Finding the right one online

[elmo1982]

Hi forum,

since I couldn't find a partner in my home country and one day realized how much attention I got from women when travelling to Asia, the idea of finding an Asian girlfriend has since been building up in my mind.

I have travelled to Asia many times now including 4 visit to the Philippines. Surely I had many dates there, but I wasn't really looking for a relationship then. But I want to give it a try now.

I'm still far away from retirement, so online dating is the only option right now. I've been trying on Pinalove for around 3-4 months and it's been more or less only frustrating.

I am someone who likes good, intelligent conversations and I don't really like going into it head over heels, but build it up slowly. I assume all the cultural differences makes it hard to find what I am looking for. It's no problem to get a reply from a girl at first, but I noticed they are mostly careless and short when replying, just answer my question and often never ask anything back. Either I get annoyed by this or she will stop replying after around 2-6 messages. 95% of all conversations end like this. I guess it is because of their generally cautious nature and being "simple" or competition from other men that they don't talk about themselves at first. But this is what gets a conversation started in the first place.

To those who have been through the same: What is your approach there? How do you make her start to talk by herself? What is your messages frequency?

[Old55]

Welcome to the forum Elmo.

It seems odd the ladies only reply with a very short message.

You  have visited Philippines a number of times so should have somewhat idea how Filipinas are.

My only suggestion is be sure to be polite don't ask too personal questions at first. Maybe only ask about how their family is and general family questions. I also suggest if you like the gal then call them and have a direct conversation? Again go slow be polite keep it simple?

Edited March 1, 2020 by Old55

[Dave Hounddriver]

4 hours ago, elmo1982 said:

To those who have been through the same:

I have not done it myself, but I have watched filipinas show me how it works.  The number of foreign men on these sites hugely outnumbers the amount of available filipinas.  So much so that the "real" daters get way more messages than they can handle, and thus the short note to each one that they find interesting.  They also do not have time to read profiles.  They scan and reply to the ones who seem interesting to them iin some way.

Again, in my experience, there are scammers and business people.  Scammers speaks for itself.  Most foreigners do not realize that there are now agencies who pay real filipinas to chat with guys who come to the dating site.  These girls get paid and consider it a business.  Their husbands also consider it income for the family and go along with it.  The girls are real and are living a kind of fantasy, howere there real purpose is to get the foreign male to keep chatting as long as possible because the dating site earns money by having lots of active foreign men (fees or advertising I don't know).  The girls get paid from the agency and they get more if they chat with more men.  They also get any gifts or cash that the men send them.  They seldom meet any of the men in real life.

 I know quite a bit about this "business" as our neighbor in the Philippines was doing it for at least a year and tried to get my wife to join the group.  I insisted that my wife stay out of it but she did enjoy listening to Ira's escapades.

I also know quite a bit about the "real" filpinas as my ex and I had an amicable split up and she was showing me how easy it was for her to find a foreigner.  She did end up in Finland with someone she thought of as a wealthy guy but the number of guys she chatted with before choosing him was staggering.

Years ago the online dating worked well with filipinas.  The learn fast.  Now you have much more competion online than you will have if you just meet a filipina in real life.  All of this is my opinion based on observation

EDIT: Try it for yourself.  Get a picture of a pretty filipina and start a fake profile.  Post it and listen to the "ding", "ding", "ding" as the new messages show up.  Then picture yourself as a real filipina trying to actually answer all those messages.

Edited March 1, 2020 by Dave Hounddriver

[Mike J]

As Old55 mentioned, that seem odd.  It has been well over 15 years since I was contacting Filipinas via the web.  I expect the site you use has a "chat" feature?   When using chat some of these ladies could go chat for extended periods of time.  We talked about all kinds of things.

Where do you live?  What is it like?  How was your day?  Is it still hot or is it raining?  etc, etc, etc.  The answers to these simple questions will normally lead to other Q and A that began to build knowledge of each other as individuals.  I recall one chat that with my now wife of 15 years that went:

Me: How was your work today?

L:  No work it was a holiday.

Me: Stay home?

L: Went to parents in the province, they were feasting?

Me: What was the food?

L: Neighbor's chicken and pancit.

Me: 

I had many ladies contact me and made contact with many ladies.  I expect I had conversations, letters, exchanged pictures, phone calls, etc with well over 100 ladies.  I actually had a file system set up where I kept the letters, pictures, etc for those I thought might be "keepers".  Eventually the number came down to "the one" and we have been married 14 plus years.

Good Luck and be careful.  There are many many scammers now making a living via these sites.

 

[Jack D]

4 hours ago, elmo1982 said:

To those who have been through the same: What is your approach there? 

Have you tried video chatting? I found that video chatting worked for me. When my future wife and I first made eye contact, we couldn't stop chatting. After a few weeks, she invited me to the Philippines.

[Mike J]

55 minutes ago, Dave Hounddriver said:

EDIT: Try it for yourself.  Get a picture of a pretty filipina and start a fake profile.  Post it and listen to the "ding", "ding", "ding" as the new messages show up.  Then picture yourself as a real filipina trying to actually answer all those messages.

Why encourage someone to make it more difficult for the next guy? 

[Dave Hounddriver]

43 minutes ago, Mike J said:

Why encourage someone to make it more difficult for the next guy? 

It already is

1 hour ago, Mike J said:

It has been well over 15 years since I was contacting Filipinas via the web. 

Your experience is outdated

One of my part time jobs in the Philippines was making dating videos for dating sites.  I/we portrayed what the sites wanted to hear.  I was good at it.  The pay for my first video was only US$30  but they were paying me US$100 a 3 minute video at the end.  I suspect they thought I was good at it and I suspect my qualifications are adequate to give advice but no one has to take it.  That is why I enourage people to find out for themselves.

[Marvin Boggs]

Welcome Elmo. 

For years I gave no thought whatsoever to dating sites. I felt sorry for all those un-married shmucks until I became divorced myself.  I happened to be living in China then, and find Asian women extremely...umm...hot.  Anyway, the trouble was finding one who spoke good english, so I decided to try a dating site called "Date in Asia".  

I really did not expect much result.  But at least I could filter by age, language, location, etc.  Within 2 weeks I was chatting back and forth with my future wife, a Filipina working nearby in Macau.  Was very wary about girls falsifying or 'filtering' their pictures in their profiles....lucky me she looked even better in person!  Maybe she was the rare exception, but we had an extremely positive result from the dating site experience.  

So I am here today to say that I was a huge skeptic of dating sites before, but a believer in them now. 

[Snowy79]

I'm right up there with agreeing there are so many scammers these days.  I think the good old innocent days are long gone.  It's a shame for the good guys and the good girls.  Even if you find one that on the surface sounds and acts ideal you will only see the real them after some time.  Filipinos are experts at putting on a front.  Just wait until the mask slips and you could have a shock. 

I started out on one of the web sites about 5 yrs ago and fortunately only got close to one girl and even today she is a good friend. I lost count of the girls with emergency medical bills, no food in the cupboard, sick parents, kids etc.  It's a business these days.  

Add to this now that I've lived here over 4 yrs and lived in areas where there are plenty of hunter girls looking for easy foreigners I recognise some of the girls from the dating sites. 

My son who is 33yrs old and has visited me here 4 times has also tried the sites and sure enough they were full of text book scammers and some of the girls that he'd been chatting to for a few months and seamed great were about as interesting as my flip flops in real life. 

If you can handle the sob stories without sending money go for it but like house hunting you can't beat feet on the grounds. You'll soon see the girls that will only go for foreign boyfriends, purely for love obviously. 

 

[davewe]

Having done it (online dating) and eventually married one of my "chat mates," the best advise I can give is to find a mentor. This is even more important than finding a girl, which let's face it, can be done easily - but finding the right girl is not so easy. I got very lucky and found my mentor who lived a couple hours away from me. He and his wife helped me navigate the tough online waters. Otherwise, I would have just drowned, overwhelmed by it all.

But here's the important thing: find a like-minded mentor. There are guys online who are looking to marry, looking to find a vacation girl friend, and looking to find as many girl friends as they think they can handle. Know what you want and find someone who has done it. Anyone can get online and chat with girls. Not everyone can successfully get what they want - and what you want.

I wish you the best of luck - it is a great adventure.