First a little about me: I'm a 59-year old Caucasian male living on the west coast of the good old USA. A few years ago my wife divorced me after nearly 21 years of marriage. I took it badly and basically retreated from most forms of socialization not directly connected with work. I slowly rebuilt my finances but shied away from re-entering the dating scene. After about 18 months of this I decided that I had spent long enough feeling sorry for myself and I joined a couple of domestic dating sites and tried my luck.
It didn't go well. I found out that dating scene had changed a lot since I was single, and that the market for 59-year-old guys was not a pretty one. The women I met in my age range were not attractive to me, and the few that were seemed only interested in comparing me to former husbands or failed boyfriends. Their attitude seemed to be "Hey, you're lucky I'm even talking to you!". Desperate, I even changed my profile and took 10 years off my age, but the 40-something women had the same issues. I lost hope and cancelled my accounts.
At about this time I started to receive friend requests from several young women on Facebook. They were in their early 20's and lived in the Philippines. I found this embarrassing and examined their friends lists to see if I knew anyone there. Sure enough, a friend at work was friends with all the girls who had contacted me. I IM'ed him asking what was up and why were 24-year-old women trying to 'friend' me?
His response was to laugh and say "You say that like it's a bad thing!". We went for a beer and he told me about his attempts to hook up with local women, and they closely mirrored my own experiences. The only difference was that he had tried longer than I had but with the same results. He started to explore alternative to dating local women and eventually threw up a profile on 'CherryBlossoms.com'. The response was incredible - 100 responses in 24 hours. He eventually started a relationship with one woman and those girls who were contacting me were her friends. Even though that relationship didn't work out, he recommended that I try putting up a profile to see if I had better luck.
So I did and sure enough I was soon flooded with requests from Pinays to exchange email and chat. While I enjoyed the attention, I never really 'clicked' with any of the women. Most seemed to be extremely poor and not very well educated. Even the ones who did have degrees seemed to not have much to talk about. If I asked what they had done today, most would respond 'nothing'. I started to think that perhaps foreign women were not going to be a viable option for me.
On the other hand, my friend was doing much better. He had spent a lot of time and effort building a list of candidates and was planning another trip to visit the next one on the list. I took him out for a 'good luck!' beer and he told me that if this girl was really 'the one', he would give me the name of one of his 'alternates' that he thought would be perfect for me. I laughed and toasted him with my beer but didn't think much of it.
As it turned out, his trip went well and he really hit it off with the second girl. I could see why - she was 24, attractive and well educated. Confident that she was 'it', he gave me the Yahoo Messenger handle for the 'Alternate' that he had told me about. She was 28, had teaching and nursing degrees and lived about 45 minutes by air from the Philippine island of Cebu. On a whim I called her and after some scheduling conflicts actually connected. We talked for over 2 hours and afterwards I noticed that my jaw was aching - I had been laughing and smiling almost the entire time. She was attractive, funny, smart and could more than handle her end of a conversation. After a week I knew I had to go see this girl and despite the fact that I had never traveled any further from the US than Hawaii, I booked a flight to Cebu to meet her. I'll save the story of that trip for another time, but suffice to say I'm going back next week for my third trip and I will be bringing an engagement ring with me.
So guys, if you are wondering if going overseas is worth a try, all I can say is that in my case it definitely was. Don't fool yourself - not all women on the planet are like American girls. Given the right mixture of determination and luck, happiness might just be waiting for you abroad
