Hunting for a wife?

October 29, 2002 9:32 PM

Hunting for a wife? I want a foreign one, please. With nice Christian values. Can you make that happen?
posted by dopamine (18 comments total)

I am especially weirded out by the number of scrawled success letters from guys who hooked up with girls in Cebu or wherever..
posted by dopamine at 9:34 PM on October 29, 2002

"©1995," and it shows.

Love those scanned-in letters.
posted by adamgreenfield at 9:47 PM on October 29, 2002

"When his marriage ended after more than 25 years, Jim Carter spent a lot of time teaching Karate in Garland, Texas in order to take his mind off of how lonely he was." Jim & Rose in the Studio
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 10:05 PM on October 29, 2002

scary, etc...
posted by priyanga at 10:05 PM on October 29, 2002

"I flew there in January, 1999. I was knocked out by her beauty at the airport and decided to marry her immediately, which I did! She's mine now! My Doctor says it's a miracle of God!" -- Tony Dechristofaro
posted by Ljubljana at 10:08 PM on October 29, 2002

Ugh. I'm sure a few happy, healthy marriages have come out of this, but that photo of a 55-year-old white man with his hand on the shoulder of a probably 25-year-old Filipino (?) woman gives me the creeps. The whole thing smacks of exotification and racial fetishism: We got Asian women! We got African women! Come on down and pick yourself out a nice 'un!

And what's with the guy in priyanga's first link putting " at the beginning of every sentence? That wouldn't even have occured to me as a possible punctuation mistake.
posted by hippugeek at 10:12 PM on October 29, 2002

Oh, agreed. There's no limit to the depthless creepiness to mine here, from the "Christian" angle to the sexual imperialism to the 6th-grade neo-orthography.

Thus speaketh me-the-int0rw3b-snob, anyway.
posted by adamgreenfield at 10:38 PM on October 29, 2002

goose/gander...
posted by madamjujujive at 10:50 PM on October 29, 2002

Wow, that website just wouldn't let me leave!

I told it that we had just grown apart, and that it wasn't it's fault, but mine; and still I just couldn't click out of there.
posted by hama7 at 11:27 PM on October 29, 2002

I knew a guy about 10 years ago who had ordered up a very young Filipino wife about 3 years earlier. This shy, sweet girl was from a remote village, and told me one of her regular chores at home was climbing palm trees barefoot to harvest coconuts. This guy really dominated her and kept her on a leash, absolutely refused to let her learn to drive in a place (Orange County, Calif.) with almost zero public transportation. Worst case scenario.
posted by planetkyoto at 1:41 AM on October 30, 2002

The guy in the picture on the top right looks straight out of Blue Velvet...

"Why are there people like that in the world...people like Frank!"
posted by iamck at 1:56 AM on October 30, 2002

From the Web site of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade:

New scam—Russian brides
The Embassy in Moscow received a letter from a concerned Australian citizen who had allegedly been scammed out of A$2,500, after responding to an internet introduction service. After email correspondence with a potential bride, the Australian citizen sent money to a Russian woman for air tickets and a visa for travel to Australia. After she did not arrive but requested more money, the Australian citizen investigated the matter via the internet, only to find evidence of similar cases involving other Australians.

The Embassy obtained details of the cases and liaised with the Russian government. As a result, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs arrested four people in relation to the scam. Apparently the total loss by foreign citizens could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars and remains an ongoing problem.

And that is only Russia. Imagine how much these scum are collecting around the world, trading on the loneliness of men.

These scams abound on the Internet and are regularly exposed here by current affairs programs, but that doesn't seem to slow them down.

On the other hand, you know what they say about a fool and his money ...
posted by dg at 3:21 AM on October 30, 2002

Ahhh...Good old Don & Mike :)
posted by stew560 at 3:34 AM on October 30, 2002

Hama7 - You too, huh. I felt like such a voyeur reading those letters , but I ....just....couldn't.....leave site.....just...one more....wierd Phillipina princess bride romance story.......one more creepy scanned letter...just one more...no, no...must...leave...site.....must go back to....metafilter.....go...back.....
posted by troutfishing at 4:39 AM on October 30, 2002

I'm totally amazed why beautiful educated young ladies in their 20s and 30s would want to have a serious relationship with an old geezer like me, but they do!
You think someone should explain it to him? (And nice grammar, buddy.)
posted by Fabulon7 at 5:58 AM on October 30, 2002

A friend of a friend tried to get a bride this way. He studied the catalogs carefully, wrote letters, called, and so forth.

Finally he narrowed down his selection to just one and made his choice. She was the one.

He sent the agency their fee (over $2000, as I recall) and waited.

And waited and waited. Several subsequent letters went unanswered.

Finally, he called them and all they would say is "The chick is in the mail."

(Sorry, had to do it)
posted by jeffbarr at 6:43 AM on October 30, 2002

Sandy Booker, the one American confirmed killed in the Russian hostage crisks, was in Moscow to finalize arrangements to marry his Russian fiancee, whom he met through a mail-order service. Coworkers said that he was looking for a more traditional, religious marriage.

My uncle's second wife is a Filipina-American, whom he met in a NYC bar, and she's neither exceptionally religious, nor (ha!) anything close to a pushover. Her sister is also married to a white American, though I have the impression that relationship started in Manila when he was stationed there. Still, marriages arranged through families have an extensive history, and marriages through singles services are also widely accepted, as are personal ads that say things like "SWM seeking SBF, slim, non-smoker, likes jazz, ginseng tea, Democrat" -- so why not Christian? Why is this one characteristic so icky?
posted by dhartung at 8:14 AM on October 30, 2002

... so why not Christian? Why is this one characteristic so icky?

I read the christian description as just marketing hype by the service, rather than as a genuine statement of belief. I certainly see nothing wrong with anyone advertising for a mate and using the criteria that they be christian (or anything else), but don't see that as being the case here. This site, as with the many others like it, is appears to be simply a way to extort money from lonely men with poor social skills and/or low self-esteem.
posted by dg at 3:33 PM on October 30, 2002