Superstitions 

Odds are, if you’re engaged or married to a Filipina, you’re already aware that superstition plays a prominent role in Filipino culture.  True, every culture entertains superstition to some degree (for westerners, the stigma attached to the number 13, knocking over a saltshaker, or walking under a ladder are examples), but in the Philippines superstition has evolved into a virtual science.   It’s a part of life, just like eating, drinking, and brown outs.  And as the sexes go, Filipinas tend to be much more superstitious than their male counterparts.  

My theory here is that protecting the home from evil spirits and curses is considered “woman’s work”, i.e., the responsibility of the wife.  I say this based on my observation, while in the Philippines, that all the women on my wife’s side of the family spend considerable time analyzing and overcoming potential curses, whereas the men seem more interested in tackling the REAL problems of the world, like war and social injustice, by sitting in lawn chairs next to the road and talking loudly.  Usually while drinking beer and smoking cigarettes in rapid succession and yelling “hoy!” at random passers-by.  I think it may be awhile before we see world peace under these circumstances, but at least these gentlemen are  making an effort. 

As a western husband, then, you can do one of two things.  You can facilitate your wife’s belief system for the benefit of your marriage, or you can try to put a stop to it.  The latter option is not a very good one, and here’s why: 

First, she’s not going to abandon her superstitions simply because you find them silly.  She may be more covert about some things, and less willing to discuss with you her thoughts and ideas on certain subjects, but just because you don’t know what’s going on doesn’t mean nothing’s going on.  More importantly, you wife will resent you for your attack her core beliefs.  

Think of it this way: Many American guys live for NFL football, and would go absolutely bonkers if their wives decided to start up a conversation about, say, curtains, in the last two minutes of the game with the score tied and a playoff berth on the line.  You must know that many wives think such devotion to a “game” is the height of silliness, especially when there are critical drapery decisions to be made.  But for you, football is important, and a part of your life, and if you’re lucky, your wife will tolerate your devotion to the game.  So, my thinking is that, if she lets you have your football, you should let her protect your home from vampires. 

Second, all that superstitious activity can really be quite endearing.  It definitely makes a marriage more interesting. As an example, my wife positively refuses to throw away uncooked rice.  We had a 25 pound bag of rice in Hawai’i one time, and she found bugs in it, but she wouldn’t throw it away because to do so was bad luck.  However, after considerable discussion of the pro’s and con’s of having a bug-filled bag of rice in our kitchen for the rest of our lives (I took the con side of the argument), my wife graciously allowed me to haul the bag out to the side of the street.  I’ve often wondered why it’s okay to throw away cooked rice, but not uncooked.  Had we brewed up a rice-n-bug soup, could she have thrown that away, for instance...? 

Mind you, this is my wife’s own particular superstition, and it may be restricted to her village or her province, and isn’t necessarily a Philippines-wide belief.  The point is that, far from finding such incidents frustrating, I usually find them amusing.   My wife turned a mundane activity like throwing away rice into an adventure, full of all kinds of peril.  Well, perceived peril, I guess I should say, since she was never quite clear on what happens to someone who throws away uncooked rice.  Presumably something bad. In retrospect, I think that may have been about the time that I first noticed my hairline receding... 

Point number two, then, is that you should view your wife’s superstitions in a positive light.  You wanted exotic – you got it! 

The third reason for facilitating your wife’s beliefs is that – hey, who knows, maybe she’s on to something!  I mean, how do you know that someone hasn’t put the evil eye on you?  You probably wouldn’t know an evil eye if you saw one, would you?  How do you know that vampires aren’t making nightly jaunts to your house, only to be turned back by that garlic clove in the window?  Sure you don’t see the vampires, but that only means the garlic in the window is working. And while you might not be interested in where you got the flu, your loving wife might be very hard at work analyzing everything you’ve done, and everyone you’ve encountered, for the past three weeks of your life, and at some point she may figure out exactly who or what made you sick.  Then she’ll prescribe a cure (in my house, such cures often consist of sour fruits and pocketing spent shell casings from large caliber rifles), and voila, in a few days you’re going to get all better.  Guaranteed.  

The wonderful thing about a having highly superstitious nature is that you’re never at a loss for an explanation.  Of anything.   Science is burdensome in that it requires all kinds of theories and tests and re-tests before conclusions can be reached, but superstitions are flexible and provide answers on the fly, as needed.  My wife, for example, is never, ever at a loss for why something occurs.  Whether it be an illness, a pay raise, a car wreck, or bad weather, she always has the inside scoop. Cause and Effect are readily apparent to her. As an example, if I were to trip on a treadmill at the gym and rub the skin off my knees (I’m not saying this happened, but I should point out that those   treadmills aren’t nearly as wide as they should be), I’ll bandage up my injuries, swallow my pride, and forget about it.  But my wife will require only   minutes to come up with a hypothesis like, “I think you made someone mad and they did that to you.”  

The cause and effect thing need not have a supernatural basis, by the way.  Food and hygiene are often the culprits when things go right or wrong.  You may forget things because you’re not eating enough peanuts, for example.  A woman might get ill because she washed her hair during the first day of her menstrual cycle.  I might get fat (okay -  “fatter”), because I didn’t eat a sour fruit after my main course.  These types of beliefs would better be described as folklore or wives’ tales than superstition, but they can be just as taxing on a western husband who’s unable to accommodate his wife’s beliefs.  (A side note here: I’ve observed that oil, creams, salves, and liquids are considered by many Filipinas to be more legitimate in treating illnesses than pills or capsules.  Just something to keep in mind if you’ve ever got a sick asawa on your hands.) 

I should address numerology and dream interpretation, too.  For every season there is a reason...and for every number and dream, too, apparently.   Numbers are everywhere, even in places you might not think to look.  A hair on the bathroom counter might be in the shape of a 6, for example.  There might be a scribble on a piece of paper you find on the ground that, in the right light and with enough squinting, reveals the number 87.  More obvious sources for numbers are license plates, hotel room numbers, phone numbers, ages, birthdays, and television channels.  

And there’s only one practical use for such numbers – gambling.  In the Philippines, these discovered numbers will be used in the game of “jueting”, whereas in the U.S. the numbers will be applied to one of the state lotteries.  My wife is seriously concerned that someday my job might require me to transfer to a state without a lottery.  Sure, there are other considerations, like crime, pollution, climate, etc., but the most important of all considerations is the availability of a lottery.  Or, absent that, a state’s proximity to a civilized area that does have the lottery. 

Dreams have supernatural trappings in many cultures, of course, including those of the west.  Carl Jung and Freud come immediately to mind as pioneers in dream research, though Freud was more pragmatic and Jung more unconventional in approaching these night time visions. Needless to say, Filipinos are just as interested in dreams and interpretations of dreams as westerners are, if not more so.  I don’t see any reason to go into more detail, since this is one subject all of you are already familiar with.  Especially if your read the tabloids at the supermarkets. Just be aware that you will probably spend the occasional morning discussing the ramifications of what your asawa dreamt about the night before.  

All this simply means that you should support your wife, whether you find her beliefs logical or inexplicable.  Superstition is how she deals with the mysteries of everyday life, and her beliefs contribute greatly to her psychological makeup.  If you pull away one of the pillars of her personality, your charming, loving wife might become dull and cynical.  By depriving her of part of her culture, you might extinguish the fire that attracted you to her in the first place. 

To wrap all this up, I’ll convey one of my own experiences to you.  One night on the Discovery Channel there was a show about superstitions.  It covered all the basics, like black cats and broken mirrors, along with the possible origins of the beliefs.  I was sitting next to my wife on the couch watching the show, which she fully expected to provide her with more ammunition in her relentless struggle against the forces of evil (I seem to recall she had a pad of paper nearby in case notes were necessary).  The show was pretty entertaining until an editor for Skeptic magazine was interviewed.  He stated, in a very condescending tone, that superstitions were stupid and often dangerous and that he found it incredible that modern people still accepted such myths.  

Now, I’m not personally superstitious, and in a different setting, I might have be nodding my head in agreement with the guy.  But I knew that my wife was watching, and I suddenly realized that the last thing I wanted was for my wife to find herself under attack by some academic in a sweater on television.  It took me only a few seconds to decide to change the channel to a more suitable program.  Battlebots.  

My wife didn’t complain.  And believe me, she’s no fan of the Battlebots.  She thinks it’s silly, the idea of remotely controlled robots fighting each other.  But she sat there next to me and watched as Atomic Wedgie pushed Vlad the Impaler into the Kill-Saws again and again, giggling at the absurdity of it all but never raising a single objection.  She gets her vampires, and I get Vlad the Impaler.  It's a wondeful arrangement. 

I wonder if the editor of Skeptic magazine watches Battlebots.  I bet he does, even if he won’t admit it.

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.