18 Reasons Thai Bar Girl Relationships Often Fail
I am going to end on a positive note. I’m not saying it’s absolutely impossible to have a relationship with a girl who works in a bar or a go go bar somebody you meet here in Thailand. But for the most part, I’m going to give you 18 reasons why it’s probably not going to work, and you’re not going to be as important to her as you think you are.
Okay, so let’s kick off with my list. Straight in at number one.
1. Trapped and Resigned to Being the Breadwinner
They’re trapped and resigned to their fate at being the breadwinner for the entire family. Most of these girls, especially the girls who come from the poorer regions of Thailand, the north east, Isaan, etc. They are seen as the main money machine of the family. The rural farmers are very, very poor, a lot of them. The girl with her looks can come down to Bangkok or Pattaya and she can make a lot of money with drinks and going with clients. It’s just something in the poorer culture here in Thailand that the girl will choose to work in a bar or a go go club rather than be unemployed or work in a factory on 300 baht a day.
2. Not Looking for Love Only to Get By
They’re not looking for love, only to get by. And just like in point number one, it’s about money again. It’s easier to lie to yourself and others when you believe the lie. If the girl is constantly lying, constantly telling guys “I love you” and various lies the more she tells these lies, the more she’s going to believe it. And the more she believes it, the easier it’s going to be for her to tell these lies.
3. A Knight in Shining Armor Can’t Carry the Whole Family
A knight in shining armor can’t carry the entire family on the horse, so lose that idea now. I’ve met a number of guys and I’m sure if you come to Thailand, especially in a resort town like Pattaya you get these guys who try to talk girls out of what they’re doing. We call them white knights. Most of these girls choose to work in the bars because of poverty. I’m not saying this never happens, but for the most part, I would say 99% of these girls choose to work in these bars and go go clubs because they can make really good money for their families. It’s all about their families.
You going along and trying to talk her out of it, telling her morally it’s wrong, and you think she’s a great girl and she should go to church every week and do this and that you’re never going to change how she thinks. So don’t try and be a white knight. You’re not going to change them.
4. She Loves Me Because I’m Older More Mature and Settled
There is some truth to that. I’ve spoken to bar girls I’m getting on a bit now, but when I was younger, I used to hang out in places like Nana Plaza and the beer bars in Pattaya. A lot of the girls will tell you even when I was younger they would tell me this they do prefer having relationships with older guys. It’s not to say they find them more handsome or more fun than young guys. Of course, they probably would like to have younger guys as boyfriends. But it’s all about financial support again.
What the girls will tell you is that with the older guys, most of them are coming up for retirement or they’ve already retired. They’ve made their money. Maybe they’ve closed down their business, and financially they’re very stable. And that’s what the girls are looking for. They’re not looking for somebody who just wants to party every night and has money this week but nothing next week. They want that stability. They want that cash to flow in every month so that they can send it up to their families.
5. Always Looking to Trade Up
If a guy comes along with more, she will test the water. And when she gets her hooks in him, when she feels secure enough, you get dumped with no emotion, no feeling. You could be in a relationship with a bar girl, go go dancer, and you feel it’s all going well. You’ve been with her maybe six months. You’re giving her a little bit of money to send to her family every month, and everything seems to be on the up and up, and everybody’s happy.
Now, if another guy comes along and she gets him in her sights, and he appears to be more wealthy, she is going to flirt and try and get her hooks into him. If she thinks that new guy who’s wealthier is interested in her as a long time girlfriend, there is no emotion. You’ll be dumped. He’s got more money than you, he’s interested in making her his girlfriend, she’s going to be financially better off, more stable. You’re gone. That’s it. End of story. Move on.
6. Just One of Many
You’re just one of many. Many bar girls maintain multiple boyfriends or sponsors, both in Thailand and abroad. You might be one of several men she’s keeping on the hook for financial support. This is mainly for guys who are in long distance relationships with Thai girls who work in the entertainment industry and don’t reside in Thailand full time. It’s hard enough living here full time to have a relationship a lot of the time, not all of the time. If you’re sending her money each month but you’re not living here, she’s going to try and reel in a few sponsors. Obviously, if she can get half a dozen guys sending her 10,000 or 20,000 baht a month, then that’s going to become big money. Her family can move up the social scale, buy a nice big 4×4, scooters for the whole family, and the gold and everything else that goes with it.
7. Work Comes First
Work comes first. Her job is about entertaining men, and she sees it as a business. Even if she has feelings for you, she won’t prioritize you over making money from customers. Again, it’s all about the money. So even if the girl really likes you, you’re going to be second. You’re always going to be second place to cash and gold. That’s what she’s looking for that new mobile phone, gifts of gold, cash. And even though she has some feelings for you, you won’t be priority. It will be the cash.
8. Emotionally Detached After Years in the Nightlife Industry
Many bar girls develop emotional detachment as a survival mechanism. This means even if she acts like she loves you, deep down you may be just another man. Imagine you go to work a skilled job. You go for the first day, you mess it up. The second day, you get to grips with it slightly. After a month, you’re an expert. It’s the same with girls who work in the bar. They are groomed by their peers. They’re taught what they should say, what they should do, what questions to ask. Eventually, they learn to speak English. And the longer they work in those bars, they just become detached from all emotion. You’re just another mark, another client. She’s already had hundreds. She knows what she’s going to say. She knows almost all of the time what you’re going to say back to her. So you’re not going to be different to anybody else.
9. She Has a Thai Boyfriend or Husband
Many bar girls have Thai boyfriends or even husbands, often hidden from foreign men. If she has one, he will always be her real priority. Something that’s very, very normal in Thailand and I’ve seen this over the years a lot of the girls who work in places like Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy, if you sit at the front at night, you’ll see a lot of them getting dropped off by young guys about their age on motorcycle scooters. They’re not all motorbike taxis. You can always distinguish the motorcycle taxis because they wear a vest with a luminous number on the back. You’ll see a lot of younger guys about the same age as them dropping these girls off. A lot of them are husbands and boyfriends.
Now, I don’t know how the relationship works with Thais, knowing what she does. Maybe a lot of the time the Thai girl can say, “Well, I sit with customers and I have drinks.” It seems a bit naive to only believe that. But even if you’re a serious boyfriend, a lot of the time they will have a Thai boyfriend in the background. There have been many cases guys who’ve gone on a date with a girl and she’s brought along a guy of her own age and introduced him as her brother. So the poor guy sitting there pays the bill for her, her boyfriend, or her husband, not knowing anything. And all the time it’s her boyfriend and not her brother. This is very, very normal.
When we’re talking about working girls, of course girls who work in bars, massage parlors, go go clubs, any entertainment business, it wouldn’t be fair to tar all Thai girls with the same brush. Thai girls are like any other girls around the world very, very decent. I know guys who have relationships with girls who work regular jobs, and they wouldn’t be seen dead in places like Nana Plaza. So we’re not talking about generally all Thai girls. We’re talking about girls who work in the entertainment business.
While we’re on that point, I might just say I’m not trying to run down these girls or disrespect them in any way. I suppose if I was a girl of 20 in their position, then I’d probably want to do the same to look after my family. Most of the girls that you meet in these bars, they’re very pleasant. They can be a lot of fun, and they’re fun to hang around. They are actually nice people, most of them. But unfortunately, you’ve got to get to grips with you can live the lie, enjoy the lie, but don’t believe the lie. It’s a great saying here in Thailand.
10. Cultural and Language Barriers
She may not fully understand or connect with your emotional needs. Even if you expect a deep emotional connection, you might not get it. Coming from the West, you want this loving relationship with her. She might, as we mentioned earlier, be detached from all that a long time ago. But she realizes she’s clever enough to realize that you want something out of the relationship like you want love and emotion and she’s going to try and put on a bit of an act and give you what you want. But it’s very, very hard for her to do that genuinely.
11. She Sees You as a Walking ATM Machine
That’s a very common saying here in Thailand. “I’m an ATM machine” the guy’s an ATM machine. Even if she calls you her boyfriend, she might only see you as a source of money. Once the money stops, so does her affection. So she’s your girlfriend. You look at her as a girlfriend like you would in the West. You’re financially supporting her. You kind of got this feeling like, “Okay, well, if I’m down on my luck and I don’t have any money, I’m sure my girlfriend will stay with me.” 99% of the time, she won’t. Why not? Because she doesn’t have feelings for you. Some of them will have feelings for you, but again, it’s going back to family and money. She has to have that money machine rolling all the time so that she can support her poor family. And even if it’s not for that, she wants to continue the good life. She doesn’t want to go back to poverty once she’s had a taste of the good life.
12. She Doesn’t Trust Foreign Men
Many bar girls have been lied to, used, and abandoned by foreigners in the past. Because of this, she might not take you seriously even if you’re genuinely in love with her. She explained that when she was working in the bars in Pattaya, she couldn’t understand why guys would lie. They’d say, “Well, I’ll see you later. I’ll come back and bar fine you later.” She said, “Look, we’ve had a drink. We’ve had a good time. Why can’t they just say, ‘Bye, I might see you another time’? Why do they have to lie?”
This is how these girls think. They’ve heard the lies so many times. That guy will say, “Yeah, I’ve got feelings for you.” Maybe the guy will date her for a week, then get bored with her and dump her. That must have happened quite a few times. So whenever a foreigner tells her something, it’s in one ear and out the other for obvious reasons. It’s going to take a long time before she knows you’re sincere and you mean what you say.
13. She Lives in a Different Reality
She lives in a different reality. Her world is full of fast money, late nights, and constant male attention. A serious relationship with one man might feel boring or unrealistic.
I know a guy in Bangkok, which I will keep anonymous. He fell in love with a girl who worked in Nana Plaza. She was quite a bit younger than him. He was fairly well off I wouldn’t say he was rich, but he was doing okay. He fell for this go go dancer and started bar fining her every night. Eventually, she moved in with him. He bought her a lot of nice gifts some gold and paid money to her family and her mother and everything. They were together for about 8 or 9 months.
One day, she turned around to him and said, “Look, I’m bored. I want to go back to my bar now.” He couldn’t understand it because he’d looked after her financially, emotionally. She was living with him. She had no worries about bills. Even her mother was getting taken care of, and siblings and everything. But she was just bored. She tried it for 8 or 9 months. She’s a young girl. She wanted to be with her friends. She wanted to party, and she wanted to drink. So although you’re getting on in life and you just want to settle down and have a quieter life, you’re with a person who isn’t thinking like that. She wanted to go back to the action, as it were.
14. She Can Replace You Easily
She can replace you easily. In tourist areas like Pattaya, Bangkok, and Phuket, there’s always a new wave of foreign men arriving. If you leave or stop providing what she wants, she knows another man will take your place. At the end of the day, relationships with bar girls are transactional. If you’re looking for real love, it’s important to be aware of the reality of these relationships and not fall into an emotional trap.
15. Her Friends and Colleagues Come First
She’s more loyal to her friends and colleagues. Many bar girls have tight knit friendships with other girls in the industry. They often listen to their friends’ advice more than the foreign boyfriends, especially when it comes to relationships. Thai bar girls are pack animals. They don’t do this on their own.
A lot of the time, relationships have been successful here in Thailand, and the guy’s taken the girl back to his country. Remember, we’re talking about bar girls again. The guy had a fairly successful relationship in other words, she stayed with him in his apartment maybe for 6 months or a year. He’s decided, “Okay, this is getting serious. I’ve got to go back to the UK or wherever he comes from,” and he decides to take the girl who was a bar girl and is now his girlfriend back to his own country. That’s when it all goes wrong.
The reason being they don’t do well by themselves. Thai society, and especially those in the bars, is very almost like a small family. They need the company of each other. What you’ll see typically in small bars around Pattaya is that a lot of the girls will come to work about 3:30 or 4:00 in the afternoon. It’s a ritual. The first thing they’ll do is one or two of them will go out and buy a load of food from the street vendors, and they’ll sit on a mat on the floor in a big circle and they’ll eat the food together. They discuss last night’s customers, what they’re hoping for today. The makeup goes on. They’re just all packed together.
When you remove one of those girls out of that environment, she’s not going to be happy. And if you think you can take her out of that environment and have a one on one and she’s going to be happy, it’s just not going to work. Honestly, believe me, guys.
16. She Is Planning Her Next Move
She’s already planning her next move. She might be using you as a stepping stone for something bigger finding a richer foreigner, getting a visa to another country, or just securing financial stability. This is something I don’t need to talk about too much because we discussed this earlier. She’s with you. She’s making some money with you. She’s having a relationship that you’re happy with. But she’s always scanning the horizon for more money. And if that wealthier person comes along, then there’s a good possibility you might lose her to bigger money.
17. She Resents Men Who Try to Save Her
She resents foreigners who try to save her. It’s the old white knight syndrome again. Some bar girls hate it when foreign men try to take them out of the industry. They see it as interference in their independence and might even view this as controlling. This is especially true with younger girls, girls who have maybe worked in the bar for a year. They’re actually enjoying it. Don’t forget, they come from very quiet, poor farming communities a lot of the time, where life is very slow paced early to bed because there’s nothing to do, up at the crack of dawn maybe helping out on the farm. Suddenly, here’s this young girl of maybe 22, 23. She’s in the middle of this vibrant night place. All the girls around her are doing exactly the same as her, so there’s nothing to be ashamed of. She’s making big money. She’s drinking every night. She’s on stage dancing and partying. You’re not going to talk her out of that if she’s new especially fairly new. When I say new to the scene, maybe a year or two. Maybe a girl who’s worked for 20 years she’s getting tired and she wants to move on. That’s a possibility. But certainly not a girl who’s only been around for a year or two.
Conclusion A Positive Note on Transactional Relationships
I don’t wish to be negative, but the reality has to be realized.
“When you’re in your 20s, 30s, or even early 40s, you should have sufficient charm, wit, intelligence, and good looks to attract a mate without having to hand over any cash. But when you are in your 50s or 60s, you’re much less likely to be a babe magnet and that’s when a transactional relationship with a Thai lady may be the right solution for you. Oh, and when the Thai girl stops calling you ‘handsome man’ and starts calling you ‘papa,’ then a transactional relationship is most definitely all you’re going to get.”
I kind of get what he was talking about. This might be something for you to think of if you’re an older guy, you’re in your 50s, 60s, or 65. When you go around the bars and you’re buying drinks and ringing the bell, every girl is going to call you ‘handsome man.’ The bigger your wallet is, the more handsome you’re going to become. When you run out of money, you’ll suddenly not be that handsome man.
All joking aside, there are guys who come out here who retire out here around my age, and they’re looking for a relationship. They realize they’re not going to be able to pick up regular girls in malls. They don’t go to nightclubs, and they don’t want to be on their own. They don’t want to be lonely. They just face the fact and think, “You know what? I know it’s transactional. I know I’m going to pay.” But they try to find a girl who’s going to play the game straight and will look after them. What this guy was saying is that sometimes that’s not a bad arrangement if you’re a guy who doesn’t want to be on his own.
What he decided to do was as he put it interview several girls. He’d take girls out of the bar, take them for dinner, have a drink with them, and just see how they behaved. Some of them, he knew straight away they were either immature or they were making up stories about having to send 50,000 baht up country because they have a sick grandmother just the silly stories that we all know now. He’d interview these girls, and eventually he found one that came across as genuine. Bearing in mind these points that I read out, he’s not stupid. He understands all this. But he wanted somebody who was going to, as I put it, play the game. He wanted a relationship somebody who could get on the back of his scooter, take on holidays, go to the beach with, maybe the islands but somebody who was not going to be messing about with guys behind his back. When he was with the girl having dinner, he didn’t want to be sitting there with somebody who, as soon as he went to the toilet, was handing out her LINE ID to the guy on the next table.
That can work. Without being too negative, that can work if you come here and you’re a guy looking for a relationship and you’re not thinking in a stupid way like, “Oh no, that’s not true, that wouldn’t happen to me.” If you can think in a sensible way and think to yourself, “Okay, I’ve got something to offer the girl. She can look after her family. I’m not poor. But I want somebody who’s going to give me genuine love or at least on the surface of it and she’s not going to be handing her LINE ID to other guys.” Perhaps that’s a way to go. And again, for the guys who are one of those guys who did meet a bar girl or a go go dancer and you’ve been living with her for 20 years and you’ve had a good life congratulations. Well done to you. But it’s not the norm. You’re very, very lucky. It doesn’t often happen.
