My Only Regret Marrying my Filipina Wife
A subscriber asked me one day if I had any regrets marrying a Filipina. This wasn’t something that had crossed my mind before so I thought I would take some time and put my thoughts down. As always, I hope that someone can learn from what I say. I am not the final authority on anything, I just try to follow the word of God in this relationship and share as our relationship develops.
Love Beyond The Sea exists to help foreigners and Filipinas have a good marriage. From before even contacting someone online to thoughts on providing for her at death, I hope this runs the gamut as I gain more experience with my wife. Check out lvbts.com for podcasts as well as a private consult services, subscribe to Love Beyond The Sea and get notifications.
Getting married so soon-It is possible to marry a Filipina in a lot less time than it would take in another country; and you should go where you’re wanted. For me this was a good thing as I had been looking and waiting for someone I wanted to marry for a very long time, where it was reciprocal. When people speculate that a couple got married too soon, I think they are saying that they got married without doing some critical thinking about the relationship. I think that can happen even when couples are together for several years or more.
When the husband is older like I am, it is possible he has figured out over the years what is important and what isn’t and what is more important than others. He may be in a good position to put more emphasis on the younger Filipina’s total wellbeing than when he was much younger. My priorities changed over the years, and coupled with studying as much about marriage as I could, helped prepare me for marrying my wife. That is not to say that I knew everything about her, because that isn’t possible. I knew what I needed to know and had a sort of blueprint for how I wanted to build the marriage. It’s like a plant that needs to be watered regularly and that is essentially what Love Beyond The Sea is about; practical ideas for managing a foreigner and Filipina marriage well.
Sending money to the Philippines-You don’t know exactly how this will need to be worked out until you have been married awhile. You can address it before marriage in a general way, but I wouldn’t suggest making hard and fast boundaries and dollar amounts right away. You just never know what could happen. Someone could need money for a burial, a legitimate and major medical issue, or some other unexpected and unavoidable circumstance.
This is also just part of marrying a Filipina. If you married an American woman, you might complain she wastes money on all kinds of things she doesn’t need, that she is high maintenance and has expensive tastes. If you marry a Filipina, she likely has a family she has been supporting and is expected to continue to support, that much, you should know and now you do.
All the support we have sent back home has been for necessities or above that by our own choice. It has been for good and has done good. In either event, you can’t easily keep the money at home. I don’t regret this because the money we send back home is not wasteful and helps others. Now, here is my only regret in marrying a Filipina. I will give full disclosure here.
That I didn’t do it earlier-I was almost going to say that after ruminating on it for a while, that I had no regrets, however that wouldn’t be entirely true. The only regret I have is that I didn’t do it sooner. I was 53 years old, which isn’t ancient, but it was beginning to feel that way. I assumed I would be married by the time I was 25. This is tempered knowing that literally, my wife wasn’t born until I was 27. The way it worked out, there was no way I could have met her and married her when I was in the so called prime of my life. It seemed like women at 25 had already married and moved on with their life, but not so with the Philippines. There you can find many women that age who wonder if they are too old to get married. Same with some other places.
I have no problems saying I need this little woman from Davao City, I need her in my life. She is such a blessing. I have never wondered what my life would be like had I met her earlier, I guess the idea of a foreign wife was just not realistic to me before I met her, that’s why I am suggesting a foreign wife to my viewers who are single and unattached.
Better late than never. So many of us have married a Filipina and are glad we did. I don’t want anyone to regret not trying or at least, not assembling enough information for them to know if a Filipina wife is something they should think about. This channel is all about all of that. You only have so much time, and you aren’t even privy to that.
Go where you’re wanted. No regrets here, finding my love beyond the sea!