Read at your own risk because, as especially Americans know, the truth is a bitter pill that nobody really knows exactly what disease is curing, and you're left with a bunch of unpleasant side effects.
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In short: if you are 40 or older, do not come to the Philippines to look for a young wife, unless you are prepared to:
1) ditch all dating websites (nowadays they're only good for pump & dump quality women) and embark in your own very "journey of discovery";
2) spend weeks to months here, roaming third and fourth-class cities and remote townships in Visayas or Mindanao, often long hours drive apart, on bumpy minivan or bus rides;
3) accept a girl with little or no education, no knowledge of the world or a relationship with a man, and an entire family that will - sooner or later - depend on you for constant support;
4) accept a girl whose features are much less desirable to Filipinos than they are for you - morenas (dark skinned) might look healthy, slender and sexy to us foreigners, but they're second or third choice for the locals, and that is exactly why they are so happy to leave them to us.
Remember: in the Land of the Morning, if a girl looks too good to be true, she certainly is. 99% of the cases, the reasons why she is looking for foreigners are either or both of these two:
1) because she can't find what she needs in the local pool of men, or because the men she could get given her looks/status would be rock bottom: lazy, unreliable, unfaithful, violent, etc.;
2) because she (and her family) knows she will never be able to support herself and her family unless she finds a foreigner to latch on to; love or lust have nothing to do with it: it is a necessity pure and simple.
In short: if you are OK with it, good, else you need to suck it up.
Unless we are celebrities, or Fil-[something] mestizos back in town, or young unmarried and flawless looking boys, we Caucasian foreigners are always second and third choices for Filipinas. And conversely: the Filipinas we can find are always second and third choice ladies. From what I have seen, the only exceptions seem to be young Koreans, because of the great resonance of their pop culture with young Filipinos. Even Japanese young men, who could find good girls once upon a time, now have to resort to marry the occasional Pinay strip club dancer on a short visa in Japan.
Again, sorry for being such a killjoy (which is part of the reason why I stopped posting here - whatever I have to say will go against the going fairy tale narrative), but this is today's reality in the Philippines.
Take it or leave it.
