Introduction

Let me start out on a serious note, by saying that this site has no agenda, other than to educate.  I am, in principle, neither a proponent nor an opponent of marriages between Filipinas and western men, though I do enjoy such a marriage myself.  This site is not intended to glorify the wonders of Fil-West (Filipina-Western) marriages, but neither is it intended to criticize those who would pursue them, in whatever manner.  My task here is simply to provide an honest perspective on such relationships, with the hope that my readers will use that perspective as a starting point for their own personal explorations of the subject.   

I am, of course, a bit conservative, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.  Most Southerners with a military background are.  But I have endeavored throughout my life to see each side of an issue.  I dislike ignorance, and I realized early in my life that I could not allow my oft-unreasoned passions to obfuscate reality, however disagreeable I found it.   The only individuals I can say I’m truly opposed to are “radicals”, regardless of their causes or leanings.  I am not an anti-feminist, though I’m not particularly fond of feminism either.  It’s just one of those topics I tend to respond to with a shrug.  I do believe that anti-feminist sentiment is a particularly poor reason to marry a Filipina, however.  Unfortunately, that’s an all too common motivation, which is why I dedicated an entire section of this book to the topic.  

I think I can safely say that this site will, at various points, displease a great many people, whether they are blindly for and blindly against such unions.   

Proponents may take issue with my dispelling of certain myths regarding Filipinas, as well as my suggestion that some men simply should not pursue Filipina wives.  They will be troubled by the many reservations, conditions, and cautionary words contained herein, and will presume that my unwillingness to blindly support any  and all Fil-West relationships indicates that I am against them in principle.  I am not, and if I were, I certainly wouldn’t waste a million keystrokes typing up a book just to hint at my displeasure.  In principle, I support any relationship that is happy and mutually beneficial, no matter how the relationship comes about, or who it involves.   But I do discourage men and women from rushing blindly into relationships that are not only long-distance (difficult enough) but also intercultural.  Such relationships should only be entered into in a careful, methodical manner, for the right reasons.    

On the other side of the coin, some readers of this site will be infuriated with my tentative defense of the so-called “mail-order bride” industry, and indeed, will infer that this site’s mere existence serves to perpetuate the relationships they so revile.  It is a monumental mistake, however, to presume that a site about Fil-West relationships is at its heart a site about mail order brides.  That simply isn’t the case.  Data from two polls I’ve conducted in recent years (available in the Appendix) indicates that most partners in Fil-West relationships met one another outside the auspices of the m.o.b. industry.    That includes my wife and me.   

Also, it would be unconscionable to construct a site about Fil-West marriage and not address the needs of westerners and Filipinas who are involved in “penpal” relationships.  For that, I make no apologies.   While there are certainly unscrupulous men and women willing to advantage of such relationships for malicious reasons, my experience has been that most penpal relationships are legitimate.  Usually they involve honest, loving men and honest, loving women, and I’m not about to turn my back on honorable people in need simply because a few cretins have abused the system for their own gain.   

Now, with that preface in place, perhaps the reader would like to know how this site came about.  You’ll forgive me if I drop the serious tone and lapse back into my true self. 

The beginning of my website, ASAWA, which led to this site and the ASAWA Guide, was exceedingly humble.  In 1997 my Internet Service Provider gave me 5 megs of free web space I decided, damn it, for $39.99 a month I'm going to use that space (yes, I was paying too much)!  Also, I had recently discovered that guys who ran websites got to call themselves "webmasters," and you have to admit, that's a really cool name.  I mean, "webmaster"!  Think about it. That's like a Marvel superhero character.  Who wouldn't want to be a Webmaster? 

At that point I had to decide what I wanted my site to be about.  No easy task!  ISP's shouldn't be so hasty to give out free web space to their clients, in my opinion.  Don't they realize what a burden this is on us?  I mean, when they say you get 5 Megs of free web space, don't you feel almost obligated to use it?  Sure you do.  But many folks can't for the life of them think of anything they really want to post on a web page, which is why, under pressure from those damn ISP's, they put up web pages about "My Favorite Denim Jacket," "The Stuff In My Glove Compartment," and "My Plunger Collection." They don't really want to post anything on the Internet, they just can’t bear the notion that they have an opportunity to speak to the world…and have nothing worth saying.  It’s a very humbling experience. 

So I wanted to think up something original, something entertaining, to share with the world.  Again, no easy task, because in early 1997, the Internet was HUGE.  There must have been HUNDREDS of websites out there, sometimes even two on the same topic!  How in the world could I ever come up with anything original?? 

Well, I knew how to speak Pashtu, an Afghan dialect, thanks to my training at the Defense Language Institute.  That was unique.  And, of course, boring as hell, and I mean that as no offense to either of my instructors, both of who are probably in Afghanistan right now with rocket propelled grenade launchers on their coffee tables ("what a great conversation piece!"). I knew that if I set up an Afghan language site I'd have to find a page counter that counted backwards from zero, if you get my meaning...who could have guessed that, four years later, my fellow Marines would be landing in Afghanistan to combat terrorists, disembarking from the ship I myself spent two WestPac’s on, the U.S.S. Pelilieu.    

At the time I was fretting over my website, I was in northwest Arkansas attending my first and only semester of law school at UA Fayetteville.  My wife, Josie (Filipina, as you may have guessed), and I had just come from Hawai'i, where the Filipino population and Fil-West couples are in great supply.  In Arkansas, as best I could tell, the population of Fil-West couples was “1”, unless of course my wife and I happened to be out of state.  Well, there were certainly others, but I never met them, and Josie and I missed that camaraderie, as well as the easy access to rice noodles, we'd had in Hawai’i.  

So it occurred to me that I might be able to meet other folks like us on the Internet, and there you have it.  My website was born.  At first I thought I’d call it “Bob’s Internet Shack of Intercultural Bliss,” but then the whiskey wore off, and I opted for the more subtle, “ASAWA”. Asawa, of course, is the Tagalog term for “spouse”, which includes both the husband and the wife. 

The site itself moved from one URL to another as I changed ISP's and my wife and I relocated to Wisconsin, and it was even down for six months at one point in 1998. Finally in 1999 I figured out that for 35 bucks a year and 5 bucks a month I could get a virtual domain name and utilize a professional web hosting service and never have to worry about changing URLs again.  All I needed to come up with was a domain name. 

Unfortunately, www.asawa.com was taken (thank you very much, Automotive Service Association of Washington!).  So I settled for www.filipinawives.com, and it's worked out well.  Back in 1997 ASAWA's hit counter spun at the rate of nearly 4 hits per day, 3 of which were triggered by me while I was checking the hit counter on my main page to see if I'd actually somehow snared an unsuspecting visitor.  The other visitor, incidentally, was usually a fella from Washington with an acute interest in automobiles. 

After years of networking with other sites, jockeying for search engine placement, and writing dozens of articles, I managed to transform ASAWA from a site folks found by accident, to a site they couldn’t find on purpose.   Okay, seriously, today the site pulls in about 40,000 – 50,000 hits per month from visitors across the globe.  This increased number of visitors means, unfortunately, that I am often unable to keep up with emailed requests for information, and this limitation led me to create an Internet-based member forum that allows site visitors to talk to one another in a public setting.  It’s been quite a success, and a wonderful resource not only for my site’s visitors, but also for myself.  There are thousands of posts in the forum today that address almost every aspect of Fil-West relationships, from immigration to cultural transition to travel.   In fact, the forum was instrumental in helping me decide what issues I would address in this book, since certain issues tend to recur frequently, and thus deserve inclusion. 

Sometimes ASAWA gets “special” visitors, who email me with comments or questions, which is always a treat.  These guests have recently included an editor for Good Housekeeping magazine, a writer for the Asian edition of Readers’ Digest, a freelance journalist for Newsday (the nation's 5th largest daily periodical), and of course Ms. Amilia Dela Cruz, Miss Philippines International, 1994.  

And sometimes I get some really unusual visitors.  Such was the case back in 2000, when an attorney from Bermuda contacted me regarding a case he was handling. It seems he had a Filipina for a client whose husband was suing her for divorce and demanding her deportation because he found out she was already married when he married her.  I think the guy was British.  Anyway, the attorney’s client, the Filipina, claimed that she never “really” married her former husband (a Filipino), so her marriage to her current husband was legit.  The Brit insisted it wasn’t legit because she was married before.  The attorney retaliated that the first (Filipino) husband was already married before he married the Filipina in question, which made his client’s marriage to the Filipino invalid, which made the Filipina’s marriage to the Brit legitimate Confused yet?   The attorney offered to fly me down to Bermuda to help out with the case, but Josie had some medical issues at the time that prevented me from going.  Yes, it would have been fun…I have no idea how the case turned out, unfortunately.   

Of course I also hear from the occasional angry visitor, but there are really a lot fewer of those than you might imagine.  Perhaps one email or guest book entry in a hundred is less than friendly.  Typically the unhappy party is a westerner who hates Filipinas, a Filipina who hates westerners, or westerner OR Filipino who dislikes Fil-West unions (both protest the lack of a “pure breed” child).  Occasionally it’s an angry Filipino male who (with some justification, really) is less than enthusiastic about the diluted pool of available females in his own country.   Like I said, though, such instances are amazingly rare, which I’m thankful for. 

You may be wondering why I decided to expand upon this site and self-publish the ASAWA Guide.  Isn’t a website, newsletter, and forum enough to keep my busy in my spare time?  You bet it is.   In a way, though, this book is an extension of my website.  In fact, about a third of all the articles inside this book can be found on my website, though I’ve done some serious editing and revisions to the material.   

To put it simply, I like books.  The fact is that a book has many advantages over a website, and I want to avail my readers of those advantages.  For example, I’ve written so many articles and compiled so much information on my website that navigating it has become troublesome.  With all the branches, sub-branches, links and bookmarks, visitors to ASAWA are bound to miss some of the more important articles.   

Also, a website isn’t portable.  With a book, you’re free to travel and read what I’ve written at your leisure, whether you’re in your study or your bathroom, your car or a plane, your country or another, more tropical one.  Sure, you can download data to a notebook PC or even a PDA, but neither of these is as easy to use as a book.  Books don’t require batteries or operation systems.  You don’t have to turn them ON and OFF.  They don’t’ crash or get viruses.  They don’t require special handling – if you drop a book off a building, odds are that it will still be perfectly readable when you recover it.  Even if a car runs over your book, you’re probably okay, though you may have to tape the spine back together.  You can write in books, and dog-ear the pages, and you can flip through them with your fingers.  The glare of sunlight on a book actually makes it more readable, whereas sunlight on a computer screen leaves you squinting and using one hand as a visor. 

So you see, in many ways a book is the most advanced medium around.    

Anyway, I just wanted to share a few thoughts with you on how this particular book and website came about.  Thanks to everyone who helped make this book a reality – site visitors, newsletter subscribers, forum members, and most of all, my wonderful and supportive wife, Josie. 

And finally, thanks to all you Washington automotive guys for keeping my web site’s “hit counter” moving in the early days.  You know who you are.  Both of you.

All original materials on this website (www.asawa.org, www.filipinawives.com) are copyrighted by the author, Bob Lingerfelt, 1997 -2007  with materials on file at the U.S. Copyright Office.  No reproduction is authorized, in any form, without express permission of the author.