British men choosing foreign wives for their "Stepfordesqeness"

Dittany - some ridiculous percentage of movement of Thai women from the country to the city or beach locations was to work in the sex trade. An a high proportion of women working generally in Thailand work in the sex trade. Thai men also use prostitutes very openly. Poor women with darker skin from the countryside seemed to be the sex class, and Thai men aspired to marry a pale-skinned Chinese-looking girl.

I don't think the Thai government offered any protection to these women at all. V sad.

Sorry for hijack, I'd blocked all this stuff out.

My DH jokes that when we're in our 50s and I'm not up for sex any more that we can move to Thailand and live in a lovely house with a pool, and I can read books, drink cocktails and have massages while he gets himself a young Thai girl. We met a German couple in a sex-tourist central beach location who had this arrangement and seemed entirely happy - the husband dancing on the beach, beer belly out, with a young Thai woman while his wife sat by with a book and a cocktail

Note that this is a joke I think

Reminds me of this one forum I was on back when I lived in the US and most of the other members were UK guys who had married US women and they used to go on about how much more feminine and home oriented American women were than swearing, drinking British women who never made an effort with their appearance. Stereotyping arseholes. Especially given the fact there's plenty of American men who bring back wives from foreign places because they're apparently more submissive than US women. DH used to work with a guy who bragged that his wife put his socks on for him on a morning.

I know many ex pats who buggered off with Thai women too, after uprooting their families to go and live in Thailand.,

I know of a few cases like this and in the end the wife got her British passport and left the pig-like husband, having realised she could support herself and live happily in Britain. The guy of course was left alone and bewildered, ha!

DH and I used to work in Bangkok and about 95% of the British, American and Australian men we worked with were shacked up with a very submissive, younger, poor Thai girl. They also all used prostitutes regularly, it was absolutely and 100% the social norm amongst the expat community there. My DH's 67yo boss over there used prostitutes as young as 16 if not less They used to all tease DH for having a Western wife. I hate to think what they said about me! So many horrible tales from our time there. A choice one being DH's colleague who used to nip out at lunchtime for a blowjob These guys all maintained a veneer of respectability, but I enjoyed making them feel uncomfortable sometimes, they were quite nervous around me and sometimes looked a bit jealous of the fun and banter that DH and I shared, although more often I was given weird looks in bars for being the only non-hooker present.

There definitely was a sense of bitterness among these men toward Western women, I think they'd all had bad experiences or been unsuccessful in relationships and the simple sex/money arrangement worked for them. They described Western women as not looking after themselves, fat, bolshy etc. Yuk yuk yuk. They took pride in how tiny and beautiful these poor women were, it made them feel like big strong men. For the women, largely from poor subsistence communities, they had financial security and could send money to their families in northern Thailand.

Btw ... as for the 'life is better here' argument ... that is a bit dubious, IMO. There are plenty of countries where men seem to be living perfectly decent and pleasant lives, yet women are a commodity to be advertised to UK men as desirable wives.

I knew a foreign bride in one of the refuges I was in. Her ex was vile Not that I'm into stating the obvious but she had a child by him. Unfortunately, she was told that she'd be deported after they split (they coudn't deport her while she was in the refuge for whatever reason) but her daughter, as she was a British citizen would remain in the UK. :( I don't think her exH had counted on her having the guts to leave, despite having no support network. I have no idea what happened to her once she left the refuge, but hope to high heaven she was allowed to stay in the UK with her DD.

As for the Southern European wives, yes, a lot of them do seem really subservient. My parents live in Cyprus, and the last time I was out there, their cypriot friends were visiting,. I found out that DM had told them xP had left me, as opposed to vice versa, as they'd understand that better, and Dad was under strict instructions to not be washing up when they got here, as Andreas didn't believe men should be in the kitchen, unless it was to make alcoholic drinks...

Increasingly over the last years, whenever there's an article in the paper about something that can be tied to feminism/women's rights/some person who happens to be a woman and actually dares to voice an opinion, men stop by to comment and say 'THAT's why we go out of the country to find wives!'

Because in their opinion, women in Thailand etc. are 'real' women, they have the right priorities (taking care of their families), and they know who's the man in the house. Yeah, and they're always beautiful, sweet, and love you for the man you are - and they never complain, either.

There have been some horrible cases of men finding wives in other countries, treating them like slaves, and then divorcing them just before they would have the right to apply for citizenship (not sure what the right term is), so that they have to go back to the situation they tried to escape, while the men find new wives, and repeat. Women who have been completely isolated, forced to work all day, beaten, and even forced to sleep on the floor. It's terrible. I'm hoping these are extreme examples, and that most of the 'imported' wives find a marriage they can be happy with.

I know that some of them despair because everybody around them suppose that they are 'sex slaves' or married their husband because of his money, especially if they are from Russia or Thailand. So it's difficult for them to find friends because of this prejudice. The men also feel judged once they disclose that their wife is from one of these countries. It seems you can marry out of the country for love if your spouse is from a Western country, but once you find someone from another place, you're automatically an abusive bastard (if male) or a sex-starved adventuress looking for something exotic (if female).

I do think marriages between different countries are on the up, but I think most of that is due to people with Indian/Pakistani background choosing spouses from their country of origin, and people in general finding loved ones through work in other Western countries. This is Norway, though, don't know about UK. When you listen to these men muttering about how all men now choose wives from abroad, it doesn't take that long to realise that by 'all men' they mean, well, themselves.

So it's alright if they've had a miserable life for years, because they'll get a pension in their old age...

Hmm. Many women don't get the chance to learn English - there are thriving communities where women don't step out of their original language environment. My mum has taught a woman who spoke and wrote three languages and had two university degrees, who had lived here for nearly 20 years. She had only just begun to learn English because her daughter insisted on teaching her, and she did not know that women could vote in the UK or ttat there was a bus service running between where she lived and the nearest GP. She thought she had to go with her husband. This was obviously only the tip of the iceberg of what she didn't know, that came up within some short lessons.

Italian women are subservient? Ehm... I would say the opposite - "desperate" Italian men tend to go East (Russia, Moldova, China), apparently to escape from feisty Italian women who are often better educated than they are...

Because they would get a pension, health care and by the time they were in their 60's they might have learnt a bit of English and hopefully their 'slave driver' DH might have died before them and left them the house.

Life in the UK is 10000s better than where some of these people come from.

ZZZ yes, Greek women are not subservient, and in fact here I have heard people talking about the more misogynist Greek men looking for wives from elsewhere so they'll have a servant good partner!

Will they really have a better life when they are older, Ripeberry?

With a non-existent network of friends, isolated by the little knowledge of the language of the country they are living in, which probably also means they won't know where to go/ how things work, not valued by their husbands...

In their home countries they probably had friends, families, perhaps an extended family to turn to, they knew the language, they were not glorified slaves...

Why is it automatically better to live in the UK?

I think of southern European women on the whole as quite strong types - Greece, southern Italy,southern Spain...I don't know what area you are thinking of but IME these women are not what I would describe as subserviant and brow-beaten types.

I wouldn't be suprised if there are some men that do marry women from abroad for the reasons you suggest.
But it isn't true for all of these types of marriages.

The town next to the one I live is well known for middle aged blokes coming back with a 'thai wife'

I know a few of these couples and the women come to parties, go out with their friends, they have intergrated into the town. We chat with them in the pubs and see them in Sainsburys and Tesco shopping quite normally.

I worked in Social Services and was supporting an adult male who had a wife from Thailand and they had two children together for a long time while he had a serious illness. They adored each other and I still see them both round even though his condition is detereating.

So I think in terms of relationships and marriages there are men of all nationalities who want a wife that they can treat like shit and there are men that want a fun partnership and this case is no different.

I would imagine part of marrying a woman fronm a poor country is not ensuring that she is aware of all of her rights.

Abject poverty sure does make one do anything for basic human needs, like food and shelter. But the men that take advantage of this are beyond low, they make my skin crawl. They are usually the sort of men that couldn't get a woman unless she had little choice. eeeeewwwww.

Sad men, who are ugly inside and out. Feel so sorry for those foreign women, but at least they get married and get to live in the UK. When they are older they will have a better life than if they had been in their own country.

I'm sure they know what they are doing, just bidding their time

I've seen it first hand in China and Thailand. Women think it's their duty to 'look after' their husbands. Loads of the men, especially here, don't even care if the woman speaks very little English.