, shapely, very European facial features and a very light skin, about as pale as mine. But they sabotaged me. People, around me, around her. Whispered things in her ear. The dreaded Marites ruined me. Courted that girl for months and it all lead to nowhere. Still frustrates me.

I found out this nasty cock-blocking behaviour much to my shock. Like you, I had thought that, by establishing myself as a valuable member of the community, I would somehow attract the right people, including the right girls. As it turned out, I was completely off the mark.

The same "best friends" (all gone now) who I asked, always very subtly politely, to help me with finding a good girl, not only never helped me at all, but resented me finding C, the kind of girl who "is not supposed" to date a foreign divorcee 20 years older than them. In their hypocrisy, though, they are perfectly OK with foreign adults hooking up with young girls who look like their maids because that allows them to give us that complacent, patronising look, perhaps mock us behind our backs and perpetuate the old Kano stereotype.

Since I moved to Manila, I stopped even trying to befriend these kinds of people, no matter how wealthy, or influential, or open-minded they might seem. This has resulted in an almost perfect form of loneliness. Yet, as we say in Italy, "better alone than ill-accompanied". When the lockdowns kicked in, I didn't even notice

While I still find certain Morenas incredibly sexy, I too ended up feeling annoyed whenever I would hook up with a girl I considered cute and/or sexy, only to be told that "she looked like a maid". Some of the wiser HA members suggested me that no, I should stick to my preferences and be impervious to other people's judgments. Some good all-round advice which, I think, should still stand for you and me. This was until I started to ask myself: am I dating these "maids" because that's really my preference, or because that's all I can get? The answer came clear to me, as it probably did to you, and I started to specifically looking for "universally hot" girls.

Now, it's true that these girls with fairer skin and mestizo traits (Spanish-looking, Chinese-looking, etc.) tend to hail from higher class families. The only remaining dilemma was then: can a 45-yo foreigner like me ever successfully woo a girl from those socio-economic levels? Turns out it's possible, yet not so easy.

Of course all the failures sort of lead me towards where I really needed to be. Which is, with my version of your C. Unlike your partner, however, mine isn't from a well-off family. In fact the family of my former wife was considerably more well-off.They're less snobby, less judgemental, less... of a headache. Less in-fighting, clan against clan, branch against branch, less drama, less issues. All her Spanish lolo gave her is a face to die for, but no family fortune. I get to be the one to provide that, and in return, I get no shortage of gratitude. Part of me is afraid of things going South again. They tend to, in life. But I do not want my fears to hold me back. Instead I just get lost again in romantic notions. I haven't allowed myself to feel that way, in a long time. It never felt "safe" but now, somehow, it does. And I like it. I cherish it.

And that's the same conclusion I got to

So long your new gf is not dumb as a rock and you see her doing well once she's outside the Philippines iron cage, I don't see any problem in you dating her. The only potential concern would be not to come across as overly kind and generous to her family. Even if she is not materialistic, statistically speaking, there will be at least one or two members of her family who will try and latch on to you for money. I am sure you know how to deal with this. It's just that these people can be very insisting at times, and sometimes use stupid gaslighting or guilt-tripping arguments, such as "we allowed you to be with her, you need to give us something back". Whatever the state of this for you, it will only get better once you move abroad and farther out of their reach.

Europe is pretty nice, too, in a lot of ways. @Winston idolizes it, as do quite a few other American posters on this forum. @Yohan abhors it. But it's really not that bad. Got some good friends there, some nice relatives too. Supermarkets that sell smoked salmon and a hundred different types of Belgian, German or Dutch beers. Clean, wide roads. A lot less gossip. Better schools, less pollution, hardly any small-time corruption. Roads that get broken up and fixed in a matter of days whereas a Filipino road can take weeks if not months to fix... Yes, I dare say I missed all that. A functional society and all that comes with it. I'll always cherish the Philippines as a holiday destination and I may spend my retirement there, part-time, but thats many decades down the road for me. I hope I can earn enough to be comfortable, when that day comes. Until then, I'll have to try my luck elsewhere. I hope you'll enjoy your stay in your little self-crafted bubble, for as long as you choose to spend in it, my friend.

I have quite a few reasons why I believe the Philippines might still be favourable to C and I, this despite her moaning about wanting to move away from here, especially after BBM was elected. If I had children and the chance to make more money in Europe, on a normal job, I would also choose to be back. My main problem right now is that, because of Brexit, I cannot go back to the UK and get one of those boring yet lucrative City jobs. Plus a few friends are scaring me to crap with their tales or sky-high inflation and stagnant salaries. Still, I have no reason to believe the Netherlands are still relatively OK for a fruitfuil, nice family life.

[Jackfruits]

Netherlands is nice. I live there as well.

[publicduende]

This was actually a pretty big issue for me, in choosing a future partner. Since I do want to further expand my family and it's somewhat of a priority to me, any girl I'd pursue would have to be good with kids, like them, and above all, want them. This removes ladies dedicated to their careers from the equation almost instantly. I'd go as far as to look for pictures on social media of girls holding little fluffy dogs and use this as some sort of "red flag" indicator; the type of girl who'd dote on a small pet and refer to it as "my fur baby" may be less-than-enthusiastic about the prospect of having a more traditional family life. Kids may be a "maybe", a "something down the line" or "some day, if the time is right" sort of deal, but they'd be, at best, flaky and uncertain about the whole thing. This diminished my options on the dating market quite a bit, I think.

It sort of takes a lot of the more well-educated, thoughtful girls out of the race at the beginning. Same with political opinions; you mentioned your girl being quite worried about the presidency of BBM (funny how I predicted him winning on this forum years ago lol) and this is a common thing I have noticed: young Filipinas who tend to vote 'Liberal Party', have somewhat modern views on love, date, marriage, and family. And the same aversion to starting a family that now defines so many young Western women. It's... a no, for me. I'd need someone who is a bit more simple, I suppose. I think simple is the word here. The more sophisticated a Filipina becomes, the more her views are unlikely to allign with me. However it tends to be the girls from those types of backgrounds, a little more well-off, a little better educated, that look better than their 'simple' counterparts. Getting a humble country girl with the face of a rich Mestiza was... a tall order.

My next steps are aimed at providing financial support for my family and myself, making sure I am in a comfortable position and stay in it. I'll travel back and forth between my country of origin and the Philippines, and will also try to (briefly) explore some other places in years to come. I finally have a position in life where money won't be an issue anymore, or less of an issue. Wouldn't be planning the whole "expanding the family" thing if I wasn't. Of course the big opportunity for me is found in Europe, not the Philippines; the Philippines mostly just, drained me. Gained life experience but not much else.

And the whole "kid in a candystore" feeling doesn't last. It never does. You mentioned the hipon before, the prawns. Love me some seafood, brother, but as my tastes changed, so did my chances, my battle became more of an uphill one, with fewer and fewer allies. It's lonely at 'the top' of the dating market. And its hard to compete with local men who know the language, the culture, the subtle gestures and in-jokes that I'll never fully master. Most of whom without the burden of a "first wife" and a bunch of kids. More and more, my former life choices seem like a huge liability to me. Weird thing is, despite all this? I still love the Philippines. Its still a great place to spend time, from time to time. But it may not be the best place for a man like me to live.

Before I wanted to do the whole "foreigner lost in paradise" thing. Raise my tribe in the middle of nowhere, come what may... didn't last long, at all. I very soon noticed I craved for things a small town could not provide me with. Had to get a second apartment, a few hours away, in a place with fast internet connection and greater access to decent food. Would spend half my weeks with this greater sense of (relative) luxury and half my weeks with the kids, bonding, raising them, doing right by them. Would need the time in my apartment to recharge. And yes, there'd be girls. Going in, and going out, and my reputation must have suffered. Suffered badly enough for me to ultimately have to travel to a whole different province just to find the girl I showed you yesterday... worth it? Yes. But not easy and not at all ideal.

Eloquent explanation, the concise version of which is..."we can't have a cake and eat it"

As you said, simple, traditional girls who will have no liberal, "kakampink" opinions about life, family, and work (in fact they will have no opinion on anything at all!) tend to be the poor, uneducated, native-looking ones. The kind you learned to avoid. I am not implying your wife was poor and uneducated, far from it, but clearly her commitment to her simple village living, her family and kids must have turned against you after a few years. It must have become more of a burden than a bliss for you.

Robinson Crusoe's tale of living in tropical paradise, removed from the needs and wants of modern society, surrounded by "noble savages" was, well, a work of literary fiction, underpinned by a flawed myth.

I didn't know you decided to rent an apartment in a bigger town, maybe one with faster Internet, a mall, maybe, a bit more of a nightlife. I do, very well, understand where you're coming from. When my first company closed down, back in 2018, even Davao seemed too small and provincial for me. I was yearning the bigger city, a bigger business network, more things to see and do etc. Too bad that, as soon as I arrived in Manila, I lost the 2 or 3 friends I had there: they all cried scandal the moment they saw me hand in hand with C.

I did turn up to a few business networking events and it was a lot more glitz and glamour than what I would find in Davao. Too bad I realised, pretty soon, that these gatherings were the typical mutual social masturbation, where everyone was showing off how successful and rich they already were, with really very little new business talk going on. Mostly a waste of time. Then pandemic and its lockdown struck and I hardly ever saw beyond the four walls of my home office for almost 2 years.

This to show that, at least in my case, even the big city isn't going to provide a substantially better lifestyle, unless one has enough money and time to throw to that kind of pointless mutual social masturbation.

Girls...obviously I wouldn't know how my dating experiences would have been in Manila, since I stopped all that the moment I committed to C. From what I could tell, I would agree with you. The city is obviously home to girls who are more intent in having a "full" life, from a work that looks like a career to hitting the gym, indulging on a good meal every now and then, partying with their urban barkadas, pampering themselves with SPA treatments. A lifestyle that is as far removed as possible from the much simpler, plainer and - admittedly - more boring province life.

At least here in Manila, you can indeed find women who are open to dating divorced men with several kids, even married ones (annulment is expensive). The catch is...they will be themselves single moms or separated, more mature but certainly not in their prime. Some of them will still be passable, as they will much more disposable income to take care of themselves (let alone access to places where they can do that). Knowing your tastes, I doubt this kind of situation will go well with you.

My final opinion on Filipinos is not a graceful, condescending one. The Filipinos who matter, who have a career, a life, decent money, won't usually even look at us foreigners, especially if we are past our stud age, if we are not established and/or wealthy, if we are not at least half-Filipinos, etc. They have their own to mind, to mingle with. We are just a passing commodity.

The FIlipinos who don't matter are usually the ones who see us foreigners as an anchor of salvation, as a way to get out of poverty, or get more loans and gratutious cash gifts than they will ever receive from their fellow citizens. The luckiest we can get is when we find a pretty girl from a poor family who sees the foreigner as their escape hatch towards a better life, possibly abroad. It's brutal, cynical. Yet, it's the truth.

I love C and I believe C loves me back. Yet, when I was courting her she was as undecided and reluctant as it gets. It's only after her Mom died and she found herself an orphan, with no direct family close to her (her 2 brothers live in London and Paris), that she changed her mind and chose to be with me. Coincidence? I am under no illusion. We are second or third-class material in this country and these are the rules of the game. Up to us, if we want to play or not. There's no catch 22, we can't make up our own rules.

[Yohan]

Again, maybe. I'll just enjoy 'my turn' for now and see where life takes me. But for now, it takes me away from the Philippines. I'm kind of burned out and drained from living here. The last year especially was wild, hectic and crazy and I couldn't handle a few more of those.

This post is kind of my way of apologizing for being an insufferably cocky bastard during my first years posting here. You may take it or leave it, but I was far too sure of myself and too certain of everything working out just fine. It didn't. We all live and learn, through our choices and mistakes and wrong turns.

Sorry to read that it did not work out as expected for you. But what happened to you happens to men all the time. Even to men who are disappointed with local Western women and think it might work out better somewhere else, abroad, in some foreign countries.

You never know and you cannot control what is in the mind of other people, you cannot predict your future...
For some men it really works out, and for some others, it does not.

There is nothing to apologize about that.

Generally it can be said, that Asian countries with low income like Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam etc. are not a good place as long as you, as an European man still have to work for a living. Savings? Forget about it. Money is difficult to control and as a foreigner you cannot live so cheap as some locals. You might run out of money soon.

Let me say, it does not make sense to compare Europe with Philippines or other low-income countries.

One of the major reasons after searching around in Asia very long time ago, I finally made it up to Japan which economic situation is competitive to EU. If you ask me the best place in Asia, at least for me. I am living now in Japan since 46 years, was never without regular job and income, had always full health insurance cover, always with the same Japanese wife and I have good contact with our 2 daughters.

About Philippines, I took care financially for many years for a child, who was one of the poorest among the poor in Mindanao, and now she is 28 years old, married, living in Cebu and still she is very grateful and keeps in contact with me and also with my younger daughter.
I have been many times in Philippines, but surely not for living there permanently - just as a tourist up to one month or so, meeting my foster daughter and don't ask me how much money I spent.

I often made comments in this forum about if you really want to relocate to abroad, as a first step forget about women and care only about yourself. Be careful about your documents like visa, working permit, about a regular job and income, and only if job/income and also housing is secure, consider to look for a female to live together with you.

I also said many times, it will be hard for you mentally if you are on an airplane back to where you come from.
if you fail, the most important point out of it is not to develop any form of hate - this is the way to self-destruction.
Well, life is going on, some men try it again, some men remain single...

Good luck to you,

Yohan

[Yohan]

Europe is pretty nice, too, in a lot of ways. @Winston idolizes it, as do quite a few other American posters on this forum. @Yohan abhors it. But it's really not that bad. Got some good friends there, some nice relatives too. Supermarkets that sell smoked salmon and a hundred different types of Belgian, German or Dutch beers. Clean, wide roads. A lot less gossip. Better schools, less pollution, hardly any small-time corruption. Roads that get broken up and fixed in a matter of days whereas a Filipino road can take weeks if not months to fix... Yes, I dare say I missed all that. A functional society and all that comes with it. I'll always cherish the Philippines as a holiday destination and I may spend my retirement there, part-time, but thats many decades down the road for me. I hope I can earn enough to be comfortable, when that day comes. Until then, I'll have to try my luck elsewhere. I hope you'll enjoy your stay in your little self-crafted bubble, for as long as you choose to spend in it, my friend.

Every person has a different story of his history of life.
In my case I always had the wish to leave Europe forever out of various reasons and never go back again and this is what I did.

Of course I am now 70 y/o since a few days, I was grown up during the post-WWII area. The situation might be better now, but after WWII nobody was really a normal person in Central Europe.

About myself, well, some people are lucky and some are not. We cannot choose where we are born and who our parents will be. It is true that I was badly treated as a child and my situation did not improve later on as a young man. Feminism and the Catholic church made my life really difficult.
No small-time corruption? For example real estate, regardless if rent or buy, is a very unserious and overpriced business in all Europe.

Nice relatives? I am happy I have nothing to do with them. Good friends? One was cheating me out of some money, another one was arrested as a burglar.... Housing? Old desolate buildings with very inconvenient rooms, with no running water during winter time, toilet shared outside of your rooms and especially living in suburbs was not safe because of street criminality...Winter time was a horror for me, very cold, everywhere snow around with public traffic broken down etc.

Food? There is nothing from Europe which I cannot find here in Japan, plenty of imports of any kind, I miss nothing...all is available here...

In Europe be aware that many shops close early, often are totally closed on Sunday, banking holidays, Saturday... opening times are overregulated.
Very difficult to buy something if you have still to work.

Women? The worst - highly materialistic, overdemanding, often crazy too and into alcohol and drugs, sex with multiple boyfriends, unwilling to work anything productive, I never met a woman from Europe who was single and still available. A terrible society. without any moral values.

If you ask me what was good while still in Europe, it was the social system, I never had a problem to find a good job easily, always received a good salary, overtime paid and all employers paid fully their part into my retirement fond and for accident, health, unemployment insurance.
Good was also the citizenship - passport available, able to leave anytime, able to come back anytime - no travel restrictions.

But in general, Europe is not a place for me, I never came back... now fully retired with good allowance, but still no desire, no intention even to travel and to visit any place in Europe, even not for a few days...