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Mail Order Bride?
EvilMuffin
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
A friend is requesting I post this, I have to stress this as the missus reads my posts on the H/A forums. Anyway hes a bit of a recluse and against my advice he is considering the mail order bride thing. Are any of the websites out there reputable? Also, whats to keep them from splitting on you once they are in the country? I know this must sound horrible but hes been hounding me to post this all day and I am doing my duty as a friend.
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None. Any website that sells women over the internet should be self-evidently suspect. They're basically trafficking humans. Remember that.
Nothing. They are human beings, and holding them against their will would be kidnapping, not marriage.
Please, if you're his friend talk him out of it. The chances of him ending up in a healthy relationship for any length of time as a result of this are slim to none. More than likely, she will harbor resentment and eventually look for an opportunity to divorce... and that's if the website doesn't just take his information and give him nothing but fake loans in his name.
He needs to be convinced that he can find a woman through his own merits, not through purchase. Both for the greater good (tm) and for his own sake (as these kinds of things NEVER end well).
EDIT: If he's a good looking guy, he just needs to be helped out of his phobia. Through professional therapy, if necessary. If he's a good looking guy and a nice person in general, he's not going to have a problem in the post-high school world of dating. He just needs to get out there and SEE with his own eyes that women aren't going to stomp all over him anymore.
They're all scams, every single one. The closest to a "mail order bride" service is a foreign dating service, where you fly to another country and are set up on dates. It costs thousands of dollars. It's basically for rich men in search of trophy wives.
He needs to realize that the odds that this company is just phishing for information is utterly overwhelming. Even if he goes to meet her and not the other way around, it's still a mail order bride service (money being exchanged for meeting/marrying a woman). And so it's still basically human trafficking... and the people running these services should not be trusted with anyone's personal information.
If he's absolutely made up his mind, he may have to learn the hard way... but most of the time, people even in desperate situations can be made to realize that their decision could bring them trouble.
Put it in terms that he can understand, for his own self interest. Tell him about the high likelihood that they may steal his identity, or even accost/rob him when he goes to meet this "bride", who may not even exist. Tell him about the fact that if he marries a woman, even from another country, she'll be entitled to alimony when she inevitably divorces him, and the odds of him actually being loved by her is decisively low, just on the very nature of the service.
Appeal to him about the fact that what he's hoping to get out of it just won't happen. You don't even need to point out the moral implications: he needs to know that he won't even get what he wants if he does this, which makes the exercise utterly futile and against his own best interests.
Aye, and even those are likely scams... certainly the women aren't going to fall in love with them. Maybe their money. The man gets a temporary wife who is attractive, the woman gets half of his money in alimony payments a year or two later.
This is a BAD IDEA, the king of bad ideas even. Keep trying to talk him out of it and pointing out that it's against his own best interests, even until the end... but if he still does it, at least you'll know you have tried. And when they do whatever they will inevitably do to him, he'll have learned the hard way. Highly unfortunate, but if he won't listen it will get to that point. At least you'll know you tried to help, and you can be there for him when he falls.
As the above poster said, DO encourage him to try online dating if he won't any other way. It will help him realize that he CAN date women, and he may find a great person. No "money-for-women" exchange there... well, hopefully.
My mom has several friends who met their husbands through pen-pal type arrangements. One of her friend's husbands came to the Philippines to meet a woman he had been talking to through the internet, saw my mom's friend and decided she was prettier and then pursued her mercilessly. It's all very creepy business and there are no guarantees for anyone involved.
We've been told that you're an attractive, good guy. Kids in high school are cruel and often malicious... but after high school, it is YOUR TIME. Now is your moment. Many women after high school begin to realize that a stable, kind man is far preferable to those they were dating in high school. In short, they wise up.
If you're all that, and attractive as well, you have NOTHING against you points-wise. You can do the dating scene. You can thrive in it. You can find a woman who will actually love you, and find her on your own terms and without money having to be exchanged. I promise you, you will never regret ditching the mail order bride idea. Going down the mail order bride route is guaranteeing yourself disaster, whereas dating will (sometimes) be hard, but will always be infinitely more rewarding.
If a person has a phobia, it's probably a good idea to see a psychiatrist. Getting over the sorts of things that bothered a person when younger will be more helpful than anything else.
If all else fails, and the problem is still American women... maybe moving to another country is a good idea? Certainly better than trying to find a mail order bride.
If he doesnt like stereotypically american girls (whatever that may entail...) then there are already plenty of foreign-born girls in the US that he doesnt have to risk internet scams to meet. If he is worried that they've already been explosed to the culture, then it is worth pointing out that bringing in a foreign bride from another country will expose them to american culture very quickly, and in fact, since they may not know anyone else locally, they may immerse themselves quicker than someone who came here with extended family presence.
But anyway all that is beside the point. He wants to meet someone he likes and who he considers an equal (and vice versa). Get on some well known dating sites like okcupid, plentyoffish etc and check those out. If he isnt interested in dating Miss USA then fine, dont ask any of those ones out. Solved!
Nothing; any attempts to contractually, forcibly (etc) stop them from doing that would be illegal, because it's pretty much their human right. And all the factors like culture shock, stress, barely having known and communicated with the mate before arriving, pretty much herd them toward doing this.
Your friend would get much more for his money, and probably be happier, if he just bought an expensive car. And that might actually get him more attention from easy women who're right in his own town. 8-)
But for a human solution, he can't get the benefits without putting in the work. If he's that lonely, I'd suggest he change his living situation. Get some roommates. Not for sex, but for company and hopefully bonding.
Although I am sure there are a few legitimate services out there. If he does go with a mail-order bride, when he's filling out the K-1 visa, there is a special section on the I-129F form for if he did meet her through a brokerage service, and how he met her, etc. (http://www.visapro.com/Download/Alien-Fiancee-Petition.pdf questions 18 and 19) I imagine the government takes into consideration which brokerage service and how legitimate they are.
Your friend should be aware that even if he does go through a mail order bride service, things still may not work out for her to enter the U.S.
Its exploiting the abysmal condidtions these women are subjected to. They effectively feel they have to sell themselves for a better standard of life. Its prostitution taken to the extreme.
I'm sure your friend want to love her. I'm sure he will be very gentle, kind, and give her a "better life". But he's taking advantage of her situation to make up for an inability to meet someone in a more traditional sense.
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Well it's mutually exploititive, although I could picture the brides being more satisfactory to the grooms than vice versa.
I have no idea how things turned out for the LAN center guy, though. He came in one day to tell me he was going to Russia the following week to meet a few of the girls and he never came in again after that.
But like everyone else said, pretty much any other avenue would be better than this. Has he considered the fact that he'd be getting a wife that couldn't communicate with him? Hell, a cat would be cheaper and easier to get for the same level of companionship.
SO DEEP
I wasn't talking to you.
Why are you responding to me?
Also Gabriel_Pitt's position is hilariously untenable.
My feelings about "mail-order" brides are EXTREMELY negative, fyi.
I know two cases where someone I'm close to has done something somewhat similar that still doesn't quite sit right with me, but in both cases my the couple are actually very much in love and happy together. They didn't go through any kind of company because that's fucked up and evil and that's just the way it is. But both of them went to countries that often have "mail-order bride" companies trafficking women out of them. The reason these companies do well in these countries is because there is not a lot of opportunity for women, not very many eligible bachelors, and a lot of women want to get out and often to the United States. One of my friends went to Russia, essentially intent on finding himself a girlfriend and future wife. And he did. He went there a few times for several months and he met a great girl and they're very much in love and happily married now. It's been like 5 years I think.
The other case is my dad, and I'm a bit more judgemental of that one because A. it's my dad and B. his wife is only 2 years older than me... But he did essentially the same thing as my friend but in the Phillippines. If your friend is deadset on spending a bunch of money and finding himself a wife, then at least that way he could experience the culture have some fun, and meet a girl more or less the old-fashioned way, but with the odds stacked more in his favor.
Also, fyi, I am a girl and I really am AGAINST mail-order brides, but I try to reserve judgement about anything between to consenting adults if it really is consensual.
also, perhaps you could find some spam email about a Russian woman that is coming to the United States and is looking for a nice man to start her free life. Try to convince him the the spam is legitimate and get him to "correspond" with her. That should at least keep him busy for a couple months. Then, when his heart is broken because it was actually some Nigerian man sending the e-mails, convince him that is how all mail-order brides end up.
The ignorant are frequently amused by what is beyond there ability to understand. :P
To the Op, your heart is in the right place, even if you head is partially lodged in your ass. If someone is going to pursue something like this, then they can't have any illusions about what's going on, or be at all naive about what they're getting into, and it sounds like your friend might not meet those qualifications. A legitimate company doing something like this is nothing more than an expensive, glorified matchmaking service.
Through being acquainted with the wrong people, I know one person by acquaintance and one by reputation who did something similar (for lack of a more dignified description, they both wanted 'supermodel' looking wives, and had the literal snowball's chance of getting something like that amongst their own nationality). All parties involved seemed satisfied with the arrangements but honestly, with all the effort and money involved with going the 'mail order bride' (not to mention all the ways it can go horribly wrong) I'd say he'd be better off joining a free personals website (or hell, even a pay one, it'd still be cheaper) if the guy wants a chance to check out what a girl's like before making the attempt to speak with her, and you don't have to go beyond your own national boarders.
So yeah, I'm also against the OP's friend giving this a try, but all the ignorant, knee-jerk asshattery bouncing around the thread rubbed me the wrong way.
There's also the computer virus he's likely to get from opening and responding to said spam email (either by downloading the Bad Thing or giving the source a valid email address to target). Computer viruses... the strangest sort of venereal disease I can think of. I think I need more coffee.
They all turn into Nigerian men? That is a rude surprise.
Oh look it's done.