Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Why do European like to marry Indonesian women?

Bali & World News and Views Editors Comments.

After living in Bali for 22 years I've observed many marriages between Indonesian women and Westerners.  A lot of them are from Europe.


Author Lawrence married to a beautiful, intelligent Indonesian lady with a law degree, Notaris license and their two sons.


I would say that the divorce rate is probably a lot less than the Western world which is currently I believe around 50%.

If you asked me why Europeans like to marry and Indonesian women I would say that the author below is right that quite often the Westerners are older. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong! Often the Western men have been through harsh marriages often marrying their childhood lovers only because of their pregnancy before marriage. Older men know what they want  in marriage and are generally much more loyal.

Of course a lot of the Westerners are attracted by the young and sexy Indonesian girls.

Indonesian women in general outside of the large cities have been taught to take care of their man and don't challenge his manhood as many Western women do these days. A Western man feels like a king often in the household and therefore does not mind being the breadwinner and sharing the bread.

As far as Indonesian women and many other women around the world that marry Western man many of them are after the Westerners money. So Westerners have to be extremely careful and test their relationship before they get married.

One thing I highly recommend is a prenuptial or even postnuptial agreements to protect the Westerners assets from the woman just after the money from any part of the world. My wife, an Indonesian Notaris, specializes in these inexpensive legal documents that not only protect the Western Husband but also the Indonesian wife who has few rights otherwise if there is a divorce. She can be contacted direct <Azizah at notarisazizah@gmail.com

Once the Indonesian wife is educated on the fact that it's better legally because of Indonesian laws to have a prenuptial the question of whether the Western husband loves them or not is taken out of the equation.

The one thing Western men must be aware of that in most cases when you marry an Asian woman you are also marrying the family and expected to be responsible for taking care of the family just like she is. 

Many look at it as their major charity after a while and agree with it.
Many Indonesian women have come from poverty or below poverty levels and it doesn't cost much for a Western husband to help her family.

I have many Western friends that are extremely happy with her Indonesian wives and of course some that are not.

The bottom line is that no one should get married because of nationality but because of true love.

"No one should get married  because of nationality but because of true love".

 If it is true love based on empathy and caring between two individuals who are devoted to each others happiness and not  tempted by outside influences it can be one of the most romantic and beautiful, loving marriages in the world.
Happily married Indonesian woman and a Canadian man


Anya Natakusumah-Abel, Founder at Sahabat Jiwa
Answered Aug 31


I dated and got engaged to a Swede in my early 20s (I am now in my early 50s), but eventually I found out that he just wanted to have a submissive and “cheap” wife from Asia. I met him through a correspondence letter on Kompas asking for a penpal, but after we met (in Jakarta) it quickly turned into a romantic relationship and we got engaged. But soon after we got engaged, I realized that all he wanted was a “cheap” (for example: he asked me how many lipsticks I owned and when I answered three, he told me that after we got married, I may have to settle with one as he thought three lipsticks were quite frivolous; and on another occasion, when he told me he just bought a new (small) Japanese car, he said that he wouldn’t let me drive it as I could just borrow his mom’s car (which was quite an old car), and so on), and “submissive” 


(I was finishing my undergraduate degree at the University of Indonesia and he had a Ph.D degree, in fact, he was an assistant professor at one of Sweden’s public university; and when on a few occassion we had a serious debate on politics or philosophy, he’d end the “discussion” with,”I have a doctorate degree, so I know more than you” kind a thing. 

Not long after, I told him we’re done. A few years later I went to the US to study and met my (American) husband. Unlike the Swede ex fiancee, he is very generous (we agreed that I would be the one who is taking care of the daily financial matters and he doesn’t question my shopping habits), and don’t expect me to be a submissive wife or demand me to do the household chores. 

He helps as much as he can and basically let me do what I want to do. I don’t ask him for permissions if I want to do something (like going on a vacation with a friend) and we can argue and discuss anything without the conversation end with “as a man I know more than you”. 

I realize that some western men (including Europeans) look for Asian (including Indonesian) women for similar reasons the Swede ex fiancee did when he was dating me. They also almost always don’t make a lot of money (as with the case of my Swede ex boyfriend, professors in Sweden don’t make that much money, in fact, when I first worked in the US in the early ‘90s, 

I made as much as he did as an assistant/junior professor). Here’s a reference of recent academic staff salary in Sweden: Sweden, Academic Career Structure (it was way lower in the late 80s and early 90s). But maybe those numbers are considered a lot for the average Indonesians (I didn’t think these numbers as “a lot”, as I knew that cost of living in western countries are far higher than in Indonesia).

Another fact I observe, is that these men are usually much older (10+ years older) than their Asian wives (my Swede ex fiancee was 13 years older than me). As it’s quite common and acceptable in Indonesia for women to marry men more senior than them, in western countries, women and men usually marry someone their own age. 

Very few case that women would marry someone’s way older and when they do, usually it’s between older men & women as the population of older single men are much lower than older single women: so the men have more choices as who they can date & marry (usually it’s their second marriage). I remember going to an “Indonesian-American couples” group and my husband found he had nothing in common with the other American husbands as they are much older than him (eventhough the wives are sometimes younger or much younger than me).

Years later I had the chance to spend a summer in Stockholm as my husband was temporarily stationed there to start a project, and I realized that most Swedes (as in case of most western civilizations including the US), still prefer their own “kind”. In fact, I don’t remember seeing even one inter-cultural/racial couples (in Sweden). 

Every single one I saw and met were Caucasian couples. If you check the population, the rate of men & women are about the same so there’s really no shortage of local women for every western men, especially amongst older people (50+), there are slightly more women than men; thus there’s really no need of them to look elsewhere for a wife (http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/?...). The people who marry foreigners usually are foreigners from other western country (https://emnbelgium.be/sites/defa...).

When I was studying at Purdue University, I found some literatures (I forget which ones, otherwise I would cite it here), that many of intercultural marriage amongst Western man and Eastern woman are based on stereortyping in which the men expect a submissive women (as it is a common stereotypes on eastern/asian women), and the Asian women who look for western husbands, expect a man who would treat them more as an equal (as it’s a common stereotype that western men are more progressive since feminism is more common in western countries than in more traditional cultures like Asian countries). 

So when they marry, they found out that they didn’t get what they want, thus a slighty higher divorce rate between these couples. The western men found out that these Asian women are not the “traditional submissive” Asians and the Asian women found out in dismay that their western husbands expect them to be submissive. On the subject of “submissiveness”, I also found that many westerner women still have (some) traditional values where they take on more household chores and responsibilites to care for their children than their husbands do, especially those of previous generations (like my husbands’ parents). 

There are many surveys that found even now, (Western) women, in general, take on more than their husbands even if they work outside the house (Women do more housework than men however much they earn, study finds). I have friends (Europeans as well as Americans) who are working and who are stay-at-home moms who still (somewhat) cater to their husbands, like cooking (most of the) dinners, taking care of their children, and all other “traditional” household works. So I am not sure how “submissive” these western men expect Asian (Indonesian) women to be. Perhaps to the point of controling how much money we would spend on lipsticks? (Lol)

I also found that Europeans are more (or less) a class-based society (most of them are kingdoms at some point and even now you still find kingdoms in some European countries), much so than American culture (as Americans are formed by immigrants), so perhaps they are actually less inclined to marry someone from a developing country (this is purely a guess) like Indonesia. Also, the marriage rates in Europe seems to be falling (Why Nobody in Europe Gets Married Anymore), so I suspect that the ones still want to marry, perhaps, carry a more traditional values, as of those who look for Asian wives. Another reason why Europeans marry other Europeans are probably because of the evolutionary tendencies of human attraction is based on physical similarities (Facial attractiveness: evolutionary based research).

Of course I would not dismiss cases where people intermarry purely because of coincidence and for love, without considering any of the cultural/racial backgrounds, as perhaps in my own experience with my American husband, but I rarely found that this is the case. So no, if you mean by “European (or Western) men like to marry Indonesian women” as if “European men prefer Indonesian women instead of their own kind”, I don’t think that is the case.
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