Foreign dating customs

Looking back, I realize my naivety was shining like a lighthouse beacon.I was 25 years old, single, very naïve and had not considered researching cultural differences that I was likely to encounter.The growth in the numbers of foreigners who marry Thai women and find Thai girlfriends or relationships in Thailand has spawned a whole industry in books defining the perfect recipe success in love and marriage for foreign men seeking a Thai woman.The answer is to know the culture and Thai customs.Growing up in the UK, the dating scene was not an ordeal.We no longer needed the approval of our dads and the days of being chaperoned while on a date were firmly rooted in the history books.Yes, it has spread to other western and Asian countries, but the wedding shower is a western marriage custom.Thailand has its own wedding customs of which any foreigner marrying a Thai woman should be aware and might also find quaint.

Whatever it was Thomas Jefferson and the other founders meant in asserting that “All men are created equal,” this statement by now has nothing exclusively American about it.These are also the key to developing a practical understanding of marriage to a Thai woman in Thailand.Marriage in Thailand involves observing different customs to those that foreigners to the country might be used to.The United States is probably the only major country in the world in which it is taken quite as a matter of course that people will talk seriously about the relation of the nation’s values to its foreign policy.We in this country seem to believe, first, that there is something distinctive about our values, such that we can speak—even if with some uncertainty—about values; and, second, that these values do, or should, affect our foreign policy.