... in response to Question for Ray, posted by Rota20 on Oct 29, 2004A lot of those experiences of mine are somewhere in the archives.
I never started out searching for a Filipina mate or any mate for that matter. I just pulled into Subic as a young crazy sailor on my first deployment and fell in love with the place, including the women. I met my first wife over there and had a great marriage for most all of the 23 years we were married until we divorced. After I was divorced for several years, the Filipina wife of an old Navy buddy was trying to set me up with one of her relatives back home. After a while, I finally agreed to write to her cousin just to shut her up. She kept bugging me until I wrote that letter and the rest is history. I don’t think things could have worked out better for me.
I don’t think there is any special advice for a guy like yourself on active duty that would differ from a civilian. One thing you could do is ask some of your shipmates who are married to good Filipinas to recommend a nice relative in the Phils to correspond with. That way, you can usually find out a LOT of good info about the lady (and vice versa) before you do get involved, by pumping her relative for info. Before I met my present wife in person, we knew a whole lot about each other because I had frequent contact with two of her close first cousins here in the States.
In general, Filipinas seem to make excellent Navy wives. I’m sure that you’ve seen some of the bad apples hanging out in the clubs when hubby is out of town, but those seem to be a small minority. Adjustment to Western life for a Filipina is usually a lot easier if she is married to a sailor because there are so many Filipina Navy wives at most all bases. When I go to the Commissary or exchange on base here in San Diego, I can see that probably 60% of the employees are Filipino and the customers make up a similar percentage. There is no problem finding Filipino food or products from the Philippines here in San Diego.
You may have to comply with some annoying Navy regulations and red tape if you marry a foreign bride overseas, but for a fiancée visa the process is virtually identical for civilians and military. If your Navy job requires a very high security clearance, you may have some extra rules to deal with also. Check with your Personnel and Legal Offices to see what restrictions there might be.
I would get to know the lady’s family as well as you can BEFORE you decide to marry. If she has any unemployed adult brothers or if any family members act like leeches, then be especially wary. A military career is still highly respected in the Philippines so there should be no problem with your job from their standpoint. Get friendly with some other guys married to Filipinas and you may be able to get a small preview of what life is like with a Filipina wife. You should try some of the foods to make sure you don’t get sick when you eat dried squid or fish eyes for example (LOL).
Also, if you don’t mind a divorced lady, usually with children, you can find a lot of Filipinas right here in the States and maybe save all the visa and immigration hassles. There a lot of them near most of the major bases and quite often these ladies are real sweethearts but they just had the misfortune to marry an American jerk.
Ray
