My Thai Girlfriend Had 3 Boyfriends

I can’t use that excuse. People warned me. I saw things myself. There were probably 10 different moments when any sensible man would have walked away. I just happened to be extremely attracted to the woman causing all the problems.

Now, this happened about 4 years ago. I was 38 and single and coming to Thailand whenever work allowed, usually twice a year. I’d had girlfriends in Australia and wasn’t particularly lonely. Thailand was somewhere I came for a holiday, not somewhere I was desperately searching for a wife.

Then I met Ren. She was working at a restaurant in Bangkok when a mate and I went in one evening. She wasn’t our waitress, but somehow she ended up talking to us anyway.

She was 30 and absolutely stunning. I’m not saying that because I was in love with her. She was the sort of woman other men actually turned around to look at in the street and she knew it as well. And that should have probably been warning number one.

So, we exchanged LINE and met the following afternoon. By the end of my holiday, we’d spent nearly every day together.

She never asked me for money. In fact, when I tried paying for everything, she’d occasionally argue and refuse to let me. That’s probably why I trusted her so quickly.

Sending Ren Money from Australia

Back in Australia, we spoke constantly. A couple of months later, she told me she had left the restaurant after an argument with the manager and was selling clothes and cosmetics online.

Then her rent came due. She didn’t actually ask me to pay it. She just spent 20 minutes on a video call telling me how stressed she was. So, I offered 9,000 baht. Looking back, Ren had an incredible ability to get money without technically asking for it. There was always a problem, but never an actual request.

Her phone broke, so I’d offer to replace it. Her mother needed medicine, so I’d ask how much. Sales were bad that month, so I’d send her something to help out. It made me feel like every transfer was my own idea.

Within 6 months, I was probably sending her between 20,000 and 30,000 baht most months. A friend came back home and asked me what exactly I was getting for 30,000 a month. So I told him she was my girlfriend. He looked at me and he said, “Does she know that?” I thought he was just being a smartass.

The strange thing was Ren wasn’t constantly available. Sometimes we’d video call for 3 hours. Other times she’d completely disappear for an entire weekend. Her explanations were useless: battery dead, staying with her auntie, helping a friend sell clothes, phone left in the car. And I once pointed out that she didn’t even own a car. Apparently, it was her friend’s car, and somehow that was enough for me to drop it.

Whenever I came back to Thailand, though, everything felt normal again. She’d meet me at the airport, stay with me most nights, take me to see her mother, and introduce me to her friends as her boyfriend.

150,000 Baht Towards a Secondhand Honda

Then I made the stupidest financial decision of the entire relationship. Ren said she wanted to buy a car. She’d found a secondhand Honda for somewhere around 400,000 baht and told me she’d saved quite a bit herself, but was still short.

She asked if I would lend her 180,000 baht. I said no for about 4 days.

Then she started sending me pictures of cheaper, fairly rough-looking cars and telling me not to worry because she’d work something out. Naturally, I interpreted this as proof she wasn’t using me. So, I sent her 150,000 baht.

Now the car went into her name because obviously it did.

For the next year, things carried on much the same. I’d come to Thailand, we’d play happy couple, I’d go home, and eventually some new problem would appear that needed money.

Ren’s Gold Bracelet and Weekends in Phuket

But there was one thing that always bothered me. Ren seemed to have more money than she should have had. Not millionaire money, just little things. A new handbag, nice watch, weekends in Phuket with friends, expensive restaurants.

Once she turned up wearing a gold bracelet I’d never seen before. I asked where it came from. She said her mother bought it for her.

Her mother sold vegetables at a market. Apparently, the vegetable business had suddenly become extremely profitable. Even I didn’t believe that one, but I let it go.

The British Boyfriend at a Bangkok Restaurant

Then something happened that made it impossible to keep doing that. I was in Bangkok with Ren and we’d gone to a restaurant near the river for dinner. Halfway through the meal, she suddenly went completely rigid. Not frightened exactly, more like she’d just seen someone she really didn’t want to bump into.

I turned around and there was an older foreign bloke standing near the entrance staring straight at our table. British guy, probably early 60s. He walked over, looked at Ren, looked at me, and said, “Who’s this?” And Ren answered immediately, “My friend, not boyfriend, friend.”

I actually laughed because I genuinely thought there had been some weird misunderstanding. Then the bloke looked at me and asked how long I’d known her. Ren stood up and started trying to get him to leave. That was when I knew something was badly wrong.

I asked him who he was. He said he’d been supporting Ren for nearly 3 years. I had known her for about 18 months. He lived in England and came to Thailand several times a year. According to him, he was sending Ren around 25,000 baht a month for living expenses and had also helped with the condo she told me she was paying for herself.

Then he asked me about the car. So I told him I had given her 150,000 baht towards it. He started laughing. He had given her 100,000 baht towards the exact same car. Then I started laughing as well. Not because anything was funny. I think my brain had just given up.

Between us, we’d handed over a quarter of a million baht towards a car Ren had made both of us believe she was mostly buying herself. I asked her how much of her own money she’d actually put into it. She didn’t answer.

Comparing Notes and Asking for the Car Money Back

Now, by this point, people were staring at us and someone from the restaurant came over because the three of us were getting louder. Ren walked out. Now, the British bloke and I stayed. We ended up going somewhere nearby and comparing notes. That was an interesting hour. When Ren told me she was visiting her auntie, she’d sometimes been with him. When she had disappeared while he was back in England, some of those dates matched times she’d been with me.

We both had photos on our phones from her mother’s house. We both met her mother. That was difficult to get my head around, although I still don’t know what Ren had told her about either of us. For all I know, her mother thought one of us was just a friend.

Then the British bloke told me something else. He suspected there was another guy, a German. I genuinely thought he was taking the piss. He wasn’t.

He showed me a photo he’d saved from one of Ren‘s friends’ Facebook pages. Ren was sitting at a restaurant with a German bloke. When he’d asked Ren about him months earlier, she’d apparently said he was her friend’s boyfriend. At that point, we had absolutely no proof he was anything else.

A few days later, I messaged Ren and told her I wanted my 150,000 baht back for the car, and that went about as well as you would expect. She said the money was a gift, and to be fair, I’d been stupid enough to transfer it without any written agreement saying otherwise.

Then I asked her about the German. She denied anything was going on. Not long after that, she stopped talking to me. I thought that was probably the end of it.

Three Men in Australia England and Germany

About a month later, the British bloke messaged me again. He’d found the German. It wasn’t some massive investigation. He’d been going back through old photos trying to work out how long Ren had been seeing other men and found another picture one of her friends had posted from a night out. And lo and behold, the German was in it.

Now, Ren wasn’t sitting next to him, which is probably why neither of us would have thought anything of it before. The Brit recognized him from the other photo and found his profile through the friend who’d posted it. He sent him a message basically saying, “Sorry for the strange question, mate, but how do you know, Ren?”

The answer wasn’t what either of us wanted to hear. The German had been involved with her for nearly two years as well. He wasn’t sending her a fixed amount every month, but he’d apparently sent her plenty whenever she had problems. He thought they were in a serious relationship, too. They’d even talked about her eventually going to Germany.

So now there were three of us. Australia, England, and Germany. And those were only the three that we managed to find out about.

Once we compared everything, it looked like Ren had a slightly different story for each man. With me, she was trying to build her online business and become more independent. With the British bloke, there was much more talk about helping her mother and family. With the German, she was talking about eventually building a life overseas.

The strange thing was none of those things had to be completely made up. Her mother genuinely didn’t have much money. Ren really did sell clothes and cosmetics online. She really did talk about living abroad. She just seemed to know which part of her life worked best with which bloke.

Blocking Ren After Another Request for Money

So I stopped speaking to her after that. But the British bloke didn’t. After everything we’d discovered, he went back to her. A few weeks later, he messaged me saying they’d come to an understanding. I asked what that meant. Apparently, Ren admitted she’d taken money from other men, but told him he was the one she actually loved, and he believed her.

My first reaction was to think, “What an idiot!” Then I remembered I’d sent 150,000 baht towards a car after months of excuses that didn’t make sense. So I decided I probably wasn’t the right person to be giving lectures on intelligence.

Now I heard from Ren once more about 6 months later. She messaged me saying her mother was in hospital. Then another message came through. I know you hate me, but I don’t know who else can help.

This is probably the most embarrassing part of the whole story. I actually considered sending her money, only for a few seconds, but I did. After everything I’d found out, there was still a little part of my brain wondering whether her mother really was sick and whether I’d feel terrible if I ignored it.

Eventually, I deleted the messages and I blocked her. I haven’t spoken to her since.

I don’t know what happened with the British bloke either. Last I heard, he was still seeing her. Maybe he eventually came to his senses. Maybe he’s still sending her 25,000 baht a month. Not my problem anymore. And I can’t really finish this by saying I was some innocent bloke who got completely fooled. I wasn’t. I saw plenty of the warning signs.