This Can Happen When A Thai Girl Plays The Long Game

Here is a story of mine about how you can take the Woman out of Thailand, but cannot take Thailand out of the woman.

This story is about my ex Thai wife that I managed to somehow fall victim to, lose a lot of money and have to rebuild my finances from scratch.

She played the long game like a professional, I would have considered myself street smart but even I did not see this coming.

First let me start by saying I did not meet my ex wife in a bar, or freelancing, she was from a poor rice farming family near Chaing Rai and she worked a normal low paying job while studying at the same time.

She was the type of girl that people would consider a good Thai woman.

Normally the Thai girl that runs off with the money or plays the guy completely is a bargirl or freelancer.

These type of girls you can pretty much be expecting that its going to be all about money and when that dries up, so does her love for you.

My story is a reminder that even though the girl does not work in that kind of area, you still cannot take your eye off the ball and think it’s going to be smooth sailing.

I thought I got lucky by meeting a quote on quote Normal Thai girl, and thought I would be able to have a good future with her.

We had what I thought was a good future plan together and everything was going to be smooth sailing, how wrong I was.

I will start with how I met my future ex wife

After I go on to what happened and finally the morals of my story.

Her Thai name is too hard to repeatedly pronounce, so I will refer to her from her nickname Fon, which means rain in Thai.

I met Fon at a popular restaurant in Chaing mai, she was studying at the time.

I will admit, the age difference between me and Fon was pretty big, she was 21 when I met her and I was 35.

I was sat at a table next to her and her friend, and I was trying to make a phone call to a friend in Cambodia, but could not for the life of me get the call to connect.

They both saw that I was having issues with the Thai SIM card and asked if I needed help.

Fon managed to connect the call, turns out I was not entering the area code correctly or something like that.

I had studied the Thai language for a year prior to my trip there, so I knew basic Thai but by no means was I an expert in the language.

It did help me communicate with Fon a bit and after I finished my phone call,  when Fons friend left the table, I took my shot.

I first told her Thank you for helping me make the call and asked if I could repay the favor by taking her on a date sometime.

She gave me her number and told me to give her a call, I jokingly said “I will if I can get it to connect”

I personally thought that was a good joke, but she just looked at me with a blank expression, guess my Thai humor wasn’t quite there yet.

Inviting My Future Thai Wife Out For A Date

I text her the day after and we agreed to go out for some food and drinks, it was actually a pretty nice first date.

She was extremely shy, I feel like I may have been the first foreigner that she had dated or maybe I just hoped I was.

I spent the remainder of my time in Chaing Mai dating Fon, many happy romantic dates but her friend did join us on quite a lot of the dates which was disappointing.

I even extended my trip in Thailand so I could stay with her a bit longer.

Things were going pretty good and she started being less shy around me, and showing her personality.

I think she was warming to me as I was warming to her as well.

It was getting close to my departure date and she dropped the question

“Will you meet my parents?”

I had heard it was a good thing and respectable to meet the girls parents,  I thought it was a bit too early, however I went along with it to keep Fon happy.

We travelled there and once her father saw me, he near had a heart attacking seeing that his daughter had brought home a foreigner.

The house was this type of traditional wood Thai style house, made by her father.

It was big but looked like it was about to fall down anytime soon.

The house was just one big room that was divided only by mosquito netting for self made rooms, and a toilet outside.

There was like 7 or 8 people that stay at this house.

After the initial shock that I would be sleeping on the floor that looks like it’s about the cave in, I actually came to be very fond of the house.

It was a very different setting to what I was used to in a rented apartment in Chaing Mai

The smell of Thai food in the morning, man made huts outside to give shade from the hot son, vegetables growing from everywhere and nearby water buffalos that her dad rather treated like pets than anything else.

I would briefly help her father with some house work and preparing food, you know, just getting some brownie points and getting in the good books with the family.

Though I dont think I needed brownie points if I had some notes in my wallet.

Her family seemed really nice, especially her grandparents.

Seems like they all lived next to each other.

I could not communicate with her grandparents even though they were lovely towards me, my level of Thai clearly was not as good as I thought.

Everyone in the village would keep coming by to see the farang, but because my Thai was limited and they spoke nothing like I had studied, I was only able to do the head bow and hand gestures.

I think I was the only foreigner in the area, and the first time for some of them in seeing a foreigner.

Being The Only Farang In The Village

I would be lying thought if I said I did not like the attention of people coming to see me just because I was a farang.

I really did not expect to be spending my time in Thailand the way I did, helping out in a poor village, but it was nice and different.

After the trip to her parents, Fon and I travelled back until it was time for me to head back to the US.

I was sad to be leaving, as were Fon, but we both knew that this would not be the end of our relationship.

It was not a holiday girlfriend type thing, I believe there were real genuine feelings for each other.

When I got back to the US, me and Fon carried on staying in touch and would be arranging future trips together.

For the next year or so, I would go to Thailand every couple of months and stay with Fon for a month each trip.

We travelled and saw a bit more of Thailand, but mainly, we would stay in Chaing mai or visiting her parents.

Our relationship really took off during this time, things moved fast and feelings deepened between us, or so I thought.

On the last day of one of my trips, Fon asked if I could give her parents 20,000 because they needed help fixing part of the house.

The Start Of The Thai Girl Long Game

Up until now, she had never asked me for money or to give money to her parents, this is the first time she asked in just over a year.

Again, this is a red flag I missed and for some reason, when us foreigners go to Thailand, we feel like millionaires, so I stupidly agreed to this.

I was in love and genuinely believed her parents needed it because they hadn’t asked me before.

After several more trips to Thailand, many phone calls and text messages, and just over a year of time, me and Fon spoke about her coming to the US.

She had always shown interest about finishing her studies in Thailand and moving to a different country for a better life.

We spoke about getting married first, in which we had to travel to her family again and ask permission from her parents.

Just a side note, I never planned on traveling to Thailand to find a wife, meeting Fon was just by chance, getting married was never in my plans.

I already knew her parents would agree to it because they saw me as a rich farang, even though I wasn’t, but I thought it would be a nice gesture to still ask them.

They gave us permission to marry, but they wanted a big sinsod, and in my opinion it was an unreasonable amount.

Me being loved up at the time and thinking about our future, I agreed and we had a huge wedding at her parents house in the village.

I gave them a pot of money which they could choose to spend on the party or do whatever they want with.

Fon’s parents spent about $2000 dollars on the wedding and party, which in my opinion is a lot of for Thailand.

Well, that is what they claimed they spent, wether or not they pocketed some of the money, I don’t know.

They treated everyone to food, drinks and everything else, some stuff that wasn’t really needed but I think they were just showing off a bit.

I was told that we get the sinsod back, well, some of it… But you guessed it, we did not get a single penny back.

Marrying My Thai Girlfriend

A catch came with the permission for me to marry their daughter, we had to send $200 a month back to her family and promise that one day we would return to live in Thailand from the US.

That was actually fine with me because 200$ was not a lot of money and my plan was to move to Thailand eventually anyway, so me and Fon spoke and decided that we would try save as much money as possible while in the US and then move back to Thailand when the time is right.

Fon fed me this dream until the very end.

I won’t go too much into bringing Fon to the US, but it was a pain and a lot of red tape to jump through.

I would say it took about a year to get her here, partly because of the process and partly our fault with not having all the correct documents.

We did get help from an agency in Thailand but they were as useful as a chocolate fireguard, so we ended up doing it on our own.

So now let me talk about our life together in the US.

We actually seemed to have a nice life together, nothing to complain about, in fact listening to others stories, our relationship was too good to be true.

Rarely argued, went out on dates together, enjoying each others company, the flame never really died, for me anyway.

Fon would be studying while I would be working, so obviously I had to support her for the time being, this is something we had spoke about and I accepted.

We both loved to travel so we traveled most of the US together and a bit of Europe also to the Caribbean islands.

My family and friends all loved her, despite them originally telling me to be careful bringing her here.

I now understand what they meant.

Living In The US With My New Thai Wife

At the time, things were fantastic.

For the first 4-5 years together, I truly believed she loved me the same way I loved her.

We had been sending 200$ a month to her family since the first month that we left, and would send more when they would request additional money for whatever excuse they could think of.

During this whole time, I never got a thank you or anything from her family, they rarely even asked how I was when they would be on the phone to Fon.

You can call me petty, but a simple thank you would of made a whole lot of difference, and wouldn’t have made me feel cheated for sending them money.

One time, when I was in Thailand on business, I was with a Thai co worker and Fon’s parents needed 8000 baht for something or other, so I asked my co worker to transfer it into their bank.

Again, nothing from them, no thank you or acknowledgement, zero.

Her parents were so ungrateful it’s unbelievable.

I spoke to Fon once I got back home and told her that I did not want to send them monthly payments anymore, and that we should just save the money ourselves.

I still agreed to send them money when they asked and needed it, but I wasn’t going to give them a monthly payment anymore even if it wasn’t much money.

Eventually, I just stopped sending money and waited for them to occasionally reach out with requests for money.

Surprise surprise, when they realized we were not sending them monthly payments anymore, the requests for money started coming more regular.

Some of the excuses to why they needed money were believable but some of them were laughable to say the least.

By the time our first visit back after about 2 years away, we went to see her family again.

This time, her father wasn’t excited to see me, he did not have the same energy around me anymore, probably because of the 200 dollars he’s no longer getting every month.

Pressure From Thai Family To Send More Money For Support

Fon later told me that her father had been begging her to leave me because I was not sending enough money back for them.

I had sent plenty over the years, and if they had shown some sort of appreciation then I never would have stopped sending.

It’s their fault, not mine.

Back home in the US, we moved states and bought a house, we used the house as a savings tool for when we eventually move back to Thailand.

Fon had been pestering me that she wanted to get her teeth fixed.

I had no problems with her teeth, I thought she looked beautiful as they were, but she had now been bombarded with western models, TV actresses and what not, she felt like she was not pretty enough.

I just want to point out, she was a very attractive Thai woman, she was pretty, cute and she would always get stares when went out together.

She had been gradually admiring western models and wanted to look more like them I guess.

I gave in and paid $5000 USD for her to get a lot of work done on her teeth, again, I felt like she did not need it but I wanted to make her happy.

Looking back, I gave in way too easy to her money requests over the years, I think I should have put my foot down a bit more and not be such a pushover.

I was a bit skeptical that she would actually send the money home and not spend it on her teeth, so it was quite the relief that she did something for herself and not her family.

One time at work, I got a bonus which was a handsome amount of money, I decided I wanted to surprise Fon by buying her a diamond ring.

We had been saving a decent amount of money so I thought it would be nice to give her a little surprise.

Noticing Change In My Wife, Less Affectionate

When I gave it her, I was expecting a big thank you and a lot of appreciation if you know what I mean or scolding me for not saving the money for Thailand.

Instead of all that, she asked if I could buy her matching earrings.

Now, there had probably already been a lot of red flags that I missed, but I really should not have missed that one.

It should have been clear then that this relationship has turned into relationship based around money.

Next, I gave her 10,000 towards a car that she had been asking for.

It was actually something that would help her out big time and make life easier for her, but again I gave in way too easy.

I gave it her on the condition that she would spend it on herself and not send it to her family, to which she agreed.

My Wife Is Spending All My Money

I guess all of this part of my relationship was actually my fault, I was stupid and spoiled her way too much.

I was probably spending 2,000 dollars on her every month in just spending money, not counting the money that I gave her to pay for things and for her family.

Other than the money I have gave her for her needs and her family, I was also paying for her to go to school since she entered the US.

I wanted her to have a good future in the US and land a good job, I did not want to just be supporting her for the rest of her life, and she did not exactly get much of an education in Thailand.

This is something I admired about Fon, she also wanted to good in her future, she seemed like she wanted to work and educate herself better.

Her dream was to get a college education, she was supporting me with my dream of going back to Thailand, or so I thought, so I was support her dream to get an education.

In total i spent over 45,000 dollars on her education which was English classes, two year certificate program in business management, two years at a community college and finally 4 years at a university where she gained a bachelors degree.

Over 45,000 dollars just to be thanked by finding out she had met someone on the last year at school and secretly started dating him and starting a relationship.

Finding Out My Wife Has Been Unfaithful

She had told me that she had some girlfriends who she studied with that she would go out with some nights of the week.

Turns out she was going out with this new guy after school and then returning to me at the end of the night.

Once I found out and confronted her about this, she broke down and apologized but in the process tried to make it my fault.

She was claiming that she did it because he shows her attention and im too busy working.

This was obviously just mind games, she knew I adored her and she always came first, even if I was working a lot, I did it for her and would always find time for her.

I personally think she started dating someone else because she obviously realized that she would be educated soon which will help her get a decent job and on her way to financial freedom.

She Stayed With Me For The Money

I think she needed me less and less each day, but stayed with me for the time being because I was supporting her.

We sorted things out and decided to stay together, though I think that it was just me that wanted us to be together, because things were not the same anymore.

All of a sudden I did not matter anymore, the only thing that mattered was her family back in Thailand.

She shown no interest in being with me, doing things with me or even being in the same room as me anymore.

Even through we were together for a long time, we still had an active dating life and would do things together a lot.

Whenever I would suggest we go out on a date or go away for the weekend, there would always be some excuse.

“Ive got to study, I am not feeling well, Can’t we go next week instead im not in the mood”

Eventually I gave up trying to spend time with her, I could see that this relationship was coming to an end, I guess I was just lying to myself and convincing myself otherwise.

We were no longer saving money for ourselves, there would always be a reason why she would have to send money back home.

No more talk about moving to Thailand, she wanted to stay in the US to work and support her family.

Our Relationship Is Now One Sided, She Is Not Interested

Our relationship was no longer important to her, she would sacrifice everything, my dreams and even her dream just to meet her Thai family demands.

I began realizing that this may have been her plan from the start.

Meet with me, marry me, get as much as she can until she is comfortable and then leave me in the dust.

I later learnt about what people call the long game, well my wife took that game to a whole new level.

Finally after almost 9 years of marriage, which started out great btw and I thought that I would be with her forever, she filed divorce papers, and if that wasn’t bad enough, she filed them on my birthday.

It was such a headache getting all that sorted with lawyers involved because she seriously was trying to get everything in the divorce.

Even though with everything I supported her with, money for an education, supporting her ungrateful family and all the money I had spend on her, she still tried to clean me out.

My Ex Wife Took Everything In The Divorce

In the end She took half my 401K, half my company’s pension and half of our assets.

It really was a complete nightmare.

I knew a few months before the papers were filed that we would be getting a divorce, but we was still on talking terms and I thought she wouldn’t clean me out after everything I have given her.

My dreams of retiring in Thailand were completely shattered, half the money I had saved has now gone, my financial situation had been significantly weakened, and to top it all off, this is all because the person I loved and supported for years has ruined me.

It’s a bit of a kick in the teeth when someone does something like this after almost a decade together, rather than from a girl you met on a 2 week holiday.

I don’t want to justify her actions, but in all fairness to Fon, she is a single child and had always been under heavy pressure to support her uneducated and poor family.

Her parents did not really care about her daughter having a good future, all they cared about was money.

Her dad pretty much forced her to do anything to make money, so when she brought me to meet her family, its like he had won the lottery, as all foreigners seem to be rich in their eyes.

Looking back, Fon may not have even wanted to take things further with me, It could have been her father pressuring her.

Reflecting On My Marriage and Divorce With A Thai Wife

Since we got a divorce and I look back at our relationship, I do have a million questions in my head.

I thought that with time, Fon would realize that she would need to put a stop on putting her family first and trying to support them, and instead work on our so called dream.

That never happened, no matter how much I tried to make Fon see that her parents were using her, she just would not pay attention.

It became clear that our dream was actually just my dream, and she had always had other plans, and she probably had these plans from day 1 of meeting me.

After we divorced, I tried to be civil but came to my senses thinking why the hell should I be nice anymore and finally walked away from any contact with her.

The last I heard, she had moved into a place with the guy that she had met at school while studying.

So here is some morals of my story.

Number 1. Most, if not all Thai women are going to put their parents first.

So if you have find a woman that has a father like mine did, that only cares about himself and money, I would think twice about taking it further.

She is always going to put him first no matter what, if he needs or wants money, she is going to make sure he gets it.

It does not matter who you are or where you are from, if you are not Asian, you will never be fully accepted into a Thai family, however, your wallet will be more than welcome if its not empty that is.

Number 2. Looks may be deceiving.

Most of the relationship stories with Thai women end up the way they do because the guy has chosen a girl the bar, or freelancer or some type of work background like that.

In my case, Fon was never into any of that, she would never do that and I still believe she would never do that type of work.

Fon is very sweet and innocent looking, she looks like she wouldn’t harm a fly, but do not be fooled by looks.

They can be just as evil and callous as they can be sweet and loving.

Number 3. Poor people typically have bad money management skills, and this is even more so when it comes to Thai’s.

In my opinion, they have no concept of budgeting, saving money or much planning.

They live for today and just hope tomorrow will figure its self out.

That being said, it was me that was not managing our money the right way, not her.

I was a push over and splashing out on her whenever I could, maybe if I was a bit more tougher on the money, things would not have gone this far.

Number 4. Look out for red flags.

I know that is rich coming from me, because at the time I did not see many red flags, but looking back on the whole relationship, I can clearly see them.

Sometimes we are too in love that we fail to see the warning signs, so keep your head screwed on, and look after number 1 first, number 1 should be yourself.

One thing I missed is that Fon did not ask me for money within the first year of us dating, but when she did ask me for the first time, the requests would start coming more frequently.

If I had my head screwed on right, i would have seen what was happening.

And lastly, look after yourself financially.

This is not just aimed at being in a relationship with a Thai woman, but being in a relationship with anyone.

Always save some money aside incase things go bad like they did for me.

If I could go back and do it differently, I would have saved money in a separate bank account that only I knew about, that way I would have something to fall back on.

As bad as it sounds, luckily she only took half of everything, and I still have a good paying job so im still ok, but am a lot worse off.

Well guys, that is my story of how I was done over by a non bargirl Thai woman.

Do I think that my relationship with Fon would have worked if her family wasn’t so greedy and demanding?

Im not sure, because the spark in our relationship died down towards the end, for her anyway, so I guess I can’t blame her parents for everything.

They did however play a big part in Fon taking the decision to end our marriage, but hey, I should have seen it coming.

Obviously not all Thai women are out to get you, there are a lot of good people in Thailand and many successful relationships.

I just wanted to share my story to show that it is not just bargirls or night workers that can do this to someone.

That’s it.

God bless.