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Mottemen... and women (if there are any???) I need your advice.
This is pretty serious, so I'd appreciate serious advice. No jokes or one-liners please.
Recently I made a trip to the Philippines. Amazing country. Amazing yet terrible. Terribly third world, but amazing people. It's like a crazy mirror-universe version of the US/Hawaii.
Met a girl there. As you do... meaning, I went to a strip club and she went home with me. She was hot, she told me she was taking birth control, and I was drunk and stupid, so we didn't use protection.
Over the next two weeks, she spent quite a bit of time with me. She introduced me to her (huge) family, and her two children (who she had as a teenager). This is the Philippines so that kind of thing is not uncommon. She never directly asked me for money, but always guilt-tripped me into it after spending time with me. To be fair, it was a trivial amount for me but a huge amount for her.
Towards the end, she was becoming extremely clingy. Crying, saying she loved me. Maybe she meant it. I really don't know. I do know that she was messaging other guys, but that's kind of her job. I was pretty honest the whole time that I could only stay a short time and wasn't looking for a long-term relationship. She seemed to accept it but she seemed genuinely sad.
After I left, I got a message from her. Saying she's pregnant. Uh oh... I mean, yeah I've taken sex ed I know these things happen... but I didn't think it would happen to me. She said she was taking precautions, and I believed her because she's experienced. I have no idea if (a) that's true and we just got unlucky (b) she's an idiot or (c) this was a deliberate trap. For what it's worth, she's catholic, but in that super-flexible 3rd world way where you just cross yourself and burn a candle to be forgiven all sins.
Anyway she wants money, naturally. She says it's for abortion pills. She's not asking for much, but I'm worried it will only increase from here if I pay it. I'm also worried that she might be telling the truth and actually have the child. This is a very impulsive, unstable woman. I can afford to give her a little money but don't want to get blackmailed forever. But I also don't want to be a scumbag and leave an unplanned child in a third world country.
...help?
(edit... should I just move to the Philippines and raise a family there? the living there is really cheap so i could afford it. But there's really not much to do there except drink, fuck, and pray)
Dude.
Others have pretty much covered it. This is like textbook Filipina scamming 101. Your post reads like a white guy reading a list of "Dos and Don'ts in the Philippines" and carefully checking off every single Don't. I almost don't believe it's real because it's so on the nose and it's hard to believe anyone is this naive. I don't mean that to be insulting, honestly I don't, but... man.
So realtalk, you sound kind of like you are desperate for this to be real, she really is pregnant with your child and she really does love you. And no one can say that is 100% impossible. Maybe you are the one guy in a hundred (or more) who gets told this story and she's sincere. But do you really want to let yourself get milked on those odds?
Look, even if you did go back, demanded a paternity test, and it turned out to be yours, how does this end? I have known guys who married former bar girls there. It just... doesn't turn out well. Almost never. Those girls are damaged and they have already been steeped in a way of life that makes them cynical, mercenary, and not well suited for stable monogamous relationships. I am not even condemning them for it; it's a survival strategy for desperately poor women who have few other options. You can feel sorry for them, but you have to be realistic about them.
That said, on the remote chance that you really did get her pregnant, and she decides to keep it, and you can verify this, do the right thing and provide for your damn kid.
It's almost never merely a survival strategy nor are they that desperate.
From their perspective, converting pussy to pesos (or whatever local currency) is just a path of lesser resistance and higher ROI than grinding away at some regular day job like a chump. A newish-model smartphone, a replenishing supply of makeup, and a recurring supply of new clothes aren't going to pay for themselves—which her stupid parents and/or an ordinary boyfriend/husband are/would be too stingy or poor to provide. Scamming foreign men is the cherry-on-top, whether playing the short- or long-game, as it's easier and more profitable—and even more fun—than picking up more shifts as a bargirl or tacking on an additional side-gig at a normal day job.
I'm aware of what you think of pussy-havers, but most of them don't get into the life because they just wanted a new smartphone. You can argue they could have or should have chosen some other (likely even more miserable) grind, but you don't actually need to despise them.
This isn't meant to be a continuation of the conversation you're having, but my answer to this is: Porque no los dos? It's perfectly reasonable to despise someone who defrauds others in predatory ways with huge psychological and possibly financial consequences for their target; disgust is an appropriate thing to feel. Most people who do terrible things do so because of some prior circumstance; serial killers often have long histories of childhood abuse, mobsters and criminals often grow up in unstable and poverty-stricken backgrounds, that in and of itself doesn't excuse the act. Dysfunction breeds dysfunction. You can feel sorry for all these bad actors while also simultaneously thinking their actions are beyond the pale, that it warrants serious punishment, and that it may not be possible to reintegrate them into a stable society that values prosociality.
Sorry, but I could not disagree more with this moral dictum and find myself to be far more in agreement with the other commenters here. Especially if this was baby-trapping. OP should have mitigated his risk more effectively, but I don't believe he has any obligation to support a family created entirely against his will, particularly if it was premised solely on the deception of the mother. Here, all choice goes to her, and all obligation goes to him regardless of whether he was duped or not. There is no world where that is an even remotely just outcome, and it creates perverse incentives in favour of patently undesirable behaviour such as baby-trapping which just results in more dysfunctional out-of-wedlock births, the very thing such a policy should ostensibly be trying to mitigate. The only reason why women do this in the first place is that it works. Maybe it shouldn't.
It's particularly unjust in context of the widely-accepted ability of the mother to avail herself of safe haven laws regardless of the circumstances of conception; an abandonment option which unilaterally ensures that the kid will be left without any biological parents by default and deprives the father of any choice to parent if he wishes to do so. (Compare this with paternal surrender; a hypothetical surrender-mechanism that still leaves said kid with one parent and lets that parent decide what relationship she wants to maintain with it, yet it is controversial.)
That being said, we've talked about this at length before and I suspect we're firmly at an impasse on this topic. Probably an example of one of these terminal moral things that's impossible to shift via argumentation.
EDIT: added more
I was talking about not despising them for being in the sex trade.
As for supporting a child you created, it's not about the woman who baby-trapped you. That sucks. But if there's a human being you created with your actions (and you chose to put your dick in her), I absolutely despise anyone who'd refuse to take responsibility for that and leave the child you created to poverty and probably being brought up in the same life, no matter how much you despise the mother.
I don't actually view the father as being hugely responsible for the creation of the child in this circumstance. The child was created primarily via the mother's deception, and the father was operating under a situation of false information. In addition, in similar fashion to another user in the thread, I don't have a high opinion of the inherent role of DNA in creating a link between child and father.
Finally, as I noted, this assignation of responsibility to the father creates a pretty horrendous incentive structure where baby-trapping is incentivised, since that system allows such women to benefit from it. The net result might in fact be more children born in such a dysfunctional situation and raised by fucked-up women, and that seems like a rather anti-utilitarian outcome one would want to discourage.
I think most people would find the idea that a woman who's had a child due to holes being poked in a condom should not be able to avail herself of safe haven abandonment or put the child up for adoption (for the ostensible benefit of the kid) pretty displeasing. Granted, she could've taken a morning after pill or birth control to mitigate her risk, but she relied on the biological father's representations. Though I will say that the argument for that prohibition is actually stronger given that the woman in question had options like abortion once she realised she was pregnant, and thus actually had to decline to take steps to terminate the pregnancy before a child was produced.
Of course, safe haven abandonment, adoption etc is allowed for women due to their default custody of out-of-wedlock children, even in situations where the woman in question was being exceptionally irresponsible, whereas legal paternal surrender is not often considered legally or socially permissible even under circumstances of coercion or misrepresentation.
I don't care what the mother did, I care about the child who was created by your actions, no matter how evil the mother. Yes, it sucks to have been trapped like that. It also sucks to be a child abandoned due to the caprice of not one but two parents.
You are right that we've discussed this before and won't agree. I will not change my position that there are few people more deserving of being spat on than those who'd justify abandoning a child of theirs for whatever bad actions of the other parent.
Yeah this definitely reflects a deep-seated and probably intractable difference in morality. As I said, one of these terminal moral values.
But, that being said, I would at the very least like if those who advocated such positions made attempts at ensuring moral consistency. I can't say and won't make judgements on whether you have or not, but in my experience people generally don't.
The law certainly doesn't meet these standards, anyway. It should go one way or the other. I know what I would morally prefer, but any consistency is better than no consistency.
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