Is he making a fool of my friend?

[mandyisme1]

So my friend (early 40s, successful career, own house and financially secure) is married to a man who moved over here almost a year ago from Tunisia.
She had to struggle to get the visa issued for him, and this involved heavy legal fees and a lot of stressful paperwork and chasing around on her side.
Since arriving in the UK, the husband hasn't lifted a finger to contribute towards living costs (he moved into a house she owns in her own right).
He's started a couple of different agency jobs but quits after a couple of days with silly excuses like "no liking the people" or "not liking the hours". He sits around in coffee shops with friends or plays computer games all days whilst my friend is out at work. Working to support him as well as herself. It really annoys me that she's providing everything and he's just sitting back relaxing, letting her chase around after him.
I feel that this person sees my friend as a meal ticket as he's always asking her for money to send to his family (medical treatment, DIY costs.. the list is endless).
She makes excuses for him but myself and 3 other close friends have started to notice she's looking exhausted recently whilst he seems to be leading the life of riley.

A total cocklodger. How on earth was she so naive?

Of course he is.

Oh dear. It doesn’t sound good.

Yes he’s making a fool of her , sounds like he married her just to come and live here.
Was this a holiday romance?

Madness. Absolute madness. She married him? How well did she know him before that? I worry for her house.

Clearly

Thanks for the reply. Yes, it was a holiday romance kind of relationship. Met in a Tunisian resort. Didn't know each other that long before he asked her to marry him. I think she's wearing rose-tints tbh. Even seeing them together, they don't look like a great fit, or a couple who have much in common. She's 43, always smartly dressed and he's about 24 (or 25 I think) and looks more like a teenaged son than husband. Looks very young for his age too. He speaks very little English and even conversation between them is stilted because of language barrier.
I don't know what on earth attracted her to him. I fear she just got swept along in the whirlwind "romance" of it all...now reality is starting to set in, things don't look as rosy.

Has she never seen on tv or heard of these scams before?

She really needs to protect her assets before she loses any more money .

Oh dear poor woman. When we get sweapt along thinking we are in love it's hard to admit how foolish we have been.

Blimey. This sounds classic. She is definitely being taken advantage of. Needs to get divorced asap I expect or wont she be in danger if losing half of her house to him? Cant see it lasting.

She's a class A fool!

Well it's what she chose, just like men who buy a mail order spouse. All you can do is be there for the fallout.

Silly silly woman
I know of someone that was in a similar situation, he divorced her and got half of everything and went back to his country
Maybe you and your friends need to have a serious talk to her to try and open her eyes a bit
Honestly this is not going to end well imho

It's sad that she was so lonely and desperate that she fell for this. He probably doesn't even think he's doing anything wrong. He probably assumes that she knew that, in reality, his job was to be her toy boy and that she would be paying to keep him.

She's willingly being taken for a ride.

I used to live in Egypt and this was relatively common there in certain places too. ALWAYS a middle aged (or older) Western woman with a younger Egyptian man. He'll have told her the most beautiful things about how attractive she is to him, he'll be (or was) attentive in bed etc. She'll have lapped it up.

She would NEVER have done this with a 24 year old (or younger at the start) waiter from a sink estate* in the UK.

She needs to get divorced, pay him whatever she's going to lose and get him out of her life asap. She won't do it yet though, she's still living in the fantasy, hoping it's real. Be there for her when her world comes crashing down, because she stands to lose quite a lot depending on where they live and what he knows about the legal system. It's going to be painful, because unlike a normal breakup/divorce, she's going to know that she was taken - very publicly - for a fool. She's been blind, but she's acting in good faith. He's been neither.

*I'm not comparing Tunisia with a sink estate! More a best attempt at the socioeconomic difference between the couple.

Wow, it's she the Very Romantic type? She's being taken for a total mug, she has the attentions of a young fit partner for now, but he can bide his time, lie back and think of Tunisia and then take her for whatever he can and go home with assets in a few years. Its he going to be there in her old age. Hardly.
This is the dream for a lot of young men who work in these resorts, find gullible wealthy Western lady and have it made, the meal ticket is so well known it's one of the reasons for working these places, in the hope that... Well, this.
How hard she's had to work to get herself where she is isn't in his mind at all, from his perspective she's had it made and it's ripe for the picking.
Any chance of a chat with her or is she still in denial and defensive?

*socioeconomic difference within the UK cultural setting.

And yes, the longer the marriage lasts, the greater the claim he will have on her assets. She needs to be very careful about that. It's probably mostly an economic arrangement for him. He may see nothing wrong in divorcing her after he's been with her long enough to claim a real share of her assets and then going off with someone else. He may even assume she expects that to happen. Does she realise that they may each be playing by very different rules which mean that she does all the giving and he does all the taking?

My friend was stung by a Turkish man she met on holiday;she was quite young herself but was abit of a late bloomer (He definitely took advantage);anyway they married;he applied for a visa;she got pregnant;he seemed more excited about how a baby would help his visa than about being a dad and predictably once his right to stay in the UK came through he left her for another woman.

Sounds like his plan is going well.

Have you spoken to your friend about it ? Or is it one of those topics that is a bit of an “elephant in the room”

If its under a year she can massively protect her assets but she needs proper legal advice.

If it's under 5 years she can still keep a lot.

If she has a child to him she's really fucked herself financially.