By the time most of us get around to marrying our first Filipina, we usually have been married before… at least once. Many of us have children from previous relationships and some of those are still with us. So how will the new Asawa handle the last wife’s gifts to her husband?

Sadly I have found more examples of the Filipina being less than noble when it comes to her behaviour towards your existing offspring. In one or two cases the marriage has collapsed because she simply can’t handle the fact he has children from ‘her’ and he loves them. Even if he is a great Dad to her own children from her previous marriage!

It doesn’t make sense and it isn’t fair but it is how it all too often is. I know of one couple that have yours, mine and ours and they seem to manage very well. I am sure there were issues to be sorted out from the beginning but having done that, they get along fine. But for my experience they are the exception, not the rule.

Even my own wife is honest about how she would treat any kids of a previous marriage if I had any (which I don’t). She would put her kids before mine and ours before all of them, with hers coming a very close second. At least she is honest.

The Filipina is an intensely loyal lover in so many ways; but that usually means the down side is jealousy that can kill at a thousand yards. If you do have kids of your own and are planning on marrying a Filipina, ask the question. How will she take them? Then ask again a dozen times. If possible, try and spend time together as a family unit before you commit. It really is that important and better to find out now, then have to find another Filipina than to regret things down the track.

Love is lovelier, the second time around… or so the song says. What I am intrigued by is the large number of Kano’s (western men) who leave one relationship with a Filipina and immediately start to look for another Filipina to replace her. Given the situation is usually because the Filipina did the wrong thing (in these cases), I wonder why the rush to return to potentially more of the same?

I can say from my own experience that after you have been dumped, deserted, cheated on or simply walked away from there is a desire to immediately reassert your worth by finding someone to replace the one that left you. When it is the man doing the dumping he has usually found someone else already but the ‘victim’ or abandoned partner could be the man or the woman.

I know several men who found their dream Filipina had been playing them like a fiddle all along. Even before they met online, she had a Filipino boyfriend or Kano boyfriend or even a Filipino husband and children stashed away somewhere. Some of these women have gone all the way to marrying and migrating to the USA, maintaining the magic for several years until the Green Card arrives and then its goodbye sucker!

That situation is for another post but what I want to consider here is; why then do these men race around looking for Number 2, and usually at the same chatcam site or online intro site where they met the last diasaster? Wasn’t one heartbreaking expensive lesson enough?

I am the first to admit Filipinas are lovely, I married one and am still married to her. But the more I learn about her the more I realise she is little different to her western sisters once you get past the ‘Pinay’ veneer. More than being a Filipina, she is a woman, a female of our species. If you can’t get along with one of those of your own culture you will not magically find the key with one from a very different culture.

I think a lot of the appeal to many is that they mistake the love and loyalty as subservience. It is easier for older, less attractive western men to find younger, very attractive partners in the Philippines and a few other choice locations. But once you are married and living back home in Hardgraft Tennesee, it is little different to any other relationship.

I put it to the readers that a lot of the problem lies not with the scamming Filipina but with the insecure, perhaps somewhat dominating Kano. The rate of divorces, scams and such like has increased in recent years and a lot of that is down to developments in technology making it easier and faster for scammers to snare their victims. While perhaps in the past marriages to Filipinas tended to last longer than average, that is no longer as true and another part of the reason has to be the contemporary Filipina.

But that doesn’t take anything away from the issues the Kano male might have to deal with. Having your heart ripped from your chest and stood on in stilettos then immediately looking for another person with the same shoe size is not the most rational course of action, surely?

If you have been wronged and you do want another Filipina in your life, or if the last woman was some other nationality and now you look to Filipinas for whatever reasons… take your time. Time heals all wounds and let’s face it, you are not the best prospect if you are still rebounding from the last relationship. Give yourself time to get over the heartache and you will be all the better for it. Better able to make more rational, thought out choices and better for whoever is going to be lucky enough to snare you.

Before you break a heart, and keep in mind that heart might be your own, stop for a moment and ask yourself “Why?”

Why a Filipina? Why not a woman from your own culture? OK, so you believe western women are getting too demanding, too much like the femi-nazi stereotype the shock jocks moan about. If that is true, ever wondered why?

If you couldn’t maintain a relationship with a woman who knows what you mean when you say something because she has the same language level and use of context as you, what makes you think you can communicate with a Filipina?

Most of the sweet young things that go online to find a partner are not the best educated of the population. Their English might be good conversationally when everything is simple and going well. But they can quickly lose the meaning of what you are saying simply because they have different connotations for the same words.

My wife was horrified and hurt when I casually said ‘I don’t care’. To her Filipina ears that means I don;t care about her, us, love, marriage or anything! If you say ‘conniving’ you can never say it humorously. It always means a corrupt and almost criminal conspiracy.

The best advice I can give you is to take your time. Enjoy the process of falling in love and keep that for after you have met in person. We can all easily fall in love when we are lonely, desperate for company and find an attractive and willing person online. Things happen at light speed nowadays and you could feel very strongly for someone in just a few weeks, even days.

I hope this has given you something to think about. Think about your motives and what you expect from the relationship and we’ll discuss that next time.

The reality is that most Fil-Am (Filipina-American or western male) relationships are between men and women of very disparate age groups. With but one or two exceptions where the Filipina may be a year or two older than her ‘Kano’ partner, the man is on average 18 years older than the woman.

I have seen couples, very happily hitched, who have twice that in age difference between them. He was 65 and she was just 21. I know of one couple where at the time of his death he was 75 and she was 23 or 28 (he told me 23, she told my wife 28). They had a son and lived happily together in the Philippines. After he died she married another foreigner, this time a little closer to her age at 56.

While finding a young, loving Filipina has its own risks (such as chat cam scammers), there are some things you should consider before getting a girl’s hopes up. Is she younger than your children of your first or other marriage/s? Spare a thought for how they might take the new step-mom when you get her home to the States.

I have a friend who is now well into his 60s, his lovely Filipina has just turned 30. One day they were eating at a restaurant in the USA when they got the stare treatment from a table of retired people on a bus trip. As they walked past them on the way to the buffet some of the people looked away in disgust. My friend stopped, turned and said loud enough for most in the place to hear “Don’t you think it is proof there is a God when a dirty old man and a sexy young gold digger find each other?” He swears he heard that proverbial pin hit the floor!

What about your family’s reaction to her? Your friends and work colleagues? We both know given half a chance she will charm them just as she charmed you and all will be fine. But you’ve got to get that half a chance first. If she truly is the one for you and you really do have a lot in common other than your need for her and her need for you (in whatever context fits)… then go right ahead.

Age really doesn’t matter but it can matter to other people. Of course, as Granma’ used to say; “Those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind”.