Live - Marrying a Filipina is just the Start of Knowing Her

This upload is about learning about your Filipina wife after marriage. I will talk about the general idea of continuing to get to know her, some things you can take to the bank she will want you to know about her, and some things you can do to get to know your Filipina wife better. I will put two links in the description box where a lot of these ideas come from, and sprinkle in my original thoughts and observations.

Please subscribe and get notifications to Love Beyond The Sea for Fil-West Higher Education If you have any interest at all in marrying a foreign woman, maybe you’ve heard Filipinas make good wives. If you are dating or engaged to a Filipina or have already married one, this is a video that you can learn from. Love Beyond The Sea is part of the Make Marriage Great Again network of channels.

You are welcome and encouraged to leave comments I can respond to later. You might want to tell me about how you’ve gotten to know your wife better or maybe something has surprised you about her.

My wife and I got married in less than eight weeks from the time I winked at her from across the planet. All I saw was a photo and I probably always looked at a profile of a Filipina in addition to her photo, but in this case, she didn’t even have a profile written up and I had to go back from a work break so I just winked at her. At that time the thought of being husband and wife 54 days later would have shocked me.

Something that helped me to be ok with marrying her so quickly was I knew that I had only one “must have” which was she be a Christian. The rest I believed would take care of itself. I proposed on day 18 after chatting so much I didn’t even realize it had only been 18 days. On day 12 I wrote an email to my pastor saying I was seriously considering asking her to marry me. I wonder if he fell out of his chair! It was as surreal as going to the Philippines and marrying her. I didn’t think much of it being so soon because it felt like we had talked so much that the next step had to be marriage. After all, that’s what I joined Christian Filipina for.

Now that we’ve been married for five years and nine months, I can’t imagine not having her in my life. Having said that, I also stated that we would continue to get to know each other after marriage as we waiting out the immigration process and then after she arrived and we were together every day. I have remarked multiple times in my videos that you can’t really know someone until you are married to them. When married you have no safety net if you believe that divorce isn’t an option. Before that, neither is obligated to each other to maintain or continue the relationship. Something else I’ve commented is that when married to a Filipina the man needs to continue to pursue her in the sense of dating her, and not living like he was still single. That could stall the development of the relationship.

A popular Bible verse is 1 Peter 3:7 where it says for husbands to dwell with their wives according to knowledge or in an understanding way. This tells me that the knowledge I acquired before we married needs to be applied currently to our ongoing marriage, but that the learning and understanding of my Filipina wife needs to be an ongoing process. My aim today is to highlight ways for the Filipina’s husband to go about this. There is much more to say than I can cover here and I am still learning like anyone else. Here are some areas to monitor after marriage to a Filipina. I will cover love language and follow that up with experiencing new forms of conflict after marriage.

What is her love language?-This should become clearer after marriage. You may not need to learn tagalog or bisaya but each of you has a natural love language you speak that your spouse may not. She may know a few words so to speak, but won’t be as fluent as you are. I will post a link to this. You already have cultural differences you will need to be familiar with and try to understand, and her love language isn’t likely to match yours.

It is only natural to try to meet her needs in the way you want your own needs met, and all of these five categories are good, but she will find that one resonates with her more. It is important that you know what her love language is. She can probably tell you from this list without a quiz but a quiz can help define her language.

Words of affirmation-using words to build up the other person; appreciation. This just happens to be mine. It was before marriage and hasn’t changed since being married. For instance, at work if I don’t hear from the supervisor all year that is fine as long as he says he is pleased with my performance. That’s what I want. I don’t want awards, trophies, or even gift certificates. Acts of kindness are appreciated but aren’t necessarily needed for me to feel satisfied in my marriage or work. Quality time is always good and so is touch.

I have told my Filipina wife I need her to appreciate the things I do for her and how I treat her. I was tacitly letting her know that I wanted her to tell me that I am good for her, that she appreciated me, that I needed to hear that. Having been married to her, I know by now that she understands this is a crucial component of her love to me. It’s one thing for your spouse to try to love you in a way she thinks you need, but another to actually be loved the way you need it, and this is important to talk about during your marriage. It’s ok to express that you want her to tell you that she appreciates all you do for her. When she tells me she married a good man, I am on cloud 9!

Since this is a strong love language of mine, I can’t quite understand it not being of the same importance to my wife or anyone else. Because of that, I enjoy telling my wife how much she means to me and how much I appreciate all the things she does. I don’t do this in order to earn her kind words because I need to hear them, rather because I genuinely appreciate her. I value her very much. Frankly it is difficult to know if this is important to her because she isn’t likely to tell me to cut down on my compliments because most people appreciate hearing that, don’t they?

If this is your Filipinas primary love language, how do you learn it? It’s not as hard as teaching an old dog new tricks. Give her compliments on anything, no matter how big or small. You’ll just need to be sure you are sincere, and even if you are not used to doing this, don’t worry if she thinks you are up to something. Just tell her that you are noticing so many ways that you appreciate about her.

Gifts Since this isn’t very important to me, when my wife first said that she liked receiving gifts, I felt a little ill. I was concerned that I would have to go through the motions of giving her some gifts, feeling like I was faking it, since it was not something I needed. I had in mind big, expensive gifts but that isn’t necessarily what she wants. She works full-time and we both help her family. I think my wife might prefer to give a gift to her family because she can meet needs. It may be that by me helping her family out as well, that she sees this gift giving as a gift to her, because it is helping the people most important to her. They were in her life for 26 years before we got married and it would be unreasonable for me to think I can compete with her family on an emotional level. I don’t worry about that.

I might prefer to do public speaking more than looking for some kind of trinket for my wife. She has told me at times not to buy roses for her because they are expensive and don’t last long. I think her family back in the Philippines is who she wants gifts for more than anything. Once again, the topic of helping the family is central to the marriage. Don’t be stingy, put yourself in her shoes and try to realize why it means so much to her. I believe if you love her this way, she will love you back, probably in your own love language.

Acts of service-Doing something for your spouse that you know they would like-cooking, washing dishes, vacuuming floors, etc. Maybe we are getting warmer here. I know she likes me to come upstairs and help her bring in the groceries, to help wash and dry the dishes, and certainly likes me to make her breakfast in bed. All in all, my wife isn’t unreasonable with what she needs from me. By virtue of me, a foreigner, marrying a Filipina, I understand she will need me to be supportive of the needs of her family. My wife gives a very significant percentage of her earnings to her family and asks me ahead of time if I am ok with it. I think when I help her in this way, she probably sees it as an act of service in a way that touches her heart. If this is her love language, it is imperative that I learn to speak it.

Quality time-undivided attention-walking together or sitting on the couch talking and listening. I would hope this would be important to anyone but for some women it is their primary love language. If this happens to be your Filipina’s love language, you would need to be careful planning too many things by yourself, as you might have been used to doing when you were single. My wife doesn’t like it if she comes home and I spend too much time on the internet, she wants me to eat with her, sit on the sofa with her or lay in bed. Even if we don’t talk. This is important to her.

Physical Touch-holding hands, hugging, kissing, intercourse, are all expressions of love. Before marriage as you may know I was alone for 30 years without a girlfriend and I was dying for physical affection; any kind of touch. I would say this was my most outstanding need when I was without a wife. This category is very interesting to me. Before marrying and after the physical element is still important to me.

After being married I am intrigued that I now have a great need to touch my wife, to simply hold her, hug her, snuggle up to her. She might tell you it is my favorite thing to do. I enjoy it immensely but there is more to it than that. Being physically close to her means being close to the woman I love and cherish, the woman I waited for, for a very long time before God brought us together.

I am talking about touch that I am initiating, just curling up to her throughout the night or taking a nap while she uses her phone. This kind of physical bonding was not something I could know I needed before we married. In her arms I feel safe, happy, content, fulfilled.

Just simply holding my wife means the world to me. The area of physical touch is also important to me as a love language when I do that to show her how precious she is to me. I don’t know exactly how important that is to my wife personally, but I want her to know that it is important for me to embrace her. I’m doing it for her but it also benefits me. Whether it is her main love language or not, I doubt any woman doesn’t appreciate various kinds of physical touch.

Experiencing new forms of conflict after marriage

Here are some ways you probably won’t know for sure about your Filipina wife at the time of marriage that could be a source of conflict.

How her period affects her-I hope this isn’t a drastic change from how she is the rest of the time. You may not be able to understand the way she acts during her period if she is prone to difficult ones, but you can at least understand that this is something women go through. Then when she is older there is menopause. One time I had someone I know tell me that if he had known about a woman’s period he never would have married! He said that his wife’s was so bad that when it happened he just got out of the house for the weekend or for a few days.

I remember him advising me to get all the education I can before age 40 then marry a woman 20 years younger. This man was a skilled architect in other countries as he could speak about eight languages. His wife ended up leaving him. If he is alive, he would be in his 90s. I remember scoffing at the notion of marrying someone that much younger, but that’s what happened.

How she handles stress or conflict-Before marriage you may not know too much about her ability or methods of handling stress or conflict. With a very long-distance relationship like with a Filipina when you are in another country, you will miss opportunities to observe conflict because you are likely to not be in many situations to find out. Even if you were to visit her in the Philippines you might not be there for many weeks and would normally tend to avoid stressful situations and conflict, but when you are married, with no safety net, that’s when you’ll find out.

Recently I read a quote on the internet that stated that “Your spouse is not the person you thought they were” or something close to that. It may have been a book title but I thought it was clever and accurate. You only get a certain perspective before marriage. You can always avoid putting yourselves in situations that involve conflict or not respond to it because you might feel you really don’t have to. It goes both ways and both of you will not be able to know some things before marriage.

Culture-You will have learned some things about the culture differences the two of you have, but you can’t be sure exactly what the impact will be when she is no longer living in the Philippines. Is she adjusting to not having the same food? Are you ok with her eating white rice every day? Are you ok with her making Filipino food for you? What about playing songs from the Philippines that you can’t understand? How will she handle the age gap when in the west where it is not very common.

Since I want to limit the time for this, we will pick this up another time and continue to learn about potential sources of conflict and other ways to get to know the woman you married from the Philippines better. I am still learning about my Love Beyond The Sea.