How to Find the Perfect Filipina Wife: A Love Story

How to Find the Perfect Filipina Wife

A Love Story

by Marc Jordells

Copyright 2014 Marc Jordells

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Disclaimer

This book is based on actual events in the life of the author. For that reason, the names of all the people involved, including the author's, have been changed to protect their privacy and avoid embarrassment. However, place names and descriptions of events are factual, to the best recollection of the author. As for the advice he proffers, well, it worked for him, and he really doesn't think it was just luck. But of course he can't guarantee that it'll work for you. As they say, results may vary. It all depends on you.

Cover Design

Caligraphics™

http://caligraphics.net/

Cover Photo

Copyright 2014 by Marc Jordells

What People Are Saying

The book is excellent, very well written, witty and honest, and also sexy. It could become the guide, textbook, reference, for men who have been unlucky with their choice of partners.

~E M Bernardo, Filipino expat living in Australia.

Quite enjoyable and easy to read. I found Marc's thoughts on the Filipino psyche and culture most interesting. It will give his readers an understanding of Filipinos as a people. I have lived in the Philippines my whole life and take these things for granted, but he was right to point out these traits of the Filipino. They are what keep this country running. And the book is indeed a must-read for men who are seriously looking for a Filipina wife, and not just looking for a good time. Although I must say I had a good time reading about Marc's adventures!

~J G Fábregas, Filipino actor/musician/businessman living in the Philippines.

Enjoyed the book tremendously! Informative and entertaining. Literally a case of 'could not put it down' once I started.

~N Centenera, Australian expat living in the Philippines.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 Ayako: How it all started

Chapter 2 The Secret: Why Filipina women make the best life partners

Chapter 3 The First Foray: Going to the Philippines to meet the girls

Chapter 4 You're Not in Kansas Anymore: The cultural conundrums you will encounter

Chapter 5 Tales from the Dating Front: The first two from the List of Seven

Chapter 6 Scam Central: Fool me once, shame on ye — fool me twice, shame on me

Chapter 7 Press on Regardless: Continuing down the List of Seven

Chapter 8 Getting Your Feet Wet: How to get online, make contact, make friends, and find love

Chapter 9 Press on Regardless, Part Deux: A few more years of adventures

Chapter 10 The Courtship of Julie: How I found my own Pearl of the Orient Seas

Chapter 11 More than One Way to Skin a Cat: Alternatives to online dating

About the Author

Preface

This book is a love story. But even more than a love story, I hope it will also serve as a practical how-to guide for other middle-aged and older Western men. I'm talking about men from the U.S., Canada, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, New Zealand, Denmark, South Africa, and any other country where English is spoken readily and/or taught seriously in the schools.

I'm talking about men who may be disillusioned and lonely, burned by divorce, unhappy with their dating experiences with women from their own countries. Men who perhaps may have resigned themselves to the inevitability of growing old alone. And men who may have come to believe that a fulfilling and joyful long-term relationship with a younger, beautiful, caring, and cheerful partner, with traditional values and old-fashioned ways, is a dream that has slipped beyond their reach.

No, that's no model on the cover of the book. That's actually my Filipina wife, Julie. She was 20 years old at the time, working as a storekeeper at a small, trendy grocery store in the heart of Manila's Chinatown. That was a year and a half before we met. She's my third wife, I hope you know. Third time's the charm?

My first two wives were American, born and bred, and, well, they didn't work out over the long run. The first lasted just thirteen years, and the second was even shorter, exactly one year.

For the three years before I met Julie, starting in 2007, while still living in California, I was very much involved in the international online dating scene. Well, I use the word international loosely — I never corresponded or met anyone from Russia or Ukraine or any Eastern European country, nor anyone from Colombia or Venezuela or any South American country, nor anyone from China or Thailand or any other Asian country. Only the Philippines.

Why not Eastern Europe? Well, the girls there looked no different than American girls, and there was the added problem that most of them didn't speak English very well, from what I could tell. I couldn't see myself learning Russian, or any other Slavic language either. On the rare occasion that I raise a glass with friends, I can say na zdorovye (to your health) — but that's about it. I find even their alphabet (Cyrillic) a bit on the weird side.

How about south of the border and South America? Well, in between my American marriages, I'd been involved with a couple of Mexican girls. One was really Mexican, visiting from Michoacán, and the other was ethnic Mexican whose family was American only because they'd had the good fortune to be living between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River when the borders between Mexico and the newly formed Republic of Texas were drawn up in 1836.

I found them both equally seductive and alluring, but somehow things didn’t work out with either, for reasons we don't need to get into here. Suffice it to say external circumstances didn't permit either relationship to prosper, and in the end, they both ended in, well, heartbreak — that is, for me. So I guess I felt that any new relationships with girls from that part of the world would be too reminiscent of past hurts, and that it would probably just be better to look elsewhere.

There was a girl from Colombia at one point too, I almost forgot to mention. I met her in California through friends, after my second marriage had been over some two years. But that too turned out to be just another short, bittersweet affair.

And what of North or Southeast Asia? Basically, the problem there again was the language barrier, the alphabet barrier, and various cultural and religious barriers I felt might be too difficult too surmount.

Which brings us to the Philippines, where people more or less speak English, and are mostly Christian. But first, I have a confession to make — are you ready? Okay, here it is. I myself was born and raised in the Philippines. I was part of a middle-class, ethnic Spanish family. I grew up in Manila and left only after I had graduated from a private college there. The school was run by a Catholic teaching order, most members of whom were, at that time, American. That same year, I was accepted for a graduate engineering program at the University of California in Berkeley, near San Francisco. I was 22 when I left.

So, yes, I can hear you saying, Well, no wonder you're promoting the Philippines and Filipinas! You're from there yourself! You know the lay of the land. You're obviously biased!

But hear me out — it's not as cut-and-dried as you might think. Yes, I admit it, I was born there. Yes, I lived there every day from birth to age 22. But in many ways, I was as much a foreigner in the Philippines as any tourist who visits there from North America or Europe or Australasia. In the Philippines, I was — to quote Moses in Exodus 2:22 — a stranger in a strange land.

A white person living in the Philippines in the middle of the 20th century — and in many respects, even today still — lives like an Afrikaner in South Africa when apartheid was still the law there. Segregation was not, and is not, the law in the Philippines, of course, but our lives were nevertheless almost totally segregated from the majority of the population. We befriended, associated with, dated, and married only those of our own kind. Our interaction with the locals was limited to dealing with them as our housekeepers, cooks, nannies, launderers, chauffeurs, vendors, tradesmen, and even our school teachers. Woe betide whomever fell in love with and eloped with his housekeeper, for example — I had a friend once who did just that and he was ostracized and laughed at for years thereafter.

Do you know I never became fluent in the principal Filipino language of Tagalog? That was in spite of having lived there throughout my childhood and adolescence. Why? Well, I hardly ever had occasion to speak it, except for terse commands to our servants and others with whom I came in contact from time to time. It was a mandatory subject in school, both Tagalog grammar and Tagalog literature. But those subjects never interested me. I found them a waste of time. I never got more than a D in them. And my teachers excused me — giving me just enough points to move on to the next grade — because, as they said, Ah, you're Spanish anyway, what do you care? You’re probably just going to leave after you graduate.

Yet today, when I think back on the vibrancy of the Filipino languages, the lushness of its culture, the astonishing history of the country, and the enduring sweetness and charm of its people, I deeply regret having closed myself off to all those riches all those years. I had lived in an antiseptic bubble, a society-imposed isolation that I had never questioned.

I'm a U.S. citizen now, but I don't live in the U.S. anymore. I moved to Australia in 2008 to help my younger sister, who had migrated here in the early 70s and was trying to look after our parents (who had also migrated here — at her behest — in 1987). They were getting on in years, and they needed help, and putting them in a nursing home was not something one did, at least not in our culture. I became an Australian resident in 2009 on that basis, and am contemplating Australian citizenship sometime this year.

Sadly though, Dad has since died, and Mom decided she didn't like Australia and moved to Spain where my eldest sister is taking care of her. However, even though I have two wonderful daughters in California whom I love very much and visit every couple of years, I think I'll stay in Australia with my lovely wife Julie for the time being. She's still waiting for her Australian Permanent Resident visa, and though Australia is far away from most everywhere else, Manila is only 8 hours away by air, and there's hardly any jet lag involved.

Anyway, I'm telling you all this so you'll understand that I pretty much know whereof I speak. And I truly believe that my luck in love is replicable for any sincere and earnest seeker who, no matter what his age, still dreams of a happy and permanent relationship with a perfectly delightful Filipina partner.

Because I don't think my case was just a stroke of luck. As the old saying goes, Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. When the opportunity presented itself, I was ready. I'd already gone through the gauntlet that online dating often is. I'd been in and out of love several times, I'd been cheated, I'd been disappointed, I'd been scammed, and I'd had my heart — and sometimes my wallet — gutted like a fish.

But I'd also learned how the game is played. I'd had many memorable adventures with women less than half my age. I'd received many new insights into the cultural ethos of the Filipino. I'd refamiliarized myself with the language. And I'd gained the easy confidence that comes with practice and familiarity.

Well, the same can happen to you. If you'll let me, I can teach you how to play the game. That way, when you finally find the right one for you from among the many amazing women of the Philippines — the most beautiful yet most traditional in Asia — the blessings of a textbook perfect marriage can also become a reality for you.

Marc Jordells

Tuggerah NSW

Australia

Introduction

But enough about me for now. Let's talk about you. So maybe you find yourself alone. You're either divorced, or your de facto relationship or common law marriage has broken down. Maybe you're widowed. Or in some cases, you've never been married. But you think you're ready to find a nice woman and settle down.

But perhaps you've already lost a fair chunk of your assets in settling your last divorce, and have gone through an emotional wringer like you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. You've basically had to start over, maybe buy another house for yourself, or maybe you're just renting a unit somewhere, just getting by. Another mistake like that and you'll be flat on your back and the local Salvation Army will be your best friend.

As Willie Nelson, the American country music singer and songwriter, who was married four times and fathered seven children, cynically put it, I'm not going to get married again. I think I'll just find a woman that hates me, and buy her a house.

Whatever the case may be, you don't want to muck it up again. Or if you're single, and you've heard your friends' divorce horror stories, you don't want to muck it up at all.

And yes, you've probably been through the dating meat grinder in your country, whether via the bar scene, or through online dating, whether it be eHarmony, Match.com, or through other means. Yet somehow, you're dissatisfied. You haven't found what you're looking for. Maybe you're finding that your onetime magnetic charm and killer looks have slowly given way to thinning or greying hair, a growing paunch, and a slightly weatherbeaten demeanor that's