[This is a guest post from JD at FWHL.]
Mainstream media will always give a platform to international dating sob stories and horror tales. They take something that is much more commonplace than most people think, and scape together the freaks and creeps from the fringes of the dating scene to paint a picture that is all but dark and shady.
The main reason they do this is because, let’s face it, crazy stories sell. No one is going to watch a documentary or share a news story on an international couple who met overseas and lived happily ever after. There’s nothing entertaining about that. In the end the media is in the business of selling stories and it’s the extreme ones that get catch attention.
However there is a second motivation for the bias media coverage of international dating that’s a bit less obvious…
While they’ll never condemn successful international couples explicitly, the media does so implicitly by only sharing the worst examples of cross-cultural romance. Thus if your wife or girlfriend has a Russian or Asian accent in the USA she’s automatically labeled a mail order bride.
This is a matter of agenda, albeit a subtle one. Western media, whether they realize it or not, has a vested interest in offhandedly dismissing international dating as crazy, dangerous, and weird. Mainstream western culture has a lot to lose by conceding the fact that international marriages are becoming more commonplace AND are more likely to be successful than domestic ones.
Feminists baulk at the idea of western men dating overseas for obvious reasons. If a man purposely sets out to leave the west in favor of dating women in another part of the world, he is effectively denouncing the feminist value system. From the feminist view international dating at best says that there’s something desirable outside the feminists leftist culture; and at worst it shows that feminism itself is undesirable and that other value systems are superior (at least to men). Needless to say, don’t expect any 20/20 specials on the merits of international relationships anytime soon.
But the main purpose of this post isn’t to tell you about a mass PR conspiracy aimed at keeping western men away from lovely foreign ladies. Rather, it’s to share with you these three facts about international dating that you’re unlikely to hear elsewhere.
1) International marriages have a higher success rate than domestic ones
Men in the west are increasingly viewing marriage as little more than a financial and sexual death trap. The tale of too many a married man goes something like this: wed a woman, put in your time and attention for 5-10 years, only to have her split on a whim with your kids and half your money for some inscrutable reason.
Yet there’s still a cultural myth that dropping a ring into the marital slot machine of the West is safer and more preferable than an international marriage. The usual logic follows that the differences between two cultures only add more trouble to an already troubled institution. But the facts show just the opposite. Evidently marriage isn’t such a troubling idea in other parts of the world…
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services published an often quoted study on marriages which resulted from “mail order bride services”. Do you know what the results were? An 80% success rate. The agency said, and I quote: “marriages arranged through [mail order bride] services would appear to have a lower divorce rate than the nation as a whole”. What was the US divorce again?
The study was once publish publicly online, but has since been relegated to the confines of a governmental library in Washington, DC. You can still find quotes from the study floating around the net.
There was also a fairly recent study carried out by Barnard College that also states that “mail-order marriages” have a higher success rates than domestic ones, though the results weren’t quite as staggering as the CIS report.
No one wants to think about how these statistics might point to the idea that it’s the western values themselves which cause much of the marital drama. Could it be that it’s precisely the difference in cultural values that leads to higher success rates in international relationships? …If it is, no one will tell you.
2) International dating is more common than you think
From 1999 to 2010 the number of international marriages in the US more than doubled, and since then it’ has showed no signs of slowing down. The international dating industry is booming. Shady romance tour companies and mail order bride sites have been separating men from their wallets since the 1990’s, but the past 3-4 years have seen a sharp increase in legitimate dating sites and introduction agencies.
There has also been an explosion of web content on the subject, due in large part to the manosphere. Prior to 2014 there was next to no information on Ukrainian women apart from Roosh’s Bang Ukraine travel guide. Now there’s a plethora of blogs, sites, and Youtube channels dedicated to the topic.
As a result of all this increased business and attention, more and more men are coming forward and sharing stories of successful international relationships.
3) International dating…it’s easier than you think
If you aren’t well traveled catching a plane to Eastern Europe, Asia, or Latin America can seem daunting. The most common reservations men have about international dating are money and the difficulty of actually navigating in and around a foreign country.
But the truth is international travel has never been easier. If you can forgo some extra legroom on a plane you might be surprised how far you can get for under $1,000. Also developing countries (the ones that fall in between the first and third worlds) usually don’t mind foreigners, or at least the money that foreigners bring in. These nations increasingly make an effort to make tourism and travel easy in their major cities.
As a result, in many parts of the world there’s a perfect storm of countries and cities that are accessible to the west, but themselves aren’t westernized. If you’re considering dating abroad there literally is no better time to do it than right now.
Final thoughts
Whether you want a relationship with a beautiful feminine woman or you simply want to flip the bird to feminism, international dating is the path worth following. Don’t fall for all the disinformation on the subject.
Take a few pages from the Commandments of Trouble: open your eyes, cause some trouble, and date the world while you do.
I promise you won’t regret it.
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