glalt wrote:Could it be that my farang friends are smarter than many, maybe most other expat farangs? Five friends and myself have been married to the same Thai women for more than 10 years. That kind of skews the 2 to 3 out of 10 statistics.

And I've been married to The SAME Thai Woman for 23 Years & 10 Months, Silver Anniversary on February 3rd 2018....She'll DO For Me.....

Agreeing with both above.. but only 5 years so far. However, (mildly) interesting are my farang are all married about 5 years too! A couple are more. These are the people who I consider mates.. we count and call on on each other when needed. So in my humble collection yes.. the stats are well skewed! Im also the only farang in my village and rarely see another even scooting by. Suits me..

the thing is owning bars you get to meet 1000's of couples, ten years down the line I know 5 couples that are still together. if you know 5 couples that are together after 10 years that's a good thing , especially if you only know 5 people, if you knew 50 couples are all 50 couples still together ? then its not that you have smarter friends , you just happen to know 5 survivors, and I would find it difficult to believe you have only met 5 people in 10 years ? anyway at least we all know survivors. I just thought about it and here's a scary thought , I know more dead guys than surviving couples from the last 10 years .
stats are funny things , you could say in liam's village there are no farang divorces ever. all of this just depends on how many people you know or knew . can you think of 5 couples that are not together after the last 10 years ? they will always be long term survivors but how many train wrecks have you seen. how many couples does 747 know that he met 23 years and 10 month ago that are still married ?

Heh. papafarang is right.. there WAS a short term visiting farang.. sad story.. two kids with a Thai wife.. every time he went back to UK she would sell the car and everything he gave and go back on the game. Once a massive screaming fight tween her and her mother in the road.. mum did not approve as he coughed up enough cash monthly from UK and was an ok bloke. But the wife had a gambling prob. And so the cliche continued. He found out.. then turned out not to be an ok bloke as he popped her head enough times for a hospital trip and then left. Fortunately for us she picked up kids and left too.

The stats bit would mean that 50% of farang marriages in "my" village end in divorce..
PS.. that was all 3 years ago. Only Thais here now. N me. We get along well.

Liam Dale wrote:But the wife had a gambling prob.

Now there is an underlying theme I've heard before both in the UK & in Thailand.
My circle of friends is about the same as yours. Perhaps because we were all mates who used to go to Thailand playing the field but all met our little teeraks around the same time, just coming up to 10 years ago (wish me luck, that seems to be a common length of time)
One mate moved to North Thailand with no intention of returning to the UK but ended up bailing his mrs out of gambling debts so many times he had to go back to get a job. She carried on gambling & he couldn't afford to bail her so she's sold everything in Thailand! He's now stuck in the UK & has little contact with her
All the others moved to the UK & have a little Sunday afternoon gambling syndicate. All of them seem to be estranged as they never go out with the better halves even going on holiday to Thailand separately which I don't think I'll ever understand
Mrs N detests gambling, in so far as only going to the Sunday afternoon soirees twice at the start & never again

Anyway each to their own. I know plenty of bitter & twisted people from farang only marriages so whether its a farang/thai thing alone i don't know

We could go on and on Liam, ok some marriages do survive but only a few, unfortunately most don't.mostly down to scamming or cheating.

vlad wrote:We could go on and on Liam, ok some marriages do survive but only a few, unfortunately most don't.mostly down to scamming or cheating.

Like the lads previous that have been married here for a long time most I know here are also happily married. Even the ones that met on the internet. There seems to be a difference between people that actually live here and the tourists that come over to drop their trousers for a few weeks every year whining into their beer about getting ripped off.

AGAIN... Where do you get your info?

Sateeb wrote: Like the lads previous that have been married here for a long time most I know here are also happily married. Even the ones that met on the internet. There seems to be a difference between people that actually live here and the tourists that come over to drop their trousers for a few weeks every year whining into their beer about getting ripped off.

AGAIN... Where do you get your info?

[redacted by Moderator]

As he says we could go on n on.. so here are my last two pennies of contribution to this thread.

I met my wife on the internet. Logged onto TLL for a gawp during a home alone drinking session after receiving spam email. After n hour she clicked "hello" to me. I looked, LOVELY smile, all the hair etc. 42 years (I was 53). Anyway, I didnt click back.. every day for 3 days she clicked "hello". So I eventually clicked back. The first person I talked to on chat. And the last! We yacked n yacked with google translate and first word of common ground was "kaput" cos we were both stuck in our houses whilst it slammed it down with rain. (8,000 miles apart). We yacked for days. (It rained a lot at both ends)

Turns out she had logged into her TLL account (indeed set up with help from her part English speaking relatives) while child minding her nieces. When she went to the loo.. they would jump on the computer and click "hello" to every bloke they could see! And then run n hide while she cleaned up the chaos. Why didn't I say hello back sooner? Because of her short description of herself. "I am a lovely woman". Tsskk.. bit arrogant I thought originally. Turned out to be nephew speak when set up. She turned out to BE that. A LOVELY woman. The nieces get Christmas presents every year for their useful act of naughtiness.

2ndly.. and important I think. We the long term married and ok dont NEED to defend our families and positions. Or justify them. I write in the hope that people.. who are planning to come to Thailand or indeed here and wanting to commit to this very different culture and way of life.. take SOME encouragement - rather than just read the embittered and sadly hurt.

After the military coup the government decreed that all the students due to leave Summer of 2015 STAY at college for another year. (The reasoning we wont go into here). This meant my wife's son needed another 12 x 7,000 baht a month to live. NOT budgeted for. It wasn't his fault. And nor was it ours. Thai circumstances.

So.. we offered to LEND him the money. And expect it to be repaid when he could. All was agreed and we upped the money to 8k.. (I still feel guilty at such a small sum - his rent was 4,000). But he never asked for more. A total of 96,000. He has already paid back 20k in 4 months. I cannot think of any other way to express my confidence than when you find good Thai people.. like any culture.. they are good people.

Just as I did with my 3 RL English sons.. when they had repaid 50% of any last debt for cars, motorcycles etc.. I cancelled the balance. He gets the same treatment as my other kids. The point had been taught, the reward for the good behaviour adding a little "generosity" too I hope.

And that's me out of the thread. Thanks for the chit chat. Dont knock online dating sites. They work well.. if you use sense. To those who have been hammered my sympathy. Dust off, make decisions and have another go. To those who have long term partners.. i wish you all a most excellent Christmas and NY season - โชคดี.

I met my wife online too.
First lady I chatted to.
Works at the local hospital and had never had much to do with any falung.
I could not be happier with life, neither could she.
Mind you, all relationship take some work any you would be a fool to think otherwise.
Most of the blokes over here that I know are also very happy with their wives.

Just got to use your brain and hope some luck is with you, (like dealing with any women).

Nothing worth any good comes for free!!!

Mick

buy yourself a bar, sit in it for a couple of years , you will soon find out how many train wrecks thee are, the reason you never meet too many of them out in the sticks is because their already divorced , lost everything and gone home to whatever country they come from. I can say one thing with confidence, I have never met a guy that gets divorced and is still in the house he paid for. nope not one comes to mind, it's a bit like that get divorced and everything gets split 50/50 , never met anyone that has actually managed to do that either.
one guy I personally know , he had a girlfriend and they had been together for 7 years, then she starts on about getting married, so he thinks why not, after all it has been 7 years together. so off he goes and gets married ,all hunky dory like. well a week later he comes home and she's not there, he thinks nothing of it as she could be at her friends or mums house. next morning still no sign so he calls her, phones off, so he pops to mums ,not there and mum hasn't seen her, so he goes everywhere looking but no one has seen her. so after a few days he eventually goes to the police makes a report as he's worried , after a while the police tell him she's ok but they can't tell him where she is. so a few weeks later he's sitting in his bar and a couple of dodgy thai guys turn up and start demanding money. .. so this is what happened , she married him , got the books for his 7 big bikes, his bmw and got money off money lenders and gave the money lenders all the books for his bikes and car, then got a loan from the bank secured to the house he had bought. she then emptied his bank account ,this was all well planned out before they married. got all the cash together and id a runner to chang mai with her thai boyfriend. I think that marriage lasted 7 days. seems she only wanted to marry so she could have his name , and the reply from the police when he reported her...'your wife, she can'. well the bikes went, the house belonged to the bank and to top the lot off he wasted 300,000 on the wedding. classic. he now lives in Vientiane and is single.
now your wondering how she managed to hock the bikes, simple ..same surname come to think of it owning a bar can be quite depressing with all the wrecks that walk through the door. as I said it would be hard to find a divorced guy as they have already gone home.
say 10 years back I knew 100 guys, some went broke ,some died, some got ripped and some got divorced. out of that 100 from 10 years ago I would be surprised if there were 10 left... 10 lucky ones

maybe I'm a bit depressed after so many years of stories in bars,when things go wrong guys head strait to a bar. got to a point where a guy would say to me 'my wife has left me', 'STOP' ...at that point I already knew what he was about to say.

Papa,
I don't doubt any of what you said and it is quite sad.
But If you don't try, you will never know.

Maybe it will happen to me one day too. Who knows?

Gotta enjoy every day, because who knows what tomorrow brings?

Mind you, I've seen plenty a falung who treat their Thai women like dogs, so I don't feel sorry for any of them.
I bet you saw plenty in the bar as well?

I treat my wife, her family, my friends and my family with respect.
Do unto others as you would do unto yourself.

If that fails, well, it just wasn't mean't to be.
Get over it, learn from it and move on.
Life has lessons for all of us.
Just ask one of the 60 millions bhuddist's around us. They will tell you that!!!!!
Mick

my buddies said it wouldn't work her family said it wouldn't work my family back in the states thought I was crazy but 46 years may the 26th and its still working.... sorry to shine on the sob fest....

i know many including wife's and g/fs and there mums all had gambling habits glalt your correct they will do anything whatever it takes to sustain there habit and not forgetting the money lender you knew nothing about who comes round every month for his payback.

lol,you cant, beat a good thai girl,ive had 6 upto now

If only we could turn it around and get some of the Thai woman's perspective on falang ars,wipes they have had to put up with, that may have, turned them to the dark side and the eventual failure of a relationship.
Just for balance. These same old same old conversations seem very one way street orientated.