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This was and still is a very curious thing to me. I have three friends with east Asian wives, one from Korea, one from China and one from Japan. Their wives are all middle or upper middle class and they have all married either laterally or downwards (especially lookswise), but all seem exceptionally happy with their husbands, who are not really exceptional people.
As I've come to understand it this does not have to do with fetishization as much as with just how badly these women have been treated by their previous Asian boyfriends and the general expectations on them from their prospective in-law families and society in general. From the perspective of a decent Swedish guy, the standards for being a good partner seem astonishingly low – to the point where failure almost seems to require an active effort.
It just seems so unsustainable for them. It's not like we're perfect or giga-cucked over here but it's still a walk-over, at least in the mind of these particular women. They just want to be treated with respect by their partners, be able to work after having children and not be treated as pseudo servants/slaves by their in-laws. I've had a bit of hard time really believing this, could it really be that bad?
Perhaps.
Or perhaps my friends' wives have a overly negative view of their home societies and that's why they ended up with western husbands. Or maybe it's a combination.
Like I've said on here before, there's a sort of misery porn/revenge porn set of texts up on Youtube (see this for sample), and while it's ostensibly set in America, it's pretty clearly Japanese in inspiration (with some copy-cat other East Asian versions).
Granted, this is all exaggerated in the style of romance novels, but still: the expectations to make the set-up even remotely credible are:
(1) Your mother-in-law will probably be a thundering bitch who expects you to be a housemaid for her because 'that's how it's always been'; when you marry into a family, you now have to serve that family like your own parents
(2) This even extends to 'hand over your money'
(3) Husbands will likely be momma's boys who don't stand up to defend you, or check out because they don't want to deal with drama, they're too busy working
(4) Husbands will often not come home because they're attending drinking parties with clients/co-workers; this is normal
(5) Husbands will often not come home because they're working so much overtime so they stay in a hotel; this is normal
(6) Grandchildren are mandatory, you'll get a lot of abuse from in-laws if you don't do your Womanly Wifely Duty and pop out a sprog. Also it better be a son, because girls aren't good enough
(7) You get it in the neck whether you're a stay-at-home wife (lounging around living off husband's hard-earned money, plus lots of free time so you must obey mother-in-law's commands) or a working woman (not pulling your weight doing chores at home because that's the wife's job)
(8) Divorce seems to be way easier, it's just a matter of filling out forms and dropping them off, and divorce is a threat often wielded by the husband/mother-in-law
There does seem to be a cultural assumption that the in-laws have way more interference in the lives of married couples and that you don't get the cops/outsiders involved even in cases where we in the West would say "that's abusive". The role seems to be: be successful (there's a ton of snobbery around education and being a middle-school/high-school dropout or not going to the right kind of university), get a rich husband, run the house on a budget while keeping up standards, provide grandkids, and be at the beck and call of your in-laws for pretty much everything.
As I said, a lot of this is clearly (I hope!) exaggerated, but the background cultural setting that makes this plausible even as wish-fulfilment fantasy seems to indicate that married life for Asian women is more limiting in many ways than their Western counterparts.
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Pity Skookum got banned, this would've been a data point contrary to his narrative of "women married to ugly (but caring and attentive) men are literally more miserable than women married to men who beat them".
To play Skookum's advocate, men's looks work quite different than women's, and asian men got the shortest of sticks on that account. A rugged, average height westerner will easily beat out the average asian moonface manlet in terms of looks. Sorry if someone feels insulted, I'm exaggerating for emphasis, but asian women are often quite open about western men being far more attractive than asian men.
They certainly are, but I'm pretty sure Skookum is a white guy, and rugged enough that his powerlifting PRs are better than mine.
Yeah I guess this point might actually go against him personally, but it still means his general argument might still be correct.
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In America there seems to be a bit of a stereotype among hispanic women that their menfolk are alcoholics who sometimes beat their wives and cheat on them at any opportunity, and thusly you see a lot of good looking latinas with white guys who are schlubby and not particularly well off. I don't think this is a great description of the typical hispanic man, although alcoholism, adultery, and spousal violence are probably more common in that community I don't think it's an 'everyone' problem as opposed to a 'higher per capita rate' problem. What matters is that senoritas seem to believe it.
It's very possible that the same thing is going on with oriental women; there's a stereotype of husbands/boyfriends letting their mothers treat girlfriends/wives like shit, and it doesn't matter that it isn't the typical case, what matters is they believe it.
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Just world fallacy. I suppose men like dating younger women because they realize they’ll treat them better and are better lovers?
The somewhat feminized characteristics of asians (shorter, socially reserved, small round features) creates an imbalance in the desirability of their men and women (works opposite in blacks), reflected in the singaporean student imbalance.
White men are just more attractive. So when your asian gf tells you how happy she is to be with you and how great you treat her, remember that to her you’re like a girl with big tits.
Yes? I mean, it obviously isn't the only reason, but there are far, far more 20-somethings who are eligible and without serious emotional baggage than there are 40-somethings. It's the superior dating pool if you want those types of things.
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And I'm totally fine with that.
I know, it's great. But let's not pretend it's because we're such great and magnanimous lovers.
I'll have you know I'm a decent lover, and spent 3% of this month's salary on her latest birthday present.
Joking aside, I see your point.
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There is a difference between hooking up with someone and maintaining a happy long term relationship.
The perceived 'leagueness' influences satisfaction with the relationship.
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I wouldn't say they have an overly bad view of their home countries, but perhaps are high percentile of sensitivity to those kinds of slights. In the same way that white people in the USA vary in their sensitivity to wokeness, and Black people vary in their sensitivity to racism. Some barely notice it, some are driven to distraction or change careers or migrate. Women with strong senses of independence will migrate out.
I briefly dated a girl who was born in Egypt but grew up in Bahrain. She left the country because she couldn't stand the repressive Islamic theocracy (IIRC, it's still the case that a rapist can escape punishment if he agrees to marry his female victim, something Morocco outlawed in 2014). But the departure of one woman chafing against the restrictions imposed by the society just means that the society is very slightly more conservative and tolerant of repression than it was prior. It had never occurred to me before that evaporative cooling of group beliefs applies just as much on a national level as with religions, cults, political organisations etc.
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That's probably true but to me they still seem fairly submissive though, especially the Japanese woman. They really aren't asking for much independence. I guess they just took the chance when they saw it, I doubt they would have migrated on their own.
Curved against their home culture?
For reference, I have a very close friend who is precisely that: a highly educated female expat from an East Asian tiger economy. She left largely, consciously, because of things like civil rights and feminism. At the same time, when I observe how she acts, she is significantly more family oriented, more submissive to her husband and her family, than I would expect from an American woman of her class and education and cultural affectations.
That's the arbitrage that is so often talked up among the mail-order-bride market boosters: she feels like she is getting significant extra freedom from her husband, her American husband feels like he is getting an amazing wife and highly supportive partner. Where so often in a dual-income marriage between equals, both feel that they're getting a terrible bargain and insufficient support/freedom from their partner.
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I think the social expectation of siding with your wife over your mother makes a pretty big difference; women treat each other much worse than men do and husbands generally love their wives, and even western mothers in law aren't exactly known for being easy to deal with.
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