British men choosing foreign wives for their "Stepfordesqeness"

There was a documentary a few years ago about a man who ran an agency for british men to find brides - in I think it was thailand.

There was a lot of emphasis on the women being "traditional" - words like "submissive", "the husband is the boss", "they respect their man" type stuff being bandied around. One bit I really remember is when he had a big rant about how awful British women were - having opinions and being lazy and bossy and not knowing who was boss while proper wives followed what their husband wanted and looked after him and cooked and cleaned for him and all the rest of it. At the end of this rant he said "and Thai (I think it was thai) women don't know about headaches" and grinned broadly.

The whole thing was just vile.

It's not particularly unheard of for people in certain countries to be encouraged to see marriage in the UK as a respectable goal. I don't know if these men deliberately 'sought out' submissive wives (or if they just have skewed ideas of what a decent relationship is like). But it is quite possible the women have been taught by their parents that marrying a British man is an important goal. My FIL made it very clear to his son that one of the reasons he was being sent to the UK was to find a British wife so he could get a better life in the UK.

If a child has been taught that it is very respectable and socially-acceptable to pursue a UK marriage quite deliberately, that child is being put it a bad position to realize that, in the UK, it's not generally seen the same way. In the UK, if you see your marriage as a trade or a business arrangement, that tends to frowned up, and consequently, the kind of men who're prepared to do this may not be the nicest. When you put two together - women who've been taught to respect the idea of marriage as a trade agreement and men who reject their society's understanding of marriage as based on love, you end up with women in a horribly vulnerable position. It won't occur to many women in that position to complain.

margery, that's awful to hear about the poor woman who has no friends. Is there anything that can be done? Virtually every ex-pat community has support groups available. If it's in East London, there's a fantastic organisation I know of that could probably help, no matter which ethnicity she is (PM me for details)

When I was travelling in Thailand I met a man who was there to find a wife who quite openly said he didn't want a British wife as she wouldn't be prepared to work as hard as he did in his business, and look after the home as well the the standards he wanted. He didn't want a wife with her own career as that apparently was "wanting to have it all". I've always been vaguely worried about what happened.

Could well be true in the men you describe. I don't know about the wider population.

Sadly, given the extent of DV in this country, I don't think men have to look to foreign shores to find plenty of women who will tolerate their superior attitudes.

It's interesting because I knew a British man who married a woman he'd met on the internet from Khazakstan, and she told me that whenever he tried to help her in the kitchen she felt awkward and embarrassed, so would tell him to go and sit down.

So maybe it's not that the men are 'treating' these women differently - maybe the women prefer it that way, because that is what they are used to?

It's also interesting because mediterranean/asian men often like to marry European women precisely because European women are a little more feisty and independent. That, of course, does cause problems in the relationships because the men like some of the feisty independence, but not all (can't cope with their partners having male friends/don't do cooking/like to laze around on the sofa all day/don't do the long hard slog of nights with newborns etc etc).