How A Failed Marriage Led Me To The Philippines

Where do I even begin to talk about what happened to me? I suppose the most logical place to start is at the beginning. Yet, what happened to me I can only say happened because other people are to blame. I honestly feel like that. And I’ve heard so many other stories where people say that they blame themselves. Yet, I don’t.

I don’t blame myself for what happened to me. I blame the greed of women on two continents. My first marriage broke down when my ex-wife all of a sudden decided that she didn’t want to be with me anymore. I don’t know how she got to that decision because all I did for the 32 years we were together was to try to make her happy.

I went out to work all the time, working a job I hated, all with the sole focus of trying to provide for my ex-wife and my three kids. How is it possible that she can just turn around one day and say that she’s had enough based on what? She’s had enough. Yet, I hadn’t had enough. So, why should I have to suffer through her decisions? That’s where it all began for me when my marriage broke down because of her.

While I might agree that she had the right to do what she did if I did something wrong, the fact that I didn’t do anything wrong, it should have meant if she didn’t want to stay with me anymore, she should have been without anything. But it doesn’t happen like that. And that’s the world we live in.

And that’s why I decided there and then that I didn’t want anything to do with where I came from anymore. I was 54 years old. I’d lost hundreds of thousands of dollars that I personally worked for. I was the one that put in the time. I was the one who tried doing all the things I didn’t want to do.

The Life I Thought I Wanted

And all she did was stay at home and look after the kids. I would have gladly taken her place, but I suppose it’s the same for guys all over the world. 54 with $420,000 in the bank and that’s it. While for some people that might be a lot of money, I should have had closer to a million. All those years I sacrificed waking up early, doing a job I didn’t want to do, not living my best life, just doing what was expected of people like me, and that’s all I had to show for it.

I felt repulsed in that situation and right there and then I thought, “F it. I’m leaving.” I decided I wanted to go to the Philippines. I heard that they did things differently there, more respectfully, and things are more traditional.

Traditional is something I’ve heard many people talking about, and I was of the mind that I could do things in the way I expected. I would come to understand that it wasn’t the kind of traditional I was actually looking for. I just wanted a situation where as the man, I was the one that provided and the girl, she was the one who didn’t need to provide. Therefore, she didn’t really need to do much of anything apart from just be happy to not have to work.

I think that’s where I got tripped up. All I wanted to do throughout my life was not work. That’s all I wanted to do, not work. Yet my ex-wife from my first marriage, she didn’t have to work. Yet, she didn’t seem to appreciate that at all. Then we have to look at what happened to me in the Philippines. I thought it was different.

I thought that the girls in the Philippines were more traditionally minded and appreciated not having to work. Yet, that’s not what happened. But I will get to that. But when I was 54, that was when I decided I’d had enough. I didn’t want to work anymore. I didn’t want to do anything. So I thought the best thing for me to do would be to just go to the Philippines and tried to spend as little money as possible. That’s what I thought would be best. And that’s what I did.

Planning My Retirement In The Philippines

I did a lot of mental calculations thinking that I’m 54. I don’t expect to live longer than 80. So, 26 years. 26 years, $20,000 a year. That should be okay. And that’s honestly what I thought. It was 2014 when I flew to the Philippines. I’d never been before. I’d never even left the States before. Yet, I was also interested in doing something different.

And I always thought that the guys that went there seemed to do things right, and I wanted to be one of them. The reason I chose the Philippines was because it seemed to be similar to what I was looking for. I was from a churchgoing Catholic family and the fact that that was appreciated and respected in the Philippines.

That was one of the reasons why I chose it. The other reason was affordability of course and also because I wanted to meet someone who wouldn’t be like my ex-wife was. These were my dreams and hopes. And if I’d have known, I would have found myself in a far worse situation not too many years later, I guess I probably wouldn’t have done what I did. When I got to the Philippines, my initial reaction was horror.

It was nothing like I expected it to be. I didn’t have these amazing first impressions like many people seem to have and I found myself in a hotel in Mati, nervous to even leave the hotel. I was on a high floor and I remember looking out of the window and just thinking, how have I found myself here? Everything seemed to be so chaotic and unorganized.

And I really strained my head a bit and peered down. And on the street below, there was a 7 Eleven and young children begging outside of it. And that really shocked me. I didn’t know what to do. I arrived at the airport, went to the hotel, and I was there for a few hours just looking outside, almost frozen, thinking, “Have I made the biggest mistake I’ve ever made?” What I did do was down a few beers that were in the mini bar. And that gave me a bit of liquid courage. And I walked out of the hotel around 8:00 p.m.

My First Night In The Philippines

And that’s when it began. When people say it’s hot in the Philippines, I mean it really is very hot, humid, and sticky, and not like any heat I’d felt before. I was only a short walk away from the place I wanted to go the most. The place everyone talked about on the internet forums I used to read, P Burgos Street.

I was only a couple of hundred yards away from the street and I can’t have been walking for more than 20 seconds when I was approached by countless girls and touts and I was taken aback by just how upfront people were. I walked into one of the first bars that I saw. That was when the Philippines went from being a place I felt very uncomfortable being in to a place I thought that for that split second when I peeled back the curtains and walked inside, I felt like my ex-wife leaving me was the best thing to ever happen to me.

It appeared I was going to be able to find someone a lot more attractive, a lot more grateful for what I was able to provide. And it was that gratitude that I was looking for. Now, if I look back, I know everything to do with the bars now and how crazy I was to have these thoughts. But when I walked in and saw those girls who I thought were looking for a guy exactly like me, I did feel happy for the first time in a long time.

The best way to describe it without coming across as being too offensive or saying something that somebody might not like is to say that I thought the bars were the place to go to meet someone yet they would just be happy to have someone and want them and would respect and appreciate them and ultimately look up to the guy that fell in love with her. I thought everything was very one sided.

I don’t know why I held these opinions. I just did. But I knew that on my first night I shouldn’t be thinking about that straight away. I had a long time in the Philippines permanently in fact. So I didn’t need to rush into anything. That was what I was thinking. Yet, it didn’t work like that. I could have only been sitting down for a minute when a girl came over and asked what I wanted to drink.

Meeting My Future Wife In Manila

She came back with the drink and sat down next to me. She asked if she could have one, and of course, I said yes. I got drunk, more drunk than I’d been for a long time, as did she. And two weeks later, I’d already asked her to marry me. I don’t want to get into all the boring details about those two weeks, but I became crazy for her.

She seemed to be such a breath of fresh air, nothing like my ex-wife. And what I felt like was she looked up to me as being someone who was able to look after her and provide for her. And in return, she didn’t want anything apart from someone to look after her. This is me going back to the traditional gender roles that I talked about before.

That’s what I was thinking was going on here. I didn’t think it was anything other than that. So when I asked her to marry me, it was with the intention that she would remain exactly the same as she was when I met her. I thought that’s what she wanted to be for me or for her future husband.

So I suppose I set myself up for failure before I’d even begun. But when I did ask her to marry me, she said yes. She didn’t have any kids. She was 24 and she was from a place called Lee. I have since come to learn that lots of girls come from there who work in that part of Manila and also up in Angeles City where I didn’t make it for another few months.

I don’t know why I asked her to marry me after only 2 weeks. I think it was because I thought I found a special girl who was different to all the others. I know everybody says that, but I want to say it as well because that’s what I thought. Yet, if I met another girl on that night, on that first night in the Philippines, in the first damn bar, I probably would have had the same feelings for her as well.

Asking My Future Wife To Marry Me

Maybe it was just me trying to get back at my ex-wife, saying, “Look at me. I’m able to find someone so easily, and you’re not.” I suppose I do have to take solace in the fact that she became a lot more bitter than she was when we were together. She didn’t find somebody who had so much money that she could start living the life she expected to live. That’s the thing that shocks me the most. The word shock is really not strong enough to describe how I felt.

Yet, she expected a particular life and material possessions, yet she didn’t want to do anything for it. Nothing. She didn’t want to work. She didn’t want to do anything. She wanted all this stuff for nothing.

So, the fact that I was able to meet someone younger than her, considerably more attractive than her, and better in every way than her, I was perhaps thinking that I would be able to hold that over her when I next spoke. Probably a very petty reason to do what I did, and that’s not the only reason for doing what I did. So, I guess I’ll never really know why I did what I indeed did. But I did ask her to marry me and she said yes.

And there was no indication that she wasn’t serious or that this wasn’t right for her. I thought I was the new love of her life. I thought she fell in love with me just like I fell in love with her and she appeared to. That’s what it seemed like. That’s what I thought happened when I asked her to marry me. It’s not like I expected to get married straight away.

I did say to her, you know, let’s get engaged, spend 3 months getting to know each other even better and make sure that we are the right match. What I meant by that was I wanted to make sure that I liked her. I just thought the fact that I was going to be able to help her not work anymore, I’m going to give her a more dignified life. I thought that was enough for her to give the love that I craved so much. That’s what the sad thing is.

Trying To Prove Something To My Ex Wife

All I wanted was love. Love and respect and also not to be taken advantage of. So that’s all I wanted. Not only that, that’s what I expected. And I honestly thought that that’s what I was going to get from her because that’s how I pictured everything happening. I thought that she respected me. I thought that I wanted things from her such as that and it was only something so tiny.

So that’s where I made the biggest mistake, I guess. But I’ve made so many mistakes and I don’t know which the biggest one is. At this point, I’d not even left Manila. So I thought, let’s go and have a look at somewhere else. As much as I liked Manila, I couldn’t see myself spending the rest of my life there.

I wanted to go somewhere more peaceful and tranquil, something that reminded me of where I grew up in the countryside where everybody seems to know each other and there’s a community and people help each other out. If I could live close to a beautiful ocean with little beach bars everywhere, yeah, that would be an even bigger bonus.

And as I’ve mentioned, my idea was to spend $20,000 a year. And from that, I’d spent so far in the Philippines, even in hotels and going around Manila. I felt like that was more than enough for me to live the best life ever with the best girl ever, who was very different to my ex-wife in the fact that she loved and appreciated and respected me.

I want to say that one more time. I definitely thought she loved, appreciated, and respected me. And the fact that there was such a big age difference was something that we never talked about. She didn’t look at me like I was any older. I didn’t look at her like she was any younger.

Expecting Love And Respect

I just looked at her like she was an amazingly beautiful girl who wanted somebody to help her escape the life she had before. In return, I expected 100% dedication and love. So, I suppose that’s why I did some stupid things because I thought this is what I was getting when it’s pretty obvious that I wasn’t. We spent another two weeks in Manila.

So, by that point, I’d been with her for a month, and I asked her if there’s anywhere that she’d like to go. I wanted to be the kind of husband who would make her dreams come true as well. I’m not trying to be someone who wants her to be someone she’s not. I’m just trying to get her to do anything that she doesn’t want to do. I want to give her an amazing life. I want to give her everything she’s always dreamed of.

And when I say that, I thought all she ever dreamed of was to meet someone not from the Philippines who could help improve her life situation. That’s all I thought she wanted. So, I don’t really understand why I made such bad choices, but I thought that I was literally making her dreams come true.

She just said that she’d love to go back to her hometown. She said she’d not been able to go for 2 years. She said when she left for Manila 2 years ago, she hadn’t been back since. So I said, “Let’s go there. I’m more than happy to go to Lee.” It took quite a long time to get there. I mean, over a day and the most uncomfortable bus journey I’d ever been on and a ferry ride where I was crammed in with lots of other people in a very uncomfortable situation.

But we got there eventually and the trip outside of Manila was very eye opening. Where I was staying in Manila, it was very internationalized. I think that’s the best word to use. At least that’s what it felt like to a guy like me who had never left the States before. Yet, as soon as you go an hour or so out of Manila, things change considerably in the Philippines. I found Lee to be a place of contrasts.

Visiting My Fiances Family

On the one hand, incredible natural beauty, amazing beaches, friendly people, affordable, but on the other hand, it was run down, hectic, dirty, and when I was there originally, I felt a little unsafe. But my fiance was very happy when we were there. When she said she wanted to go there, I didn’t know what she wanted to do when we were there, but she said she wanted to go and visit her family and introduce me to them as her fianceé.

I felt appreciated in that moment. I was more than happy to go and visit her family. At this point, we’d been together for a month, and I thought that everything was running smoothly and getting closer to the point where we were going to get married and start living the married life.

At this point, money had not even been spoken about even once. I never expected to have to give her any money apart from occasionally when she needed something. When I say needed something, I mean needed, not wanted. I never expected to have to give her anything apart from that. Definitely not on a regular basis. I never expected to have to give her an allowance.

And I suppose if I’d have known that something like this would have happened if I started to spend more time with her, I guess I wouldn’t have allowed myself to have fallen in love with her in the first place. But we’re not quite there yet. Throughout the whole time we’ve been together as a couple, I’m the one paying for everything as expected.

Yet, I’m not giving her cash because it didn’t appear that she needed cash because she didn’t have to pay for somewhere to live. She didn’t have to pay for food. So, what does she need money for? This was my mentality. Whether it’s right or wrong, that’s what I’m not trying to say. I’m just talking about my actual mentality. So, we go and visit her family.

Seeing Poverty In The Philippines

Really friendly people, yet I wouldn’t call them poor. If I heard the word poor before when I was in the States, I pictured somebody who lived in a very basic house, driving a basic car, perhaps having to eat fast food too many times to save money, or buying cheaper groceries than anyone else. That’s what poor meant to me. Unfortunately, they were on a whole other level of poor in the Philippines.

I suppose you could say they lived in poverty and I was really appalled to see how they had to live. I felt bad for them and I also felt very proud of myself for rescuing my fiance from such conditions. I never expected my generosity to continue over to her family. I just expected her family to be happy that their daughter was free from that life now.

Yet, I didn’t expect them to think that they were going to get taken away and taken along from the ride as well, because that wasn’t within my budget. Yet, when we were with her family, it became quite apparent that that’s what she was expecting as part of getting married to me. That was the first time she ever asked for money from me directly. It wasn’t even for her. It was for her family.

And that was the moment when I should have known that this wasn’t what I thought it was. But if I’m being truthful, I actually gave them some money and I felt proud of myself when I was able to help, thinking it was a one off and it would never happen again. It was only a few hundred, so it wasn’t the end of the world.

But I never expected it to be a regular thing. And then you find yourself getting to a point where you just have to keep going to maintain the status quo. We spent a few weeks on Lee and it was a few of the best weeks I’d had. Aside from the little money I’d given to her family.

Considering A New Life In The Philippines

You know, she never asked for anything else and I started thinking about the possibility of living there. Manila, as I said, wasn’t somewhere I planned to live permanently, so why not live there? I did want to go to some more places in the Philippines. That was something I needed to do.

I felt I wanted to make sure I made the right decision on where to live because how I felt as soon as I found the right place to live that would be it. I didn’t want to go somewhere else. So, we went back to Manila and then went to Angeles City to see what that was like. Interesting. That’s what I would say. A very interesting and different kind of place.

If you’re the sort of guy who isn’t looking for a relationship, not looking for anything serious or anything like that, then Angeles City would probably be the place to go. A great place to live the single life. Yet, I wasn’t looking for the single life. I was looking for the life where I’d be watching a game from back home, which would probably be at a very difficult time to watch due to the time difference.

But then my wife would bring me a beer and come and sit next to me and ask if I want chips to go along with it or something. And then she’d come and sit with me and we’d watch it together. Then I’d ask her what she wanted to do and she might say, “Oh, I want to go on vacation for 2 days to a resort.” So I would take her. That’s what I was sort of thinking.

I was happy to give her experiences and occasional material things, perhaps a new phone if one broke, but I hated giving money. She didn’t need money because she didn’t need to buy anything. But that’s the thing. After I left Angeles City and back to Manila, that’s when we got married. It was quite a strange feeling to be married again. Unexpected, I suppose.

Getting Married And Returning To Lee

But the first thing I did was take a picture of me and her and send it to my ex-wife. She didn’t respond. At the time, I was just feeling how happy I was that I had someone who was more appealing, who didn’t nag or complain or think that she was more than she was. She was just a great girl who wanted a better life, and I was there to give it to her.

It took quite a few months to get all that arranged, trips to the embassy, but throughout that time, it gave us enough time to think what we really wanted to do, and we decided that living in Lee would be the best thing for us. At this point, we hadn’t talked about building anywhere to live. That wasn’t even on the cards as far as I was concerned. Let’s go rent somewhere and just live. So, we packed up from Manila.

I bought a car and we drove a long way and got the ferry to Lee, ready to start this new chapter of both our lives. I was married again, and I thought I was happy. But I was also feeling proud that I found someone who I was able to give a better life to. Yet everything went downhill from there, unfortunately.

And as I said, the only people I can blame are my ex-wife putting me in that position to start with and my new wife for displaying such an obscene amount of greed and want, even though her new position was so much better than her old position. If anything, what I expected her to do was say, “That’s too much. You’ve already done too much. I don’t want anything else.

I don’t need or deserve anything else.” But I guess I’m being a bit deluded to think anybody would be like that. I guess I was living in a bubble, my own little bubble that I created to escape my old life, to make myself feel better about myself. I guess that’s what I was doing. But I still blame my ex-wife.

Deciding To Build A House

And I suppose you have to call my second ex-wife also to blame, although we are still married. The first thing we did when we got to Lee was check into a hotel. I started talking to my now wife about where we were going to rent. We hadn’t even discussed the living situation when we arrived. I just assumed we would rent. But the first thing she said was, “I thought we were going to build a house here.”

The fact that we hadn’t even talked about this, I suppose, is quite worrying. But I didn’t feel like we needed to. I just thought it was obvious we would rent. But now she’s talking about wanting to build a house. She started saying that because we wanted to live in a very rural setting, which is true, we did.

It was difficult to find somewhere to rent and we should build our own place close to where she was from. I don’t know how she said that. I don’t know how she said a few words like this and then I started to actually think myself that this would be a better idea to build a place. And with very little persuasion, if any, I’d already made my mind up as soon as she talked about it that we were going to build somewhere.

I knew I couldn’t own it as a foreigner, but that didn’t really matter because I was married. I thought once we had the house that was ours, there would be no rent to pay, therefore I wouldn’t have to spend as much money on a monthly basis. So, I actually started to like the idea of having our own house as soon as she talked about it.

Perhaps I just wanted to maintain her level of enthusiasm and happiness. And I thought also by building a house that would be the case. If I could change anything I did, it would be that. I suppose I wouldn’t have got married either. But building the house was probably the most stupid thing I did. I just didn’t realize what I was doing.

Building Our New Home In The Philippines

Over the course of the next year, we got the house built. It cost a lot more than I was expecting, so that was disappointing. Including the land, I spent $114,000, but it was a house that I was very proud to call ours. My wife was very happy with it. I was happy with it when we moved in initially, but the transformation from her was considerable almost as soon as we moved in. I have since learned that it’s a common playbook.

But when we moved in, it was as though she held something over me now and I wasn’t getting her full or undivided attention. Yet, I was giving my full attention to her. It was the little things I started to notice. And I don’t know why she did what she did.

If I think about it, it does definitely feel like she was following a playbook that had been written by other girls who had done similar things to guys. Get the house built. Slowly change your ways. And maybe once that happens, he will understand that because the house is built and he’s already heavily invested, he’s going to continue to invest until all his money is gone because he’s already invested to such a level.

I’m sure that there must be a playbook somewhere that says something like that because that’s exactly what happened to me. I hated to be with her when she wasn’t like she was meant to be. I felt like although we didn’t have a legal contract, we did have some kind of contract which I thought meant she wasn’t allowed to behave in any other way than I was used to her behaving.

That was part of my reason for building a house. In fact, that was solely my reason for building the house. I thought that by building the house, if anything, she would improve. An improvement from where she was when I met her would have been quite hard to pull off because she was perfect as it was. Yet, it wasn’t an improvement. It was a deterioration.

Losing My Savings After The House Was Built

And it was sudden and vicious. And as so many guys have done this in the past, finding themselves in positions like this, I started throwing money at situations to try to get back the wife that I met and the fact that I invested all this money in a house. And that was the mistake that would signal my end.

Over the course of the next three years, I spent every last bit of money on business ideas, helping family, new motorcycles for the family, fixing the family’s house, little bits for my wife every now and then, and just trying to get her back to the level where she should be. That was the thing that hurt the most. All I wanted was for her to be like she was when I met her. And that’s what I wanted and expected her to do.

I expected her to be like that forever. And the fact that she changed, I feel was some form of breach of contract. I should be able to take her to court and if anything, remove every bit of wealth she now has that came from me. Her position should have been solely based on behaving in the way that I wanted her to behave in.

If she strayed away from that position, that should be something I should have been able to do about it. But that’s the problem. Instead of her staying where I thought she should stay in terms of behavior, she got worse because I’d already invested and there was nothing I could do about it. And I am shy to admit that I let my money go almost to zero.

I had enough for a plane ticket home and that was it. But I didn’t have a choice but to leave. What she did to me and how she acted as soon as that house was built was the prime indication of a scammer. She took my life savings away from me. Or should I say, she took half of my life savings that my ex-wife didn’t take, and I was left with nothing.

Starting Over After Losing Everything

I had to rely on a friend to give me a place to live until I could get a job again. And then COVID happened, and then I find myself stuck, and I’ve just been living hand to mouth ever since. I should be retired. I was retired. Yet, the two women in my life destroyed me and I don’t have a retirement anymore. So I think that is the only right thing to do is to tell people and guys what can happen.

How you expect something is going to be you’ll quickly understand that it’s going to be nothing like that. To me it was very obvious. I’m the one with the money. I’m the one paying for everything. She’s the one who has to behave in the way that I want her to behave in so I can maintain this situation. That’s the only thing that made any sense. Yet, the problem was I gave her control when I built the house. And that was the biggest mistake.

At that point, even though we were married, she didn’t hold anything over me anymore. She didn’t have any control over anything because I held all the cards. Yet, the house was built. It changed. Don’t give your hard-earned money to people who don’t deserve it. She most definitely didn’t deserve anything other than what I was prepared to give for her when she behaved in a way I thought she should behave.