8 Concessions Needed When Marrying a Filipina

As you know by now, I am a big proponent of finding a Filipina to marry. I don’t deny that there has been a lot of heartache for men who have been scammed by unscrupulous Filipinas. Any time a man is going to marry someone from another culture and if they have a large age gap, some concessions will need to be made, that’s what I want to talk about today.

Please subscribe to Love Beyond The Sea for help for foreigners wanting practical information about having a good relationship with a woman from the Philippines. Go ahead and leave a comment and don’t forget to get notifications for upcoming videos. Check out my book in the description box, I have podcasts and the website lvbts.com. Here is the definition of concession-

Noun: concession

The action of conceding, granting, or yielding something

Considering the Filipina will not know anyone but you in her new country, won’t know where anything is, might not be familiar with the currency, not be able to drive or have a job yet, that will require extra time on the foreign husband’s part and I would like to think he would accept that responsibility as a way to show his Filipina bride that from now on, he is going to work to make her happiness and wellbeing a priority of his.

There is no place for selfishness in a marriage, and especially early on, concession will need to be made-The action of conceding, granting or yielding something.

To make this even more clear, I want to clarify by adding the word deference as the reason why concessions are made, the motivation for it. Here is how deference is defined-

Noun: deference

respectful submission or yielding to the judgment, opinion, will, etc., of another.

respectful or courteous regard: in deference to his wishes.

There you go. Respectful yielding to the preferences of another out of courteous regard. I am not a supporter of a so-called 50/50 arrangement. I prefer I give 100 percent and leave my wife’s response up to her. If I treat her this way, I won’t have to be concerned what percentage she gives me. We’ve been married since May of 2015 and barely knew each other, and hadn’t met in person before we got married. Since I am satisfied with her as a wife and she is happy with me as a husband, this formula is working. I understand that I need to initiate conceding and deferring to her in order to show her I am going to do all I can to make this work.

I much prefer this to the idea of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”, you do this for me, I will do this for you”, or “we’ll do it my way this time, and next time your way”. That is compromising, but I am going beyond that. This would be my perspective regardless of who I married, but since I married a woman from the Philippines, executing that will look different. So, what kind of concessions are in order? Here are 8.

Your time-This beautiful woman from the Philippines likely has never set one of her small feet in your country before, so she will be unfamiliar with many things including where anything is. If she doesn’t learn to drive, she will need her husband to take her everywhere, which isn’t a bad thing, and can help them bond more, but will also require his time, which he might not be prepared for. Until she works, if she works, she will be alone a lot especially if her husband is working. He will need to concede some time in light of her being in a new country far from home. What about learning how to drive?

Your priorities-Since she will need more time devoted to her needs than if you had married someone from your own country, some concessions will need to be made with the foreign husband’s priorities. I wish we had 48 hours to a day instead of 24 but at least we all have the same amount of time as the next person. To free up time for his Filipina, the foreigner will have to at least temporarily adjust and refine his normal routine for her. If he is retired, then he won’t have as many concessions to make.

Your money-He has already invested a good deal of money in order to meet her in the Philippines, get married (or later on a fiancé visa), and is at some stage in the visa process. There is a 10-year affidavit of support he is required to sign and he will need to be prepared to use money for her needs which is pretty much everything, until she can get a job, and she very likely will want one. I really think it is best to do this ungrudgingly. I support my wife’s desire to help her family in the Philippines and know how necessary this is for her.

Your home-In all likelihood, the man isn’t going to protest much about the way his Filipina wife will want to change the way his house looks, at least I hope not. She will want to get her little hands on the place and start to make her nest. I don’t try to interject too much of my opinion in how she arranges our home and what she buys for it. As for our house in the Philippines, I have tried to have little to say about that too. The reason is I know it is important to her and I want her to have control of this.

Your appearance-You might have more to say about this one. For example, generally a Filipina won’t be enamored with facial hair. My wife wasn’t at the start but then it kind of grew on her (no pun intended), when I had a beard. Your Filipina wife will likely have different ideas about how you dress too. I think she will want her husband to look nice sometimes but presentable all the time. Try to work with her on the changes she may want to make in your apparel. Why? Because she is a woman and she does care about how he presents himself and may take it as a reflection of herself. She doesn’t want other women to think she isn’t capable of making her husband look nice.

Your food-Probably not a big change here, but she might want to eat a more traditional diet like she is used to, and will need to know where the Asian food places are located. She might want you to try it and I suggest giving it a try for her sake. We drive about 60 miles to a place that has a Philippines aisle in it.

Your interests-This is just the logic of having so much time in a day and needing to spend quality and quantity time with his Filipina wife. It is up to the foreign husband to decide if he needs to drop something but going from being single to being married will require some interests to get less time allocated to them.

Your future plans-The last one I will list is your future plans together. Initially much time will go into helping her adapt and adjust to her new country and culture, including the weather, but in due time there will be discussion about the future. In my case, I was striving so hard to find a wife I didn’t want to contemplate a future doing my own thing, so making concessions to her and what she wanted to do was relatively easy.

When we got married, I would have said there was about a zero percent chance I would seriously consider retiring in the Philippines, yet here I am having built a house there with my wife already. We are both paying for it. I even told my wife’s mother I wasn’t going to return to the Philippines because of the back pain I had on the flights there and how much of a grind it was, but now I have been back (3 additional times). I was being totally honest but things change when you’re married.

After getting more acquainted with the Philippines and learning how much my wife loves her family there, I have reneged on my original desire to retire in America, and after I die then my wife would return to the Philippines. That was the plan early on. I am more open to retiring over there depending on the kind of meds they have. I am not suggesting you retire there, that is entirely a decision to be made by you and the Filipina you marry. It is a rather large concession, but there are other positives now that I have considered living there with her.

I don’t mind respectfully yielding to my love beyond the sea.