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This is a collection series
                        Lured and Abandoned Join Filipino Friend Finder
                                                                            Westerner's View
Lured and Abandoned – A Cautionary Tale
While I stress throughout this site and the ASAWA Guide that the popular media has grossly exaggerated the abuses of the so-called “mail order bride” marriages, it is undeniably true that at least some westerners bring Filipinas to their homelands for immoral reasons. A correspondence service operator, Carl, and his wife, a Filipina, arranged for the introduction of one such man (“Gerald”, a pseudonym) to an unfortunate Filipina we’ll call Mary (also a pseudonym). While such events are rare, it’s important for those of us in the Fil-West community to recognize that these abuses do exist, and that not people involved in a penpal relationship are honest about their motives…

Mary is a Filipina who was introduced to an American penpal by a friend who had successfully used the penpal method to meet her own husband. In the friend's case, as in most, this method worked great - she's happily married. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case for Mary.

In this case, the penpal, Gerald, contacted Mary initially by phone and then wrote her a for a few weeks after that. He then took a vacation and visited the Philippines, spending ten days there. Seven of those days were in Mary's hometown, where the American met her family and even bought her mother a family-sized refrigerator. Things were certainly off to a promising start.

Gerald stayed at a nearby motel while he was in the Philippines, and Mary says he was the perfect gentlemen the entire time he was in the islands. He never touched Mary inappropriately nor did he try to coax her into heavy kissing or anything physical. In fact, one of Mary's brothers even stayed at   Gerald' motel to ensure that the American was not spending his nights visiting local bars - apparently he wasn't. Gerald further established himself as a gentleman by throwing a large party for the family and their neighbors at a nice motel, after which he even had the courtesy to ask Mary's brothers and mother for permission to marry her (he wasn't legally required to get their permission, since Mary is over 21 years old).

So all indications were that Gerald was one helluva a nice guy. To top things off, he gave Mary what appeared to be a very nice engagement ring   (it was later determined by a jeweler to be a cheap fake, but of course this couldn't be known by Mary at the time). Needless to say, Mary was impressed by his apparent good character and charm and agreed to marriage. She proceeded to get all her documents ready for her fiancée visa while Gerald returned to the states and started the paperwork required of him.   This is where the first warning sign appeared. Mary should have noticed that Gerald was sending her merely $10 a week, which was supposed to cover her living expenses while she was processing her immigration paperwork (anyone who's done this kind of paperwork in the Philippines knows that it is very difficult for a Filipina to work the traditional 12 hour days and do all the traveling required by INS and the Philippine government to arrange for a visa). But Mary accepted this unquestioningly and continued to live and execute the paperwork required of her using whatever funds Gerald decided to send.

Months passed before Mary was finally approved for travel to the U.S. This would normally be a time of great celebration and optimism. But when she finally arrived in Atlanta, Mary received her first clue that things weren't right. Gerald had actually sent friends to meet Mary at the airport, saying that he couldn't "get off work" to meet her, that the four hour drive was too long. You can imagine the shock that this poor girl must have experienced, her first time away from her family, alone in a foreign land and being picked up by strangers because her "loved one" didn't want to take time off from work.

When these friends took Mary to her fiancé's apartment, things got worse. The apartment had only one chair, one bed, one desk, a kitchen table and a television. There seems to have been an implication that Gerald had been through a divorce the year before and simply could not afford to buy any furniture. Well, it was a sparse home, but Mary was resolved that she could make any place a home with the right support from her husband.
If only that were to be...

Gerald finally showed up and immediately began using sweet talk to soften Mary up (you can imagine she was a bit uneasy at this point). Despite her concerns, however, she must have been relieved to at last find herself with the man who had charmed her and her family in the Philippines, her future husband.

And so it is not surprising that, when the two were alone together that night, Gerald successfully managed to convince Mary to give up what she had guarded for so long - her virginity. The night after that, however, he came home from work very late, and the night after that later still. The fourth night he didn't return at all. There were no phone calls, no notes, nothing at all to let Mary know what was going on. In point of fact, she had just been abandoned. It turns out that Gerald had a girlfriend on the side and was frustrated that Mary, after one surrender to his sexual advances, refused anything else until after the marriage. Apparently this was too much to ask of Gerald, who promptly determined that Mary had become a bit too much trouble.

Mary was to later learn that Gerald had lied repeatedly when completing his paperwork to bring her over. He had stated that he had only been married and divorced one time and had only one child and had never before applied for a fiancée visa. In fact, he had been married four times and has three kids. He has had at least one other fiancée visa application that went as far as one week before the interview before he canceled it.   Gerald had also been to the Philippines three times before and married at least one other girl in the islands and did the same thing to a girl from Honduras six years ago.

To make matters worse (hard to imagine, isn't it?), Mary had borrowed the money for her airfare to the U.S. from her relatives living here. Gerald had not even paid for her travel. So Mary was duped, used, and then abandoned - at the expense of her own family. INS was contacted and given proof that Gerald had falsified most of his INS paperwork but the
government's position was merely that Mary must return to the Philippines.

For obvious reasons, she was humiliated beyond words and believed that she had forfeited her chance of finding a respectable husband in her homeland.

Because she had given up her virginity and because of what had happened to her here in the U.S., she believed that any Filipino husband she might end up with would treat her badly. She also believed that her family would shun her, and that she was essentially marked with what amounts to a "Scarlet Letter" by her entire community.

Not too long after I published this story on my website, Mary was deported. I found myself barraged with emails from men offering to help Mary (or to bash Gerald’ head in, or both), but ultimately there was little that anyone could do. Carl and his wife since emailed me, however, to say that Mary has rebounded from this tragedy and that she is again leading a productive life. Still, not all exploited Filipinas are so resilient, and many suffer worse injuries than the mental variety.

                                                                      Heaven or Hell?
                                                                              Westerner's View
If there's one thing you can count on, it's that the Internet has a way of polarizing every issue to unbelievable extremes. Quite often it's not enough for a site operator to state his opinion on a subject, so he or she will plunge into exaggeration and gross generalization to get a viewpoint across. Mind you, a little generalization is always necessary, but typically there is an implied disclaimer that every person and situation is unique and that you shouldn't take any person's view as law. However, some less scrupulous site operators will do the cyber-equivalent of stomping their foot and pointing a finger in your face when making their case, and this is as true in the realm of Filipina relationships as in any other place.

There are two main groups: the Heaven crew, who do everything they can to convince you that Filipinas are God's gift to the men of every nation, and the Hell crew, who will contrarily state that Filipinas are the Devil's minions.

The Heaven crowd is mostly populated by overly-enthusiastic operators of smaller, and typically new, penpal businesses. In their rush to establish their businesses, they will often gloss over the fact that Filipinas are human beings with human desires and human faults. Which isn't to say Filipinas cannot be fantastic partners in life - obviously I think they can, which is why I have this site! But we have to be careful not to cast all Filipinas as robot-saints. Most likely to be encountered on small, often new, profit-motivated penpal websites. Also seen in some newsgroups in the form of SPAM for penpal site.

The Hell crowd is primarily composed of men who have been in relationships with Filipinas that went bad. When relationships go badly, both partners will naturally seek to find an explanation as to why things didn't work out, and nationality or ethnicity is an easy target. Mind you, not all men succumb to this temptation; I've written to several men who have divorced their Filipina wives but who leave open the possibility that they may marry another Filipina under the right circumstances. They realize that their marriages failed for the same reason most marriages fail (arguments over money, chores, career, children, etc.). Still, there are those who blame Filipinas for all their heartaches, and they voice their opinion (that all Filipinas are evil) very loudly on the Internet. Most likely to be found in newsgroups, listservs, and bulletin boards.   Sometimes found in my own guest book and in those of other Filipino-oriented sites. Comments range from despair to racist outrage, and none of them are pretty.

Anyway, I've decided to save any of you newcomers to this field of endeavor a lot of work: I've consolidated the views of BOTH the heaven and hell crowds into two short, easy to understand pages. That way you can experience the joys and pains of both camps with a single click of your mouse.

Both of these views are, of course, wrong. What I have written on both pages is only a reiteration of what others have written, with a dose of my own humor added to soften the blows. For the record, neither of these viewpoints, heaven or hell, is accurate. If this were a multiple choice test, you should mark the circle labeled, "None of the above."

So where do you want to go today...?

                                                                Welcome to Heaven!

(BIG DISCLAIMER: Hoy! Before you read this, be sure to read the Introduction to both the Heaven and Hell sections, above. Go ahead and read it now, please, because if you don't you might actually take these articles seriously and then you'll email me to tell me how wrong I am about my "beliefs." Okay, did you read the introduction? Promise? Well, in case you've got your fingers crossed, or perhaps on a trigger of some kind, let me reiterate that, "THIS PAGE IS NOT SERIOUS!" These articles exist only to give you an EXAMPLE of some of the crazy, irrational attitudes you will find on the Internet regarding Filipinas. Some people do actually believe these things, and they may try to make you believe them, also. The Heaven and Hell articles contain most of the erroneous propaganda I've read about Filipinas, and your job is to read both articles, recognize that both views are ridiculous, and then develop your own personal attitudes based on your own experiences. Marriage to a Filipina is not destined to be Heaven or Hell, it's destined to be what you both make of it.   Okay, if you now understand that is NOT for real, and that these are NOT my personal beliefs, and that, in fact, I think both views are WRONG AND IRRATIONAL, please...proceed).

Filipinas are the greatest wives on earth! Any man who doesn’t marry a Filipina is making a big mistake! They are all beautiful, loving girls who want nothing more in life than to please their husbands. All of them are virgins until married – sex before marriage is absolutely unheard of! Still, once you’re married, all Filipinas instantly become sexual dynamos who have insatiable appetites for sex in any form. But only with you, of course. Filipinas never cheat, and the idea of divorce is utterly alien to them. Most do not even know what divorce is, or adultery for that matter. No, Filipinas are utterly and completely loyal sexual servants who want only one thing: to please you!

Why? Because you’re a handsome guy, that’s why. Because she knows that American women just don’t know a good thing when they see it. Filipina wives don’t care if you're unemployed, or if you’re a crack-head, or if you're lazy or abusive. You’re her one and only and there was never, ever, anyone else for her. She loves you because you are who you are and that’s why she married you. The fact that you live in one of the wealthiest nations on earth and that she was living in poverty played no role whatsoever in her decision to marry you. She loved poverty, and unlike other women, Filipinas have no desire to marry men who can provide a good life for their children and themselves. In fact, if you were a destitute alcoholic rummaging through the alleys of Manila, and you somehow met the exact same woman you are now writing to as an American, she would still want to marry you based on your charm and good looks alone.

By the way, you can get away with anything when you’re married to a Filipina. She cares only about your happiness, not her own. If you’re too hung over to mow the lawn, tell your wife to do it! In fact, the only thing Filipinas like better than constant sex with you is, that's right, mowing the lawn. You know all those times she’s on the phone talking to her friend in her native language and giggling? Well, you can bet if she’s not talking about your sexual prowess, she’s probably talking about the new Craftsman pushmowers that are on sale at Sears.

Another unique thing about Filipinas is that by some genetic quirk, they never age. They will remain exactly the age you married them for the rest of their lives. If she’s 25 now, she’ll remain 25. Her skin will never wrinkle, her hair will never turn gray. And it’s a physical impossibility for a Filipina to ever gain or lose weight. They never get fat or skinny, and their hair is always perfectly combed.

Most Filipinas speak perfect English, but that doesn’t really matter, since they speak only when spoken to, and you won’t have much time to talk to your wife while she’s mowing the lawn, right? In the unlikely event that you find yourself talking to your wife (perhaps you get stuck in the elevator with her, etc.), don’t worry, she’ll not initiate a discussion. While all Filipinas are brilliant, they prefer not to use their intelligence in any capacity outside of reading the Karma Sutra or performing complicated lawnmower repair. Talking to you would clearly be out of line. For that reason rest assured that you’ll never have an argument with your wife, since even if she were inclined to talk to you, her opinions and beliefs match yours so perfectly that there is no area for disagreement, and even if there were, she would never in a million years voice her dissent.

There's really no need for you to get to know a Filipina before you marry her, since all Filipinas are wonderful in their own unique ways. You simply can't go wrong. Step off the plane, find some girl outside the airport, and you're set! Yes, it's really just that simple! Why waste hours, even days of valuable time getting to know your special girl when you can make a trip directly to the U.S. Embassy and get that paperwork started? Don't worry, the taxi drivers are all honest and they'll be more than happy to watch your luggage for you while you sign the three forms necessary for you to get married and bring your Filipina back to the U.S.   The embassy staff members are all very friendly and eager to help you and will overlook any minor mistakes you might make while doing your paperwork. The entire immigration procedure should take no more than 15 minutes, and of course the Filipino taxi-driver, thrilled with the knowledge that another Filipina is marrying a wonderful American guy like yourself, will stop his meter while you are inside.

So what are you waiting for?! Get on that plane and go get her!

                                        Welcome to HELL!

Filipinas are the worst wives on earth! Any man who marries a Filipina is making a big mistake! They are all evil, manipulative girls who want nothing more in life than to get a greencard. All of them are prostitutes – virginity is absolutely unheard of! Still, once you’re married, all Filipinas instantly become frigid monsters who are opposed to sex in any form. At least with you. Filipinas are never loyal, and the idea that they will remain married to a loser like you after they get their green card is utterly absurd. Most come to the U.S. with the date of their divorce already marked on a secret calendar they carry with them, though they fully expect to screw around on you in the meantime, too. Filipinas want only one thing: their greencard!

Why? Because you’re loser, that’s why. Because she knows that you couldn't find an American girl who would even look in your direction and that you're desperate. Filipina wives don’t care if you have a job, or that you’re a crack-head, or that you're lazy or abusive, because, hey, they're going to run out on you eventually anyway. You’re her one and only ticket to America and she grabbed the opportunity. She tolerates you because INS says she has to, at least for two years or so. The fact that you live in one of the wealthiest nations on earth was the only reason she married you. Certainly not because she loved you! Filipinas never marry for love. In fact, if you were a destitute alcoholic rummaging through the alleys of Manila, and you somehow met the exact same woman you are now writing to as an American, she would probably pull her butterfly knife out and slice your nose off before kicking you in the ribs while you begged for mercy.

By the way, you can't get away with anything when you’re married to a Filipina. She cares only about her own happiness, not yours. If she's too hung over to cook you dinner when you come in from the late shift, you better bring home a pizza! In fact, the only thing Filipinas despise more than the idea of sex with you is, that's right, cooking. You know all those times she’s on the phone talking to her friend in her native language    and giggling? Well, you can bet if she’s not talking about how inept your are in bed, she’s probably talking about that new knife sharpeners at Sears.

Another unique thing about Filipinas is that by some genetic quirk, they instantly age by 20 years when they step off the plane in America If she was 25 when you last saw her in the Philippines, she’ll be 45 when you next see her. She will also gain about fifty pounds during her first week in the states, mainly from eating all that pizza you bring home after work because she won't cook.

Most Filipinas can barely speak English, but that doesn’t really matter, since she's got nothing to say to you, and you won’t have much time to talk to your wife while you're busting your butt working to feed her, will you? In the off-chance that you should talk to your wife at some point (perhaps she wants to borrow a few hundred dollars to go bar hopping, etc.), don’t worry, she’ll leave as soon as your wallet is empty. Talking to her would clearly be out of line. For that reason rest assured that you’ll never have an argument with your wife, since if you did, she might kill you in your sleep.

There's really no need for you to get to know a Filipina before you marry her, since all Filipinas are pretty much the same, i.e., evil. You simply can't get a good one. Step off the plane, find some girl outside the airport, and watch your life become a living hell! Yes, it's really just that simple! Why waste hours, even days of valuable time getting to know your special girl in a desperate search for sex when you can make a trip directly to the U.S. Embassy and get screwed right on the spot? And while the immigration officers are screwing you over, rest assured that the taxi driver who is supposed to be watching your luggage is already in Ilocos Norte sorting through your valuables with his family.   The embassy staff members are not, technically, human, but are instead aliens from the planet Scroo-U2 who specialize in anal probes. The entire immigration procedure should take no more than 15 years, and by that time your girl will have already found a richer and better looking guy to spend her time with.

So what are you waiting for?! Go get drunk and forget about marriage. You don't deserve it anyway, right?