Mistakes I've Made in my Fil-Am Marriage you can Learn from

I’ve talked about many things that I have learned in my marriage to my Filipina wife, that help me to be the kind of husband she wants to have. Marriage is two opposite worlds colliding and on Love Beyond The Sea, that’s my interest-marriage. If you want to be married to a woman from the Philippines, you know there are many differences if you are from the west and I can help you with that; I have to know what I am talking about because I intend to stay married.

I wanted my wife to know that I was going to be a strong leader from the start of us being together but learned that backfired a few times early on as I asserted myself the wrong way. Christ is the head of the church and countless times we ignore his claim of authority over us and he is patient and longsuffering with us. Yes, you are the head of your Filipina wife, but often you will find yourself learning to love the way the Bible describes love-1 Corinthians 13:4-7 says-Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

It will require the help of the Holy Spirit to love like this. This is the type of love that will inspire your wife to submit to you. This is the kind of love that she responds to. This is exactly God’s love for us, every day.

There will be differences in each other just naturally and combine that with different cultures, nationalities, ages and having spent little to no time in person with each other, and you see the potential for clashing. Here are a few more things that have helped us develop a more harmonious marriage. By the way, it took us less than eight weeks to get married. I don’t know if people are impressed by that or think we were both crazy but we are still together! If I learn something, I want to share that with my subscribers so if you haven’t, please subscribe to Love Beyond The Sea. I have podcasts on Casting Beyond the Sea you can access on Podbean among others as well as my website lvbts.com.

Take it outside-If I was fuming due to another unexpected and unexplained cable bill increase or phone bill increase, I’ve learned to simply go outside and walk around the block if I felt like I was going to erupt at customer service. I could blow off some steam and my wife wouldn’t have to know. Better yet, I need to not be rude and have self-control.

Stay calm with everyone-I have learned I need to focus more energy on simple fact-finding and try not to take things so personally like with customer services which can drive me crazy. One day I got mad at a rep and oops, she was a Filipina. That didn’t go over well with my wife. I go into it knowing it is going to make me mad but need to try to go into it knowing that I am going to focus my energy on getting answers, without getting upset. I must remember that when I respond in a mature way, in control of my emotions, that is something that my wife respects. I still haven’t made an international trip with her without having an airport TSA person getting on my nerves, which in turn gets on her nerves.

Give her space-A mistake you’d be making early on in your marriage to a Filipina would be thinking she is going to be so overjoyed being in your country with you rescuing her from extreme poverty, that she will not complain about anything. She is going to cry many times due to homesickness. I think under the circumstances it is best to try to avoid showing her how you are the most important person in her life now. As a man, it is very difficult to not start asserting your influence over her right away. This takes some sensitivity and I am trying to help with this in this three-part series. A Filipina is going to be under a lot of duress with all the new things happening in her life and won’t respond well to insensitivity.

Don’t try to change her-As with the previously mentioned grocery shopping experience, I can’t force her to not sometimes eat something like a doughnut, or ice cream since I like it myself. I also think it is important to let her know I don’t want her to get fat. To be fair, I have decided to not overdo it myself.

Don’t try to own her-I am glad that my wife wanted to work at the company I worked for 40 years. However, if she had wanted to try something else, I should let her explore that. We had a situation where she suddenly was asking me to let her work somewhere else, which all things considered, made little sense. She was wanting to not go to work. It turned out that she was being bothered by some jerks at work. She didn’t want to tell me that but I simply couldn’t acquiesce to her request because something about it didn’t make sense.

My wife needed to learn that taking the easy way out is usually not good for the long run. She needed to confront some coworkers or let management confront them. She bravely talked to human resources with me at her side. To make a long story short, she did what she had to do. She was later hired full-time and I am so proud of her. This would not have happened if I had not decided to make her face this problem, which I am sure wasn’t easy for her to do but it was the right thing to do. My wife is a great employee.

Like what she likes-Her family for sure, her favorite movies, singers. She likes to travel and I had never had a desire to travel but I have decided to sacrifice my football and basketball tickets to the university so we can either travel within the country or so she can have the opportunity to go back to the Philippines as often as she needs to. We have been to Paris, which is a place I want to see again someday. Even small towns in the United States have been enjoyable. I have enjoyed hitting the road with her and we have plans for this year too depending on the changing coronavirus restrictions.

Knowing my rough spots-I value closure to a very high degree so I am well aware if there is the chance something could get delayed then I will be challenged to not get stressed out. I like things to work in a straight line and of course that’s not the way it usually is. This is why I continually get mad at doctor’s offices and customer service reps.

I also tend to get upset with myself if I don’t do something well or felt like I wasn’t going to do it well. This upsets my wife.

I need to get 8 hours of sleep a night, always have needed to. When my wife got home 3.5 hours after I did, I learned to take a nap after work if I wanted to be able to stay up later with her. If I don’t plan for this, I am going to get on her nerves.

Hair today, gone tomorrow- At the end of part 2 I mentioned about cutting my hair for her, but that’s not all I did…,

Generally, Filipinas aren’t keen on men with beards as facial hair is rarely seen in the Philippines outside of a goatee or some kind of mustache. At 53 when I met her online, I had grown my first ever beard and got to liking it. It hurt me that she didn’t like it. I recall a video chat with another Filipina who was not shy at all to tell me she didn’t like my hair and that probably included my beard. Just like I did with my hair, I got my beard cut just for my wife.

Now after she is here in America, she wants me to grow a beard, so I did, then a few weeks later she tells me she wants me to shave it off! After a number of months, she asks me to grow a beard again, and by this time I changed my mind and didn’t want a beard anymore but I reluctantly started to grow another beard. My point in this is that as often as you can, I think it is wise to please her in any areas you can. I remind myself from the Bible that love is not selfish so I try to accommodate her when I can.

After a month she says she wants me to shave the beard off but I honestly told her that it is hard for me to keep changing my perspective on this and that since she has her reasons for asking me to grow one in the first place, this time I wanted to find a style we both liked and see how that goes. If she just can’t stand it then I will need to accept having to shave it off again, simply to make for harmony.

She insisted on shaving my beard and thought she could do better than the barber, despite not having any experience! I allowed her to shave my beard and she took it very seriously and did a great job! She bought a straight edge and uses other tools to do the job.

Learn about your wife-Understand her. The Bible tells husbands to dwell with their wives in an understanding way. This takes patience, observation, and asking questions. I should want to understand my wife a lot more than I understand my job or my favorite sports team. She is so much more valuable. I need to learn how to read her reactions. I’ve learned she sometimes says things she knows will hurt me when she is upset with me. She has opened up about things the longer we’ve been together, which I take as a good sign that she is more comfortable with me. I’ve learned she is a determined woman. She is a tough little woman too or else how could she leave all she has known in life to marry a man in less than eight weeks?

As I work on this message, my little woman is upstairs cooking many different things at once. Small steaks, tuna, chicken, hamburger maybe more. She is able to work the microwave, oven, stove top, slow cooker and a countertop grill all at once, while washing the dishes! She is amazing at cooking all the food for the week, putting it in containers and cleaning up, in only a few hours. Oh my, am I a blessed man! She just reminded me to come upstairs and resume doing the laundry so I went up and kissed her on her cheek and laughed as I told her how blessed I was to have her as my wife! Falling asleep cheek to cheek while holding hands is invaluable to me. She is a great lover. There are so many things I have discovered since I married her.

We married very quickly and will be discovering much about each other as we go. I think it is important that I don’t give the impression that marrying a beautiful Filipina takes no work or effort. It takes as much as marrying anyone else. Little things can become very irritating and hurt the relationship if there isn’t some give and take. If this video helps you see that, then it has succeeded. There are more good marriage choices on Christian Filipina where I found my wife than you’ve ever had before, by a ton, so your search could be a short one. When you do find her, you will find beneath her amazing beauty is a person like anyone else. We will continue working out any differences with the goal of mutual satisfaction and harmony.

I pray God gives me a lot of years with my Love Beyond The Sea!