Filipina Lady Dating

The happy smile, the bare enticing midriff, the simply expressed desire of “an average and simple lady looking for a simple guy…who is honest and sincere” – all these prompted me to write to Rubeth and begin a relationship which brought great pain and unhappiness. Some of my experiences may be useful and instructive to Americans looking for Filipina wives.

I followed the suggested pattern: first a letter by airmail, followed up a few days later by email and then a phone call. The reaction was friendly. She was “serious” about marriage and she could see I was too. Things moved quickly. Phone calls moved to three a week and then within a month they were daily. “You spoil me with your calls,” she said, “and I love it!” We began singing love songs to each other over the phone and I sent her poems.

Three weeks from the time I first heard from her she had sent me a valentine. “Miles may separate our hearts, but love has its way to bring together what is meant to be One forever,” it read. This was followed by more of her cards, letters and calls complete with endless professions of love and devotion”through thick and thin.” It was time for me to visit the Philippines.

In the past I had a big disappointment when I went to Russia. I had put all my eggs in one basket and arranged to see just one lady there for 10 days. It was only on my last day there, though, that we actually met. I resolved not do to that again. Thus I chose to visit with three other ladies first before seeing Rubeth, inviting them and their chaperones to visit with me at my expense in Cebu. They were all good people, but the spark was not there. Then I met Rubeth. We decided to ‘concentrate’ on each other to the exclusion of anyone else. We became increasingly intimate. We took her lady friends out to dinner and to discos and traveled around the Visayan region, spending some nights together.

By mid-April shortly after I had gone to the states, she was writing “You belong to me, I belong to you.” By early may she was calling me “my future and beloved husband”, and barely a week later she told me of her dreams of sex together – “I know I’m already your wife”, she proclaimed. We had arranged to meet in July, but I suddenly had a chance to go to the Philippines in June. She was clearly thrilled.

During my second visit we were inseparable. I gave her full erotic body massages, which she loved. At her and her family’s urging, we arranged for a formal ceremony in her home town of Ormoc in which the Catholic monsignor blessed our rings. I have given her a diamond engagement ring set in platinum. This was followed by an engagement reception for 150 guests. Rubeth’s family and relatives and I got along very well. I felt I was part of her family and her friends were my friends. We took more trips together for a week at a time, with one of her many uncles as our driver. We became more and more intimate sexually.

Rubeth had proclaimed at the outset, in predictable Philippine fashion that it was most important in her culture that a young woman preserve her virginity until marriage. In the very early days of our courtship, I respected this but with our travels together, formal engagement and so on, it was no longer meaningful to maintain this facade, even to her family and friends, among whom the matter was never mentioned. In the early stages of our intimacy it was clear that the hymen was ruptured (there had never been any bleeding) and her physical reactions were not those of an untutored woman. I saw no need to express my discoveries about this to her. “Will you be my teacher?”, she asked. Of course!

After my first visit to the Philippines and our decision to be come engaged I applied for a fiancee visa for her to go to America. The initial part of the application was handled relatively rapidly and I received notice that the packet was sent to the U.S. embassy in Manila. There was nothing left to do but “hurry up and wait”.

When my second visit was drawing to an end I invited Rubeth and two of her friends to go with me from Ormoc to Cebu to be together for our last two nights. We hoped that the next time I would come I could go with her to Manila to process the visa. The night before I left Rubeth was curiously silent. She turned down an offer of an erotic massage and wrapped herself in a blanket. “I don’t want to sleep naked tonight”, she announced. “I’m sore down there from yesterday”. I thought she was out of sorts because I was leaving the next day. At the airport I embraced her, looked her in the eyes and asked, “Are you sure you’re sure?”. “Yes, oh yes!”, she replied, diverting her yes to the ground.

After I returned the first few emails were normal. Then I started having trouble reaching her by phone. I would constantly hear, “The subscriber cannot be reached”. She replied by email that she was not aware of any problem with the telephone system. No, her cell phone was not shut off, she said.

Then the bombshell came! I got an email from her that began, “I’m really SORRY. I’m not ready for marriage…I’m too young…I need more time…” She said she had gone with a classmate “to a faraway place” where the classmate had found her a job. No one, even her parents knew where she was, she stated. She was fine, though, not to worry. She admitted to being “confused”. She said she could not come back soon because her parents and I would be very angry with her.

By email I replied that there was plenty of time, that any visa application to the USA would not be ready for months and that she had six months after the visa was issued to use it. In addition she would have ninety days in America to decide whether she wanted to marry or not. I told her I agreed with her that she needed more time and maturity to be ready for marriage. I told her that her family and friends would not be angry, that we all loved her and hoped she would come back soon. I advised her to contact her parents right away.

I called Rubeth’s parents who were distraught because they had not heard from her at all. Her mother told me that her father, despite his heart condition, had gone to Manila from Ormoc to look for her. I wrote to her family by special courier suggesting that if her father couldn’t find her soon he should go to the police and file a missing person’s report. If after a week even they could not find her we should post a large reward in increments until she is located and he could bring her home. I would provide this.

Meanwhile, another email from Rubeth. She thanked me for my advice and said she had finally contacted her parents. She said she was not yet ready for a commitment. “I can’t give you the happiness” you deserve, she concluded, fatefully. Finally I received word that she had met with her father at a neutral location. She told her father that on the spur of the moment she had fled with a female classmate to Manila and “married” “Lib” , a former classmate with whom she had been carrying on secret text-messaging off and on for several years. Neither her parents nor her relatives or friends had ever heard of this person before. At first her “husband” arranged for his father and brother, Rubeth, and her father, to meet at a neutral location. After Rubeth’s father agreed not to beat him up, “Lib” agreed to meet with her father.

Probably many readers are aware of the law regarding marriage in the Philippines. Was this “marriage” legal? Even presuming that the two waited the mandatory 14 days for posting, the answer is “NO”. That’s because according to Philippine law a woman must receive the permission of her parents, if they are living, before she can marry. The law calls it “advice”, but the documentation of positive “advice” is a stringent requirement. According to Rubeth’s early version, only she, the groom and the groom’s parents were present at the wedding. Rubeth’s friends and relatives all believed and still do that no marriage took place and that she was simply living with this person called “Lib”. She later told me that they were never married and “they” meaning her parents and relatives, had told her tell everyone that she was married to avoid the further shame of just living together. But who could believe anything she might say by this time.

The reaction on the part of Rubeth’s loved ones was shock and consternation. Rubeth’s family lived in an area surrounded by the homes of her relatives and friends. Within a couple of months Rubeth’s family felt compelled to move out of their house in the middle of the night because of the shame she had brought on her family. To me she wrote an email begging for forgiveness, pleading with me not to “hate” her. I said that Christians should not “hate” people, who are created in the image of God, but rather “hate” the bad things that people do. Of course any feelings of affection we might have had for each other had permanently ceased.

And what about the “groom” called “Lib” It was said that he did not know (nor did his mother) who his actual father was. I received two incredible emails from him, signed with the utmost irony as “Stoic Warrior Poet”. He was alleged to be a full time member of the military. While Rubeth and I were traveling and sleeping together he was text messaging her and proposing marriage. What sort of person would propose marriage to a woman fresh from her fiancee’s bed? And his parents encouraged a “wedding” which they knew to be illegal. The “groom participated in the deceitful actions Rubeth took against all her loved ones and in turn she deceived him (at first?) into thinking she was a virgin.

In the first email he proclaimed in an incredible arrogant tone that Rubeth was his and that was that and I should not “hate” him. He raved against her parents saying her mother was so much on my side that she would have married me herself if she could. In Filipino culture, of course, this is reprehensible and extraordinarily insulting to her parents. I of course failed to answer this, which caused him to fly into rage. He defended her “virginity” (supposedly until the time he was with her) and lashed out at me calling me every nasty name he could think of from “dirty old man” to “queer”, “faggot”, and so on. I simply forwarded the letter on to Rubeth without comment. I had heard that she was appalled. She also criticized me for revealing her less than virgin state but later apologized and ask for forgiveness.

I replied to her that I had two immediate concerns. I said that the person she had “married” was a classic example of a psychotic individual and could easily be expected to attack her physically. Even more immediate, though, was my concern for her contracting a sexually transmitted disease. I had spent eight years in Taiwan and elsewhere in East Asia and was well aware that in nearly all these countries the professional military either maintained their own brothels or worked on a formal contractual or other arrangement to provide “recreation”. I suggested she proceed right away to get tests for such diseases. She would not.

Rubeth sent additional emails again asking for forgiveness. I reminded her of the passage in the Bible when Jesus is presented a couple who were found to be having an adulterous relationship. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”, He said. After the crowd dispersed, though, He turned to the woman and said, “Go and sin no more”. If she wants forgiveness, must she not repent and sin no more? Why did Rubeth continue (allegedly at least) to copulate with a madman and risk physical abuse or a potentially fatal disease? Is this pleasing to God? Rubeth replied by thanking me for forgiving her and giving me her new phone number so I could call her “when you want somebody to talk to”.

From my end, this story has a positive ending. Should I not thank Rubeth for alerting me as to what kind of person she was before marrying her? Isn’t this like someone committing adultery before even getting married? After learning that Rubeth had fled her family I was deeply disturbed, unhappy, and discouraged. I turned to friends for advice and prayed a lot. I reached a conclusion that the best thing for me to do was to find someone who is sincere. Perhaps my experience was meant as a lesson, not only to me, but to other Americans so they may not find themselves in a similar predicament.

A few months later I found a wonderful woman through Filipinaeyes. Of course I had been upset and depressed after the experience with Rubeth but I realized that one can’t condemn 80 million people because of a rare cheat. I still believed that there are many fine women out there and there is one that is just for me. This experience was meant to teach me something.

I learned to beware of ladies who come on very strong after a brief acquaintance by email or phone. Don’t get so involved before you know the lady. Take your time! In this case, Rubeth’s conduct in abandoning parents, relatives, and friends came as a complete shock not just to me, but to all her family, relatives and friends. Look for a certain level of maturity. Beware of overly emotional women.

Ask your lady if she still has email or text mail with “old flames”. She may lie about it, Rubeth would have, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.

On the issue of “virginity”, don’t bring it up. Let her do it. She will tell you what she wants to and if what she says bothers you or you feel she’s not candid enough, drop her – you are not suited.

Look for signs such as refusal to have sex after repeatedly having had sex before. Something has gone wrong, seriously wrong.

Use common sense – the best and hardest rule to follow.

Pray. And yes, meet with good luck!

P.S. Don’t expect me to follow my own advice!




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