LIVE - Did I Fall in Love Too Quickly with my Filipina Wife?

My wife and I were pronounced husband and wife 54 days after we met online, and I had to fly to the Philippines to meet her, and if things had been a certain way, it could have been quicker. Had being single for so many years made me lose my mind? But how fast is quickly? Does it take six months to fall in love? I am going to make some statements tonight that will not sit well with some of you. Before you marry any woman, you need to know it will sometimes be difficult. The better you love her and lead her, the less issues you will encounter but there will be difficulties now and then. The good times should be more than the tough times, over time.

We didn’t know all that much about each other when we got married. Age gap, cultural differences, from other sides of the world, etc…I know there are some trolls who think that a Filipina will marry a westerner so that is not a big deal but staying married, and earning her respect and her commitment is what I want to help you with. Anyone can marry someone. I know that seemed impossible when I was struggling to find anyone to have a relationship with, but if you drop your standards low enough or don’t have any standards, that helps to have a relationship, but it hurts to get a good marriage.

I was alone for 30 years. I didn’t give up, didn’t quit. I refused to accept the intolerable position of being without a wife. If I have to explain to you the benefit of having a wife, then I probably won’t succeed at convincing you. I hope I don’t have to convince you that being single (and abstinent) is hard, It is difficult because it is unnatural. It isn’t supposed to be that way.

While I was single up to the time that I was married at 53, it wasn’t for lack of effort. I finally had to go where I was wanted (GWYW) and got married because I had options. I found women I could chat with who also wanted a husband. Imagine that! I picked the one who first indicated they wanted to focus just on each other, and I obliged her, and we got engaged in 18 days and I made marrying her my top priority.

I would understand people asking questions like this-

Are you sure you love her?

How do you know it’s love?

How do you know she loves you?

Would it have made a difference to wait longer, like another three to six months?

What if she reveals something about herself later that is disturbing?

Was she going to be different after marriage?

Isn’t this too soon to say you love her?

Are you in love with the idea of being in love? (It had been 30 years since my last relationship)

I am going to answer the questions I posed then explain why I believe that. No, I don’t believe it is possible to fall in love quickly. We got married quickly, am I saying that I didn’t love her? I say this because of the way I define love. Very often love is seen as an intense feeling of deep affection and those feelings, while wonderful, won’t help you stay married. Commitment will.

Very often, we say things like “I love the Philippines”, which means I have an affection for that country since I met my wife there and it is a beautiful country. We might even say we love this particular athlete or actor until they get traded or say something we don’t agree with politically. We might say that we used to love someone. But how can that be? Do we just fall out of love? I would question if it was love in the first place. I’m going to talk about love a lot tonight so please chime in with a comment or question.

Believe it or not, some people think that they can beat and abuse another person, yet maintain they love them. What on earth is going on in their mind? I have beaten you, yet I still love you? Get that crap out of here!

Feelings come and go; they depend on our circumstances. We might say “I’d love to go there someday” but never make the effort to take a vacation to that destination. Maybe we don’t feel that strongly about it.

The kind of love I want in my marriage is forged over time, through good times and bad. It involves giving, sacrificing, meeting needs, putting another’s needs above your own. It isn’t concerned primarily with what it receives but with what it gives. In my opinion, this doesn’t happen quickly. My commitment to her was to love her. That’s what I told her I was committing myself to do and I would have accountability to someone to kick my butt if I was failing to do that.

I’m going to answer the seven questions I mentioned earlier but quickly, let me recite 1 Corinthians 13:4-7- ⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;^[a] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

I have just shown you exactly what love looks like and it is a high standard but we are talking about love, which is something God takes very seriously himself. This is an excellent checklist to have for anyone at the end of their day, to evaluate their level of love.

Are you sure you love her? If asking this question before I married her then my answer would be that I will love her-I am going to love her. Anyone, and I mean, anyone, can say or feel or believe they love a woman but they haven’t married them yet, and it is easy to love when there is no commitment necessary. It gets tougher after marriage, even to a beautiful Filipina, because our sin natures are going to clash resulting in conflict. Then we are going to need to handle that conflict in a way that can bring restoration to the marriage. Ephesians 5 commands husband to love their wives as Christ loved the church (his bride) and gave himself up for her. That’s quite the responsibility and commitment that begins when married.

Until that wedding day, I believe a woman is fair game even while being engaged. If someone comes around that pursues her aggressively, she doesn’t absolutely have to marry the one she has been engaged to. It is up to him to commit to her and marry her before someone else does. I have shown interest in an engaged woman, two weeks before she got married. If she wasn’t happy with her fiancé, she could give me a chance. In this case, it was her fiancé who put a stop to it. Once married, that’s it, there can be no other competition or options for either. Just like you shouldn’t take anything for granted before marriage, you shouldn’t take anything for granted when married.

How do you know it’s love? Since there will be emotions and sexual attraction at work when involved with someone, like I said earlier, that shouldn’t be misconstrued as love, which is an action. Getting married as quickly as we did with me proposing on day 18 from thousands of miles away, how was I going to be able to actually love her? I could do that if I married her and we were together which we have been since January 11 of 2016. The love comes after we are married, for instance:

Staying committed to her no matter what, focusing on my responsibility to do what is best for her, which is what Jesus did for his bride the church. You know it’s love when you are more concerned about meeting her needs than having yours met. Luke 6 :38 says “Give and it shall be given unto you…” I haven’t had to be concerned about her giving back. Going to the Philippines recently was out of love for her because I wanted her to spend as much time with her family and friends as possible, so I have to take a back seat sometimes, but that is fine, because I love my Amazing Aiza. Now I have been back four times and can’t wait to visit again.

Sacrificing for her whether it be financially, sacrificing time to be with her, trying to give her a baby because that is important to her, putting her above friends and family. This needs to take place throughout the marriage, not just when we are clicking and things are going well.

As for after we got married and were going through the spousal visa process, I loved her from a distance by communicating with her, trying to learn about her, trying to prioritize her, trying to be with her as much as possible as if we were together, like we have been here in America since early 2016.

How do you know she loves you? If asking this question before our marriage the answer would be that I can’t know until after we are married. It would be better to rephrase the question as “How do you know if she is going to love you?” All I could say at that point (and likewise for her) is that I believe she will-based on what she has told me and my general impressions.

Under eight weeks and we were already husband and wife. I knew my motives better than she did at that point so I believed I would be committed to her, and my wife had to trust me that I was sincere.

All I wanted from marriage was companionship, touch and sex and my wife gives me that and a lot more. When we were in the Philippines recently, I hurt my back. This is what she did for me”

She fed me in bed with a spoon! She showered me. She bought me a muscle relaxant from the pharmacy, and she paid for a full body massage the next day. All without complaint. She was loving me; she was meeting a need I had. She was being a good wife. Later when I got the worst sore throat in my life, she went to about five pharmacies to look for something the doctor prescribed. She was loving me, not just saying she did. Please watch the video I made on Filipina caregiving called “In sickness and in health.”

I find it difficult to believe a couple can fall out of love. They must continue to love, it is an attitude and when it stops flowing, the marriage starts faltering. Nothing else should come before the relationship of a husband and his wife, not even the children, not even their jobs. I will not stop loving my Filipina wife. I deal with what we all do; I have not buried my head in the sand.

Would it have made a difference to wait longer, like another three to six months? That’s a fair question. I felt I knew about her what I really needed to know about her the most (she was a Christian) and believed I would be totally committed to her, so I simply asked her sooner than later. I had already waited the last 30 years alone and had spent ample time learning about marriage and was eager to actually start being married. I had been praying throughout that span of time. There was also going to be a sizable delay of being together as we processed the visa, which ended up being eight months.

If I had put it off for a while longer, I am not sure what that would have accomplished. We chatted at least four hours a day before we married so I had my chance to get to know her. My pastor even chatted with her (check out the video with pastor Scott). Sure, it was quick, but I had to ask myself if there was a good reason not to marry her quickly. No one is guaranteed another day on this earth and I wanted to get going.

What if she reveals something about herself later that is disturbing?

That didn’t matter to me because I told her I was committed to her until I died. She should feel safe with me that my love for her isn’t based on her being perfect. Filipinas are beautiful for sure, but no one is perfect. Our marriage should be an environment where she doesn’t have to be ashamed to tell me anything. Doing this builds trust and intimacy. We all want a safe place to be and a safe person to be with. Marriage should be that place. I am much more open and transparent than my wife, so it is only natural that I would be more revealing than she would be early on. I didn’t interrogate her while we were dating.

Was she going to be different after marriage? Will she show her “true colors” as in, was she deceiving me before marriage? I have wanted to title a video “Don’t gamble on love, a Filipina is a safe bet”, but I realize that there are times it doesn’t work out. My purpose for this channel is to help foreigners and Filipinas have a successful relationship.

We will just have to take it one day at a time because being in different situations will cause stress we haven’t been under before.

How will she respond to being so very far from home?

How will I respond to actually having a relationship?

How would I respond if I became a father? If she became a mother, would that change her?

How will our intimate life be?

How will she react to having money?

How will she respond to the culture of America? To working in America? To being married to an older, imperfect man?

I prayed for a wife for a long time and my church was praying for a wife for me. Now that I have one, I trust God to be able to learn how to live with her and her with me. There always needs to be concessions and sacrifices. I never wanted to know everything about her. There is only so much you can discover and that is limited to your questions and what she thinks is important for you to know.

Who to marry is a major decision in anyone’s life but that doesn’t mean that there is a one size fits all method to going about it. I should mention this, that for me, since sex before marriage wasn’t an option, delaying this even more by protracting the dating process was not appealing to me.

Even though we had seen each other on Skype, I told myself that even if she showed up in a wheelchair at the airport in Manila that I was going to marry her. Before the actual wedding, I believe plans can still change because until marriage, God has not joined the two together. In our case, I wanted so badly to commit to someone to make their life better that I decided this was the one.

Isn’t this too soon to say you love her? Yes, in a sense. As long as our love isn’t based on feelings but is based on a commitment to meet each other’s needs for the rest of our lives, no matter what. We tried to avoid saying I love you until we met in person on April 25 of 2015. Some people avoid saying I love you until they are engaged. The reason for this is to not cheapen the love. It is just too easy to say you love someone when you are not progressing towards marriage. When I told her I loved her, what that was really expressing was “I am committed to loving you the rest of your life and I will prove it by marrying you.”

Even arranged marriages have worked because the two focus on expressing love now that they are married. Adam, the first man, had never even known what a woman was when God gave him Eve as his wife and he was expected to love her.

Are you in love with the idea of being in love? Considering how long I had been without a girlfriend this would be a good question. I had been in love before but was rejected by a woman who preferred getting taken advantage of by a man who refused to marry her. I’d have to honestly say that I was not in love with the idea of being in love. That is because I was in love with the idea of loving someone, of being responsible to love someone, of committing to them. I knew it would be challenging. I also had unmet needs as a single man that only marriage could meet and that required getting married, not living in some daze of feeling in love.

I sometimes wonder what is happening when a foreigner and a Filipina have known each other for years and he has not proposed marriage. Some have not even made a trip to see her in several years. Good grief. I do believe some men have been wounded through divorce and are going to be cautious, some other men might be hesitant to “pull the trigger” and yes, other men might want to stay in the dreamland of a dating relationship with a beautiful Filipina because they are in the safe zone still. In marriage, the bloom is coming off the rose sooner or later, then you have to deal with each other’s sin weaknesses. If you are willing to accept that as part of a relationship that will be good for you, then I would want to get married as soon as possible.

I hope this helps you understand me a little better. There was a method to my madness. To be honest with you, it did escape me that I proposed to her as soon as I did, it seemed like we had known each other longer, but maybe that’s because we communicated so much early on. Somehow, we make a good couple despite the cultural and age differences. It seems like she has been in my life for decades, like I have known her for a long time. Like I said in another video, it seems like I have always known her; I have never felt out of place or uncomfortable with her, not even from the day we first met in person.

A few days ago, I drove her car because she had taken mine, and realized she was playing a flash drive with our wedding songs on it. Man was I pleased! I have the same list of songs on this computer and for some reason they all place twice before going to the next song, but that’s even better! So, I am a hopeless romantic.

It was enjoyable hearing those songs again, bringing back memories of those early days when eight weeks before we got married, neither of us even knew the other existed. She was the one I’d been praying for, for a very long time.

I believe that true love starts after you marry your love beyond the sea!