Warning Signs - is she using me for green card?

[amberjack1234]

It probably wasn't that the marriage was more important than being together for her...it was that marriage represented the guarantee of future security.

 

I could write books and books and books about what I understand of the female mind, and the way it plays out in Chinese culture (in my opinion, men and women are extremely different in thoughts, emotions, motivations, etc...all women are the same, but the culture a person grows up in filters the way it is expressed...your culture tells you what behavior is acceptable, tells you *how* to achieve what you want).

 

One of the other points about it not being a binary choice is that it isn't just "She loves me and we will be happy forever" or "She is using me and doesn't love me."

 

Love and trust grow over time.

 

Everything you say and do either (and everything she says and does) either increases love and trust, or decreases them.

 

That's why you can get away with arguments and problems in your 40th year of marriage that you can't the day after you met.

 

So if you love her, you should be doing things that show her who you are, that she can trust you to do what you said you will. And you should be looking for indications of her character, her emotional reaction to different things, the way she releases emotional pressure, etc. It's hard, because EVERYONE puts on their best face early in the relationship.

 

Both men and women complain about the things that get dropped after you settle in to the relationship. Women complain about not getting the romance anymore. Men complain about not getting the sexual stuff anymore. (Crudely: I've heard dozens of men repeat this as if it were a fact: "when the marriage starts, the bjs stop")

 

So, basically, women are hypergamous. They want a man who is at least a little bit smarter, taller, more successful, richer. Women also think about a marriage as getting help in life. They want someone to help out around the house, help raise the kids, help earn money for a better life and retirement, take care of the lawn, and squish bugs. Women marry to improve their lot in life.

 

Chinese women marry because there is intense social pressure for them to marry and have children. If a woman makes it to spinster age (35 and unmarried), their mother WILL arrange a marriage for them. My wife had to beg her mom to hold off a year until she saw whether I would follow through on marriage or not. (Her parents love me...in no small part because they are grateful that she found a husband who loves her AND respects them AND supports her putting a high priority on taking care of them).

 

Also for Chinese women, regardless of your financial situation, getting to come to the US fulfills her hypergamous urge. Coming to the US puts her in a top class of Chinese women, better than the hundreds of millions that are stuck in small town, small cities, or the lowest economic rungs of the big cities. (plus, she probably doesn't have the capacity to understand exactly what your financial situation is...we tell them about mortgages and car loans and its almost like they don't hear it, because willingly and unconcernedly carrying debt loads like that don't compute for them...I think it is an instinctual cultural assumption that a Chinese man wouldn't even look for a wife until his debt was gone...this American man is looking for a wife, therefore he must not really have any debt he can't pay off immediately)

 

Because you already talked about marriage so much, when you suddenly started talking about being together and NOT marrying, you damaged the trust. From her perspective, you were not following through on your promises. You showed her you were not trustworthy anymore.

 

Because it isn't a binary choice, and because trust and love build over time, playing games like testing her to find out whether "marriage" or "being together" is more important too often creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. The obsession with "red flags" or "warning signs" usually does that.

 

Humans aren't perfect. If you go looking for problems, you'll almost always find them. If you start to suspect her commitment, she'll start to suspect yours, and that never ends well.

 

Most of the trainwrecks of marriage that have been detailed in the breakup/problem section of Candle For Love could have been avoided if there had been more patience and more understanding at a crucial time. The problem is, it is very difficult to identify the crucial time. Most of the trainwrecks occurred years after the wrong choice was made...the problem festered out of sight...by the time it manifested, it was too late.

 

I'm sorry yours fell apart. If you try to get back together, remember that in her mind, this is all your fault for being untrustworthy. You will just about have to crawl across broken glass to get her to trust you again. If you aren't willing to go farther than you think is necessary to convince her of your sincerity, don't even try.

Nate's post made me think about my original foray into bringing her and her daughter here...

 

Always an interesting question; if I could do it over, how would it be done differently?

 

Although I am happy with the outcome and I have a good wife and marriage today, I sometimes wonder how things might have been today had my former SO and I not parted ways and I brought her and her daughter to America to be with me.

 

I doubt that I would have done anything different. I am who I am. I have learned a long time ago to be wary. I fell off that turnip truck, oh….round about 1970.

 

After traveling to meet her, exchanging rings and going off on a honeymoon - all in a matter of the first few days of arriving in Nanning - I remained skeptical. I kept asking how could this younger, (22 years younger than I) woman could love someone whom she didn’t know and could barely talk to. WTF? Was this some weird dream that I had entered? One moment I’m hunkered down, alone with my computer and in a seeming instant I am transported to Yangshoe, China with this woman who calls me her husband. OK. I go along for the ride….for the adventure.

 

After returning home, I continued to ask her ‘why does she love me?’ Today, I realize that love, as we know it, doesn’t always figure into the equation for a Chinese woman. To my good and naïve fortune, however, I did not know this and continued to ask and question her, even when she continued to assure me and tell me to ‘just believe’ and have faith.

 

It is not such a thin line that one must tread to choose to either throw ourselves in, head first, helter skelter to staying wary of red flags and questioning constantly. Yet, the question IS: were my constant questions warning flags for her that I was an untrusting and suspicious man, as she once wondered? Or, had I not questioned her would we be together today and would we have been happy together now? Who knows? Yet, I think this is the dilemma that many of us face when we venture down this road.

 

I still don’t have answers. Does one throw the dice and go at it with blind faith and hope for the best? Or, does one become an inquisitioner with the hope to find what lurks behind and underneath the soul of this exotic person who cannot talk to me and will forever be an enigma and run the risk of making her high tail herself as far away from me as humanly possible?

 

Excellent post Dennis.

 

Larry

[tsap seui]

Nate's post made me think about my original foray into bringing her and her daughter here...

 

Always an interesting question; if I could do it over, how would it be done differently?

 

Although I am happy with the outcome and I have a good wife and marriage today, I sometimes wonder how things might have been today had my former SO and I not parted ways and I brought her and her daughter to America to be with me.

 

I doubt that I would have done anything different. I am who I am. I have learned a long time ago to be wary. I fell off that turnip truck, oh….round about 1970.

 

After traveling to meet her, exchanging rings and going off on a honeymoon - all in a matter of the first few days of arriving in Nanning - I remained skeptical. I kept asking how could this younger, (22 years younger than I) woman could love someone whom she didn’t know and could barely talk to. WTF? Was this some weird dream that I had entered? One moment I’m hunkered down, alone with my computer and in a seeming instant I am transported to Yangshoe, China with this woman who calls me her husband. OK. I go along for the ride….for the adventure.

 

After returning home, I continued to ask her ‘why does she love me?’ Today, I realize that love, as we know it, doesn’t always figure into the equation for a Chinese woman. To my good and naïve fortune, however, I did not know this and continued to ask and question her, even when she continued to assure me and tell me to ‘just believe’ and have faith.

 

It is not such a thin line that one must tread to choose to either throw ourselves in, head first, helter skelter to staying wary of red flags and questioning constantly. Yet, the question IS: were my constant questions warning flags for her that I was an untrusting and suspicious man, as she once wondered? Or, had I not questioned her would we be together today and would we have been happy together now? Who knows? Yet, I think this is the dilemma that many of us face when we venture down this road.

 

I still don’t have answers. Does one throw the dice and go at it with blind faith and hope for the best? Or, does one become an inquisitioner with the hope to find what lurks behind and underneath the soul of this exotic person who cannot talk to me and will forever be an enigma and run the risk of making her high tail herself as far away from me as humanly possible?

 

Excellent post Dennis.

 

Larry

 

I agree with Larry....darn good post Dennis.

 

And the eternal question you bring up....man, I had to laugh as I read that, not at you, more at how we human beings question ourselves.

 

I took you're lead and tried to think of a similar question I may have myself of any of the "blind date in a foreign land" wimmin I had talked to before, unknowingly to me, getting tied up with an agency who sent me ten photos of three different wimmin (all supposed to be the same woman...LOL)....ultimately leading up to my meeting "Ms Forth Woman" (Wenyan) in the Beijing airport.

 

Thank God I went ahead and went to China...and met Wenyan...the woman who has made my life happier than it has ever been, and finally...complete.

 

My question is simply....what if I had been like most intelligent men, worried about the tell tell signs written in those photos purporting to be the same woman....and hadn't gone to China? Just lookey at what I would have missed out on.

 

Oh well, I am thankful to my lust of adventurism, which often overshadows any sort of sensical logic I ever had.

 

Against all odds, Wenyan took the chance, knowing I had no clue what she even looked like, and had never written one word to me, and just as crazy as me....went to Beijing to see what if anything Mother Fate had planned.

 

It has turned out to be the best thing either one of us ever did. Against all odds a rational person would spend hours and weeks ponderin' we both took the chance.

 

Then again, back in Cambodia in 1970 I would have lost my life being "rational" and not trying to do things with a chopper to flee desperate situations that back stateside the builders of Bell helicopters would have said couldn't be done.

tsap seui

 

Hi ho hi ho it's off to work we go. Lil' rabbit has turned out to be quite the painter/caulker in the renovation of one of these units she has in her apartment complex business. What a joy it is to hear her sing and crack hilarious jokes on me as we work together. I could never dreamed up a script for happiness better than the one handed to me for simply not over thinkin' or makin' an affair of lust in the dust too complex. Damn the red flags, it's full speed ahead.

 

Disclaimer: Mr Suei has been known, and has official Veteran's Affairs (VA) papers proving it, to be half off his rocker. Unless you are one lucky SOB whose sense of adventure far outseeds your rationality, please don't follow the path in your quest for romance that this crazy bastard took. You may wind up "took".

Edited May 25, 2012 by tsap seui (see edit history)

[david_dawei]

If you realize that she would sleep with any man who came to her two times... does that shed any light on the situation?

 

I think you figure it out the hard way. Time to move on and stop thinking that love is the most important item for a lady seeking to leave china.