Hi Gang! I've been away for a while. Did you miss me??
Howard has touched on some things recently that have been going through my mind for quite some time. I would like to elaborate somewhat on my own thoughts over the last few months.
When I first started this quest about 4 years ago, (Wow, seems like a whole lifetime ago) I pursued this for many of the same reasons as many others here. I was tired and burnt out on the AW thing, and all the info available at the time pointed towards what appeared to be the best route for me personally. At that time I had heard of very few failures amongst fil/am relationships. Loyalty was to me the most important quality I was looking for. The philippines seemed to offer good odds at finding this. The women were beautiful, and supposedly had good values and all most of them wanted was "someone to love and care for them". After my failures I think maybe I expected too much, and was too late in starting.
I started out by going on one of the "tours", which cost me about $3500 and was a total disaster. This was the first time I encountered the PI culture, and to be honest the term "culture shock" does not do justice to it's reality. This was where I first encountered the deciet that some filipinas seem to be capable of. Also, this company I went with had many internal problems, and the person running it was more than a little decietful himself. He also wopuld not believe me when I told him some of the things that happened between me and one of his "nice girls".
My second trip I planned myself, and was much better. I went through personal adds and picked some girls to write to, and did so. I went through MANY short pen pal relationships, and met many of them on my trip there. This trip I met the wonderful Myrna, as well as about a dozen others. I started then to see a pattern and what started to appear to me as "a way of life". MANY of them would ask for money for a cell phone or something on the first or second time we spent time together. This was one of the things that attracted me to Myrna, was she did not. By the time of my third trip there, I had eliminated all but Myrna and Nannette. I met many more on my third trip, but for one reason or the other nothing clicked with anyone but Myrna, and we became engaged the night before I left the PI. All told, we had spent close to 2 weeks in each others company.
After that, just about every third email or phone call from her was asking for money for this or that. I paid her rent, for her college, her hospital bills, her mothers medication, loans to friends and family, and not last nor least, paid to build a nipa hut for her mother, complete with running water, electricity, and refridgerator. This was financially ruining me, and I told her many times over that I could not afford all this. I always got the same answer out of her. "Don't worry, when I get there I will work very hard to help pay it all back". I borrowed heavily against everything I had, my business, my vehicles, my home. My response to her promise of helping to pay it back was always the same, "If you come here with the intention of trying to make this work, that in itself is payment enough".
She put off coming here as long as she possibly could, seemingly delaying our petition proccess repeatedly. The reasons for her not to come got really ridiculous. For instance, "I can't come now because I must finish paying off a cd player, and must work another two months to pay this up". To this one I pointed out to her that she didn't make enough in 2 months to pay it off, and that every month she was there was costing me much more thatn that anyway". I paid it off, and it was stil over a month later before she finally got on the plane.
More later.
Larry.
