Wife from 3rd world with education, on her way up the USA socio-economic ladder

[robert angel]

Well, I know of at least one good guy here, who had a wife from Colombia. The Colombiana earned a degree as a Registered Nurse and between the pressures of the job and the considerable money she earned here in the USA (and there's always a few other details in such story), a relatively long marriage fell apart.

Same thing happened to me. It was after about a dozen years, interestingly the length I've been married this second (current) time, but back when my then, first RN wife hit a rough patch and she and I split after 14 years and two children. When things got rough, she didn't need me or my money anymore.

There's all kinds of scenarios and in hindsight, I should've seen the strong possibility beforehand, especially as she was an ophan who barely survived a horrible childhood and had showed sad signs of her past early on. Never marry someone because you feel sorry for them in large part, as I did.

But how do you guys feel about your foreign wives or foreign girlfriends coming to the USA and 'making it' in a good earning career? Encourage them? Push them one way or another?

My wife is now is hitting her stride in her career with the Dental and Medical equipment and machinary company she's worked at for the last fI've years. They're sending her to Dallas TX for 4 days, to present to employees of the company she works for, employees who'll come from Mexico, all 50 states and all of Canada. She's never spent more than two nights away from me and hates the idea, but duty calls.

I guess some guys would worry, but this time around the elements before and during our marriage are a lot different. For one, they started off better and have stayed grounded. She's always been about the family unity that endures and God. Values.  I'm not sweating at this point. That's not to say I'm naive and unaware that things can change in short order and that conditions 'outside the marriage' can be root causes. Only time will tell....

[benjio]

But how do you guys feel about your foreign wives or foreign girlfriends coming to the USA and 'making it' in a good earning career? Encourage them? Push them one way or another?

As chauvinistic as this may sound, if you're perfectly okay with her "making it in a good earning career," why leave the U.S. to look for a woman in the first place? I understand that the most powerful draw of foreign women is their beauty. But I think we can all agree that their traditional approach to marriage and husbands as heads of household is a much more appealing character trait. Robert, I think your situation is different because from what I've read about your journey with your wife, her career success happened organically. But if I met a woman in Colombia for example, and she was expressing sincere interest in studying to become some type of professional when we moved to the states together, it would be a HUGE turn off for me personally.


There are plenty of beautiful women in the states. I can find a career woman there. They are harder to land and even harder to keep, but if you can't do either you probably need to work on yourself before hopping on a plane and going somewhere else just to bring a woman back. We all have to remember that even though these women are from a foreign land with different customs and cultures, life in the U.S. will inevitably change them a bit. Whatever shortcomings that stopped you from getting a girl here may not have been as obvious while you were dating your future wife back in Thirdworldsville, but they will be gleaming in the U.S. Women notice things like that. THen, all of a sudden they find themselves considering their options for bigger, better deals.

[mambocowboy]

Well, I know of at least one good guy here, who had a wife from Colombia. The Colombiana earned a degree as a Registered Nurse and between the pressures of the job and the considerable money she earned here in the USA (and there's always a few other details in such story), a relatively long marriage fell apart.

Same thing happened to me. It was after about a dozen years, interestingly the length I've been married this second (current) time, but back when my then, first RN wife hit a rough patch and she and I split after 14 years and two children. When things got rough, she didn't need me or my money anymore.

There's all kinds of scenarios and in hindsight, I should've seen the strong possibility beforehand, especially as she was an ophan who barely survived a horrible childhood and had showed sad signs of her past early on. Never marry someone because you feel sorry for them in large part, as I did.

But how do you guys feel about your foreign wives or foreign girlfriends coming to the USA and 'making it' in a good earning career? Encourage them? Push them one way or another?

My wife is now is hitting her stride in her career with the Dental and Medical equipment and machinary company she's worked at for the last fI've years. They're sending her to Dallas TX for 4 days, to present to employees of the company she works for, employees who'll come from Mexico, all 50 states and all of Canada. She's never spent more than two nights away from me and hates the idea, but duty calls.

I guess some guys would worry, but this time around the elements before and during our marriage are a lot different. For one, they started off better and have stayed grounded. She's always been about the family unity that endures and God. Values.  I'm not sweating at this point. That's not to say I'm naive and unaware that things can change in short order and that conditions 'outside the marriage' can be root causes. Only time will tell....

I'd  be happy she's making so much I can retire....  This country changes people , yes, but it's more about bringing out qualities that are already there. If i was a betting man i'd say you're safe with this wife. She sounds well grounded and a woman of integrity...

[Fosgate5]

I used to think I had to absolutely had to have some woman that was highly successful and once I got someone with that qualification I realized how wrong I was in wanting someone that was as career oriented as I was at the time. My priorities at the time was career first, family second. My priorities have since changed since and I believe she is the same. While I'm fine with her being a work at home mom, she has no intention of being so. She has an understanding of the high amount of feminism and man shaming here in the U.S. and that was one of my largest fears is that she falls into the "Status Quo." I love each other for who we are as we are and aware of negative outside influences.

[robert angel]

The word 'organic' as Benjio used, does sort of fit my wife's work situation, her history in the USA--how it's evolved.

She earned a rigorous 5 year computer engineering degree in her country from a fine college. It was more for her family, what they thought the 'future' holds, than what was in her heart. All her credits (except for her nation's history and religous courses) were accepted here in in the USA.

But it wasn't easy here, especially with her written and spoken English challenges. She has a lack of self confidence regarding her English language skills. Still does. On top of that, she was also firm on wanting to work with people, rather than with 'things'--namely computers.

It was tough, as in college, she had interned as an engineeer with Coca Cola back home, and they liked her so much, they made her a 'regular'. So she landed a job at Coca Cola, working logistics after graduation. That's about as good a job as a woman's bound to get in her nation and then she gave all that up for my silly ass.

As a result, she started low on the ladder in the USA. She was ready to take a first job working at McDonalds, but I vetoed that. Had seen some Filipinos working at Goodwill and Salvation Army and that wasn't an option I supported either. I quickly rejected her interest in working at Victoria's Secret too, LOL.

But with her REALLY wanting to work, I finally relented and she took a job at the mall, stacking and restacking clothes at JC Penneys. She'd fold, rack n stack, the customers would quickly make a mess again. Different than the polite society she knew back home.

I remember the first day she had to drive herself to work alone. Even though I helped her learn to drive well, she was so afraid of the road, of being a WOMAN driving, that she stayed in the right hand lane the whole ten miles there, until she got to the prerehearsed intersection and parked a distance from other cars.

After a few weeks at Penneys, a friend of mine who's a Public School Principal, hired her at a big K-8 school. She was terrified. I made her rehearse, standing in front of the mirror, barking out terse orders like 'Quiet down!!' , 'Slow down!!' , "Hands to yourself!!--"Personal space!!"--"Eyes on your own assignment!'

We look back now and really laugh about it.

She stayed at the school five years and Lordy, they loved her. Big time. Each year, they moved her up a grade, so she worked from K to 4th grades, some years spitting two grades. When she started there, my younger son was in the third grade, same school, which was very cool. Plus the school's about a third of a mile from our house, so her fear of driving wasn't an issue. She walked our son to and from school, to her job.

Her 1st year of eligibility, they elected her 'employee of the year'. Each subsequent year, they nominated her yet again, but she said 'No--let someone else get the honor'. All too classic Asian 'team/family first' mindset. Her lack of confidence drove her to work so hard that she made 99% of the other employees look like slugs! But again, they accepted her--they really loved her positive attitude--this little dynamo, shorter than some of the 6th graders, LOL. Even the 'bad kids', the parents, all loved her. She could straighten out delinquent type kids better than the Assistant Principal could. It was odd. Even the hard core misbehaving kids, seeing how unfailingly nice she is, didn't want to upset her. Hard to decribe the effect she had.

They offered to give her full fledged Teacher status ---her own grade and class, full time. She'd taken the required state exams and passed them, but swear to God, she refused, saying "My English writing and speaking skills aren't good enough---I don't want to negatively impact the students--it's not fair".

Never mind that she passed the damn tests and THEY all thought she was 'good enough', or the fact that we have USA born associate and deputy superintendents making well over a 100 grand a year, overly proud power trippers, who have trouble speaking or writing a grammatically correct paragraph.

I was a bit pissed, with  her halfway towards being vested in a very good pension already and then looking to do something else. 

But hell, if she wasn't gonna be happy, we wouldn't be either...

She'd been working a couple nights a week at Chick Fil-A to put extra money away and guess what? They loved her. In a year, she had taken all 13 exams to be a Manager, the first person who ever did it in our city.

She couldn't believe that she was going to be put in charge of everything. No, she wasn't the owner operator (who was rarely there when she was) but she hired, fired all employees, ran everything, supervising, ordering everything needed,  handled payroll, schedules, customer service, etc. She even helped unload the truck--all,92 pounds of her!

She had started that job part time, to buy herself a nice house back in her country, which she did, then insisting on putting in both our names.That was one of her life dream goals.

When she accepted the management job, the pay was better than a Teacher's and Chick-Fil-A is a great company. But beyond the mental, it was long, hard, physical work. There was nothing she asked anyone to do that she wouldn't do herself. She lead by example and I'm happy, as her having to lead did change her for the better, at least in the USA.

Along the way, she took college classes in  Cisco Networking (computers) in Medical Coding, as well as in Nursing, but never decided on pursuing those career trajectories to their end, although her grades were great. She even took classes to improve her spoken and written English expression. Still worries about her accent. Still trying to improve her English to this day.

Then, the multi millionaire owner of a large dental and medical equipment and  machinery company, a nerdy, eccentric guy who was driving his Audi R8 super car to Chick-Fil-A everyday, always ordering the same chicken salad sandwich, along with a glass of tap water, noticed her.

A sharp study, he saw over time, how well my wife ran the operation, running it like a Swiss watch. He suggested she contact Human Resources at his company. It took her a few weeks for us to decide. She had two interviews, took a few aptitude exams, going by the book. She never said: "Mr. ____  recommended me." One day, he came in for his 10,000th chicken salad sandwich and glass of water and said: "thought you were working with us already."

They offered her a job, not a great one--it involved her going after large medical practices, outfits that the company didn't have accounts with. Cold calls. Hard work and she didn't like it. She's not a pushy person and had to deal with rejection, along with a lot of  azz hole Dr.s. She was successful nonetheless and THEN they decided to close that dept. She was mortified.

But when that door closed, another opened. The company had enlisted contractors from India, Eastern Europe and Canada, to develop a new, complex, state of the art on-line ordering system, capable of reducing the work force, reducing the # of 'on the road ' reps in Mexico,  Canada and the USA. Efficiency. Tens of thousands of high priced products involved. My wife was familiar with almost all of them, their pricing, images etc.

A lot of work, a ton of money involved in finally 'doing it right' for on-line. Customer profiles, algorithm buying patterns, more than we realize.  Then her boss, the guy in charge, of her dept., a guy with degrees from Stanford AND Cambridge, was fired when he missed dead lines. The suits in NYC wanted it DONE, 'or else.'

That left my wife to work with these contractors, many of them working from abroad. Her computer skills, a need for them AND for working with people, had come full circle. The contractors eventually left, leaving one Romanian contractor that accepted a USA residency contract. An immigrant herself, she loves my wife's work ethic and together, they're working out the inevitable remaining technical bugs. The new system's launched and rocking sales.

Next month, she's going to Dallas TX for four days, to an international convention to present and answer questions about on-line, "eCommerce."  It'll involve company staff, a lot of reps from Mexico, from all 50 states, as well as from all of Canada.

Aside from visits home, she's never gone that long without me, without us sleeping together.

She's terrified, worried she can't handle it. Her Romanian colleague won't be there either--she'll be away--at wedding in her own home country.

I don't doubt for a minute that she'll do just fine. It's that sort of worrying, along with her 'Asian mentality', pushing herself, wanting to do great for the group, not seeking individual glory, that drives her to high levels of achievement.

I wish she'd be more pushy, more assertive and I tell her that she needs to up her game and play hardball, USA style. She has done so to a degree, but that mindset shift is still a work in progress. She'd make more money if she took credit for all she does, but she's just too damn nice.

But, she's a great example of how immigrants made our nation great and given the right measures, will continue to do so.

[Jhengsman]

But with her REALLY wanting to work, I finally relented and she took a job at the mall, stacking and restacking clothes at JC Penneys. She'd fold, rack n stack, the customers would quickly make a mess again. Different than the polite society she knew back home.

I had the opposite experience. In the Philippines every clothes table at a SM department store had a girl standing next to it as their work day seemed to consist of refolding sampled clothes and keeping that single display in order. When my wife arrived in the US she would take a t-shirt and just discard it as she was used to in the malls of Manila until I pointed out that there wasn't a girl stationed on that rack of clothes like she was used to. It took a few months to break that habit.


While some customers tore into a rack and just dropped things anywhere in a department store with the few staff at a central cashier station it wasn't a majority

[piglett]

my wife arrived almost 6 years ago from the Philippines. She 1st took a job at a local hotel cleaning rooms.

after a couple years she took a nurses aid course & went to work at a local nursing home.

in less than a year the hotel called & wanted her back so she agreed to work there part time which turned

into almost full time. The nursing home made her employee of the month & they wanted to send her to a

medical nursing aid course which would allow her to dispense medication. this is now her night job plus after

working all night she comes to the marina where i work to clean boats.  She uses the boat cleaning money to

pay for her own car which bought new last summer plus she has purchased 7 hectors of farm land from her

aunt in the province where she is from.