That sounded kind of sarcastic so I apologize in advance.  Consider this a bad reaction to your unfortunate choice of "prince."  When I was in the Philippines, I was treated like a king, and I didn't have to proclaim myself one.  I really wish you the best of luck in your search and no I'm not serious about looking for women in this country.  If you join up with blossoms.com you'll have no shortage of Asian penpals so know what you want and be ready to say no to what you don't want.

Don't do like I did and propose marriage before you meet her in person.  No one could get as lucky as I did. In meeting and wedding the perfect woman within less than a year, I might have used up many years' worth of good luck.  If you have the money do like Ray says and go there in person.  If you don't have the money to travel regularly, you should do something about that before you start looking for a woman to support.  If you're not interested in traveling to foreign lands, just marry an American.

In answer to the question that you actually asked, I've heard that Slavic women and Latino women are just as psycho as American women, but of course you can find wacko women anywhere who would be vastly entertained by helping you ruin your life, even in the Philippines where the GOOD women are in my opinion, the sweetest jewel of God's creation.

- Jeff

"Furthermore, majority of relatively happy marriages are among very religious people, people choosing to live a simple lifestyle, people living in the rural South/Midwest, and recent Hispanic immigrants. If you are a normal American guy living in a large metropolitan area marrying a normal college-educated American woman who is looking for the American dream (a nice house, kids, good life), then you are extremely likely to either get divorced or trapped in a miserable marriage."

"Women to avoid are women interested in Career, Personal Success, Personal Growth, Finding Themselves, and Self-improvement."

Jeff, you should know better than to encourage me, if you had known what my day was like you wouldn't have, but it's too late.  Believe it or not my day was SO BAD that I have nothing better to do than RANT, plus it's three beers later and that's one past my limit, so here goes.

Those were a couple quotes from the no marriage website you recommended (above).  A website that reminds me of some of the stuff on this Planet Club website that attracted me to it after I realized that the American women on eharmony.com were not looking for love, but for a fantasy superman to idolize first and reject later (="let's play games" as per Josh's relevant comment).  When some of my relatives' first reaction to my finding an Asian sweetheart was, "Be careful, you might get scammed," my gut reaction was, Thank God those women on eharmony didn't write me back, or I might have ended up with one of them.  My other gut reaction was, Oh jeepers, finally my family has something to say to me.  Because it is a sad fact, brothers and sisters, that the fall of the traditional family is synonymous with the advent of the "myth of freedom" in regards to family obligations.

You all know that I am not a Republican, not a "conservative," whatever that is, not a right-winger, etc, and here I am spewing family values.  I know whereof I speak.  I am an old hippie from a very liberal family.  A DYSFUNCTIONAL family whose six nuclear members live in four different states and five different cities.  I was told all my life that I could be anything I want when I grow up, I could go to any college I want and choose any career.  When I turned 18 my career was chosen for me and I was thrown out of the house in the general direction of anywhere but here, after no career counseling from my parents and nothing to go on but enough money to buy either groceries or marijuana, my choice.

And I am telling you that the most important term in my vocabulary, since I discovered the Asian extended family and spent a month there to back it up, is FAMILY OBLIGATION.  Compare that to the myth of freedom ("you can do whatever you want"...HORSESHIT!).  Family obligation is the greatest joy of my life.  A woman who would actually be SURPRISED if I didn't love her, instead of one who EXPECTS me to not love her so we can WORK IT OUT with the new self-improvement technique she has just discovered at the bookstore...

I have experience with artificial extended families, ranging from communes to groups of roommates working in a cottage industry, and nothing about living alone like a "free" American bachelor ever compared with the vastness of the communal experience.  So when I arrived in the Philippines and found hundreds of related people apt to drop in on each other without notice and WELCOME to do so, and found three related nuclear families living under one roof and four more related nuclear families within shouting distance, I was ecstatic.  I felt that I had reached the pinnacle of success as a human being to put 8000 miles between me and the American idea of family obligation, which is roughly something like: maintain a good credit rating and gouge your customers for as much as they're good for, to insure the best possible school for your children, preferably on the other side of the country so you don't actually have to deal with the narcissism that you've bred into them by promising them the moon since the day they were born.  But spending time with them?

The very existence of the term "quality time" points to the glaring lack of any such a thing in our so-called culture.

In the Philippines my wife's family is lucky enough to own a little land which was divided amongst them by a father who was smart enough to plant fruit trees all over the place.  Not everyone is this lucky.  Let's just say that intelligence breeds the opportunity to love.  In the absence of intelligence, poverty is a horrible thing.  But because my Philippine family owns fruit trees, and in spite of the fact that they have no expendable income, no money in the bank, and nothing to fall back on, they do have time to spend with their children.  They do not need to pull a major freak out or seek counseling for every little problem that comes up, because they have each other.  A wealth of aunts and uncles and second cousins exists as a resource that is readily tapped into.  Asking someone for advice or for a favor is a natural consequence of the fact that you helped that person out yesterday.  Family obligations?  Americans only THINK they are allergic to duty; they only think they are free.  In reality they are alienated, bolstered by toys and expensive entertainment, prisoners to the huge overstuffed homes for which they will owe for the rest of their lives, and if at any point this country should lose its hold on the world economy, we would all be a bunch of helpless misfits with bitchy wives and itchy trigger fingers eager to kill each other off, because we know nothing of togetherness that would do us any good in a real crisis.

What if that $30/hr job suddenly disappeared, along with the social security system, the unemployment insurance, etc?

Affluence is a poor subsitute for family.  It's no substitute at all.

I guess I started out to say that Western women are helpless as wives because they come from an unstructured nuclear family situation where they are raised by TV and daycare, not by a mother or Lola.  The myth of freedom (as opposed to family obligation) insures us that we can pursue careers and let our children's training fall where it lies.  (In the gutter, or whatever you want to call the lowest common denominator.)  Being addicted to privacy and allergic to family obligation means very simply that our women are going to be useless mothers because they are too busy, angry and competitive, and our men are going to be useless fathers because in order to compete they must lack a conscience.

It is not just American women who don't know about the JOY of family obligation and the fulfillment of having nothing better to do than to live amongst their kin.  Men are as deeply affected, and you can consider yourself lucky if you even recognize the problem enough to seek a woman with traditional values.

All this from a hippie liberal.  So much for stereotypes.

You're right, I have days when I think our capitalist system is cruel to those who don't fit in.  It is not however the fault of the average middle class person who is going to naturally want what is available in our society, because it's there.  I grew up middle class too.  Well, maybe I didn't grow up but you know what I meant.

There are unemployed siblings in the family, apparently the official line is that they're laid off at this time.  I don't think any of them gamble and I didn't see any true signs of laziness.  Well I don't mean to get defensive because I know you're not talking about my wife's family.  I think what you're trying to say is that I have put the Philippines culture on a pedestal and over-generalized the wonderfulness of Jovie's family to represent the rest of a somewhat troubled nation.  My outlook is sugar-coated because I was there on a honeymoon, on a vacation, not living as a Filipino the way that Filipinos live.  Believe me, I saw plenty of very miserable and unhappy people in our daily treks through Davao and surrounding cities.  To be honest, part of me is relieved that Jovie wants to come to the US, because it will motivate me to try for the gravy train again and hopefully avoid repeating previous mistakes.

I am also aware that after a year of living in the Philippines, I will have accumulated many small motivations for giving the US "land of opportunity" another chance.  Ants, mosquitoes, cockroaches the size of squirrels...cold showers don't do anything for the itching caused by the insect bites...being charged a white guy surcharge by taxi drivers and others...public toilets you can smell 1/2 block away...not knowing anyone I can have an in-depth, detailed conversation with in my native language...living amongst people who are so happy that I can't indulge my inner feisty little cuss around them (but then that's what you guys are for, right?  I will enjoy posting to this board once I am over there.)

On a serious note, I have to announce that our baby is not living anymore and Jovie is in the hospital now to have it removed from her womb.  She is crushed but still optimistic about the future.  At least we have proven that neither one of us is sterile.  She is taking it well (for being crushed) and proving once again her resilience and maturity when up against hard times.  Me, I gave up on maturity a long time ago and have settled for getting old, "keep on keepin' on," and do the best with what I have.