Living and Loving 5: Filipinas and What They Are Looking For (2 of 3)

Confused and want to go back to the beginning of this series?  Just click HERE to go to Part One.

Welcome back to our continued examination of types of Filipinas you might encounter while dating in the Philippines.  Without any further ado, let’s get back to it.


Young, Pressured by her Family (YPF)  The Family Supporter 

This category is very similar to the aforementioned Clueless type noted above, but there are subtle differences. Although typically uneducated, this type is more likely to be attractive and charismatic. Although sad, this is usually because the family realizes they have a girl who foreigners will find attractive and they are looking to benefit from it economically.  Yes, this is a shitty situation, but you have to call it like it is.  And although fueled by greed, this does not mean the family are looking to “sell” their daughter to just anyone – They are hoping that a kind man will come along that will give a good life to their daughter AND her extended family. This type of woman can actually make a perfectly good wife, but the situation is not right for all men. You have to be comfortable getting involved with the family. The family will want to meet you, and get to know you. You will have to do things like take the family out to dinners, spend time ‘bonding’ over karaoke and house parties, and things like that. The courtship phase will be watched over by the family. It may be more difficult to have sex before the marriage. After the marriage there will typically be pressures over money. The family will always want something and how much will be a constant negotiation! For many foreigners, this type of situation is just too stressful. However, for some people it might be just fine. If you have a bit of money to spare, and you are generous by nature, it can work out for you. You have to strike a balance. You have to help the family out sometimes, but you have to also know when to say no. They will take as much as you are willing to give. In particular, if someone gets sick or dies, they will expect you to help out. This type of woman is not for me personally, nor for many of you, but if you are willing to accept the baggage, she will usually make you a fine loyal wife. Most certainly she will also want to become a mother.


The Working Girl (Not That Type of Working!)

If you live in the Philippines, or choose to take a reasonably long vacation of a month or more in the Philippines, you will come across, in your normal day to day activities, many young women at their jobs. This may include sales ladies, grocery clerks, laundresses, post office workers, secretaries at doctor or dental offices or waitresses at restaurants and bars. You will find some of these women to be attractive, intelligent, funny, and helpful. You may see such a woman and think to yourself, wow, that’s the kind of woman I want, and in fact, these kinds of gals are often high quality women. Such ladies are often college educated, speak English well, have a pleasant personality and a high moral character. They are this way because they would not have been hired if they were not. Even simple low-paying jobs are hard to come by in the Philippines so the people that are hired usually have something to offer.


Working Girl Sub-types and Considerations

Working Girls fall into two general categories: Those with the lowest-level jobs, such as sales assistants, waitresses, workers at McDonalds or the like and those with slightly better more secure jobs, such as secretaries, office workers or dental or doctor’s assistants. The women in the former category typically make very little money and are often on a six month contract. Why is this? Well under Philippine law, permanent workers working for more than six months are entitled to certain benefits such as minimum wage and health insurance. The employers get around this by hiring their workers with six month contracts. After six months the girls are let go, and they typically wind up landing another six month contract at a similar establishment doing a similar job. For obvious reasons, Filipinas trapped in this merciless cycle are usually very open to meeting a foreigner.  The woman working in higher-level jobs are usually not as desperate for a man, or foreigner in particular. They have a good job, and they are happy and grateful to have that job. They are likely to be content at what they are doing. Still, if you go about it the right way, there is a good chance they will be interested in you.

However even if a Working Girl is interested in you, there is still a problem. The problem is finding time to date them. They will not be willing to give up their jobs unless they feel the relationship is very serious. Most jobs in the Philippines run six days a week and require long hours. During their day off they may have other obligations, like visiting family, washing their clothes or going to church. So you will have a hard time finding quality time to spend with them. It will be a hard process. If you do convince them to give up their job, you are expected to follow through. If they resign their position and you dump them a week later, that is very bad. Perhaps you had better leave town. Still for some men with patience and time, a good woman can be found this way. If it does work out, she will probably want kids.

Career Woman Looking at the Ticking Clock (CW) Older Career Lady
This category probably isn’t as common as some of the others, still I have seen it a few times now, so I decided to include this category in my discussion. In the previous section I already discussed Working Girl. The difference between NWG and career woman is the level of job. The career woman almost always has a college education and has a higher level of job, like a manager in a bank, high position in a government office, or some such thing. The career woman looking at the clock is typically in her 30’s. The Career woman has always put her education and job before her social life, and now maybe she is beginning to have second thoughts. She feels her biological clock ticking and feels maybe she wants a family. The problem is, she feels stuck. Her job is too good to give up unless there is a very good alternative. She does not want to give up her job to marry a typical low paid Filipino man. In any case she is already too old for most Filipino men looking for a wife. Thus she begins to think that maybe a foreigner is her best hope.  Of course one problem with this category of woman is the same problem as with the Working Girls and that is once again finding time to date and be together. Like the younger Working Girls, the career woman won’t give up her job unless she feels secure that the relationship is very serious.

If you are the kind of man that likes the company of an intelligent educated woman with a strong opinionated personality this could be a good choice for you. Sometimes it’s nice to have real intellectual conversation about serious topics with your GF or wife. On the other hand, and in at least from what I have seen, this kind of woman is more likely to be a pain-in-the-butt: More opinionated, more sensitive, more prone to arguing than a less higher “caste” Filipina.


The Single Mom

For such a ‘conservative, Catholic nation,’ there are a surprising number of single moms in the Philippines. Why is this, you might ask? Well, it seems to be due to a number of circumstances that interact with each other. Filipina women are often very ambivalent about the subject of sex. They live in a Catholic society where the church condemns pre-marital sex. Most women profess to be religious and believe in the teachings of the church and thus would say that sex before marriage is a bad thing. On the other hand the teachings of the church are not really consistent with other aspects of society. Philippine society is a pretty liberal society in many ways. People are not shy to talk about sex. They love Hollywood movies and TV that is full of sexual content . Even if you watch Filipino TV, produced in the Philippines and spoken in Tagalog, it is full of sexy women and sexual content. Honestly, Filipina women simply seem to enjoy being sexy.

The Catholic Church plays a weird role on all of this, as it has been fighting sex education for many year.  Back in 2008 (ten years ago!) a number of politicians tried to change this with a new bill promoting sex education in schools. Their proposed bill ran into fierce opposition from the Catholic Church which condemns condoms and most methods of birth control. It is yet to be seen who will prevail. At any rate because there is no sex education there is no real knowledge about birth control. Many Filipinas have ridiculous notions that they have heard from friends, things like, if the girl is on top they can’t get pregnant I personally knew a young woman who enjoyed sex and was sexually active but insisted she would never get pregnant as long as she stood on her head after sex. No, I did not make this up! Guess what. She is now a single mom with two kids. Big surprise!

Ok, so you have a situation where young single women don’t like to admit they want sex because of their religious upbringing, but who deep inside are much more sexually liberated than they like to admit. They would never do something like take birth control pills or carry condoms with them, because to do so would be to admit they expect to have sex. Filipino men don’t do much to help the situation because most Filipino men would readily admit they hate condoms.

So what happens is this: The first time they are in a serious relationship and are turned on, they wind up having sex without birth control. If they are lucky enough to get away with it the first time, you would think they would then get birth control. But no, most of them don’t. They just keep on having sex and hoping. Then, when they get pregnant abortion is not an option. Besides being illegal in the Philippines (it is available illegally and dangerously) it is also strongly against their religious beliefs and family-oriented culture. Thus they wind up continuing the pregnancy. Meanwhile, the would-be father (boy) who is not really ready to be a father takes off. In the Philippines the laws governing child support are not very strong. As long as the boy takes off to another location it is almost impossible for the girl to get child support. In any case the boy is usually poor anyway, and in most cases the women does not even attempt to get child support.

The good news for these women is that they are accepted in Filipino society. There is no real stigma against being a single mom. Furthermore, because Filipinos usually have very close knit families, the parents of these singles moms, after an initial period of shock, almost always accept the circumstances and welcome the baby into the extended family. The bad news is that most Filipino men do not want a woman who already has a baby, so it is very hard for these women to get married to a Filipino man. This is why many of them hope to find a foreigner who is more open to their circumstances.

If you don’t mind some of the difficulties of becoming a step dad, Single Moms can be a very good choice for many reasons. First Single Moms are more liberal, attractive and charismatic on average. They won’t have any qualms about having sex before marriage since it’s something they have already done. Also, you often don’t have all of the problems of family associated with single mothers. Even though there is not a big stigma against SMs, they still have a very difficult time in the Philippines. Either they stay at home, which means they are a burden on their family, or they work, in which case their family has to take care of their child while they bring home the bacon. Either way, it is difficult on the family, and since you are doing the family a huge favor by solving this problem, her family will often not expect as much from you in the way of continued monetary support.  Also, since it is difficult for a single mom to get married to a Filipino man, they are more likely to be loyal and grateful. Of course, the most important thing to any mother is providing a good life for her child, and you will of course be expected to treat the child as your own, providing a support and education for the child. If all that is ok with you, then it can be a good situation. If you don’t want any additional kids, this can also be a good choice as often a single mom will be content not to have more kids.

That’s enough for this installment.  To be taken to Part Six, just click HERE

Stay thirsty, my friends!

 

Corey X

2 comments

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