A Word to The Wiser Single Man About Younger Women in Taiwan

Life Dating & Relationships
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To all of you over-25 Lotharios out there, Tomas has word of advice, learned through hard experience:

You meet her through friends, at a coffee shop, or at a pub. She is cute, sexy, sweet, and adores you almost immediately. You enjoy yourself immensely…for about a month. Very quickly, you will find yourself with an additional appendage, stuck to you like glue. Her happiness will depend on your every word and action. Her goals, if she has any, will be centered around life with you. In short, you will become her universe, which sounds appealing at first but which will later feel like emotional prison. You’ll try to talk to her, repeatedly, about having her own goals and friends, her own hobbies and interests. She’ll nod attentively, and then go right back to focusing her entire life on you. If you decide that you can’t change her, or that you’re not interested in anything long-term, you’re looking at pure hell. Her response will range from outright denial to threats of suicide. She will probably cry for hours and be unable to function for a few days. You will feel like a shitheel, even though your only sin was to get into a relationship with a girl (presumably an adult) who didn’t have the emotional maturity or experience to understand that adult relationships don’t always work out.

Here’s the bottom line, for me:
In most cases, it is pure folly to pursue or agree to a romantic relationship with any local woman under the age of about 25. You are asking for major, major trouble.

Now, before you go blasting me, please remember that most of you don’t know me or the women in question, and that I fully admit that I have written this from a very subjective, male point of view. For me, writing this is both catharsis and public service. Lots of guys come here not realizing how very different the culture of romantic relationships is. I personally had no idea, and nobody warned me that most women here are not emotionally equipped for adult relationships until they are in their mid to late 20s.

One more little detail, before you go making assumptions about me: I was fully capable of having mature, actualized relationships with younger women in my home country. In fact, I didn’t have a girlfriend here for the first two years because I had a girlfriend back home. The difference is that women back home were far better equipped to handle the ups and downs of relationships at a younger age than women here in Taiwan are. Further, I used to think that age wasn’t much of a factor in romantic relationships. My first Taiwanese girlfriend was 30 years old. I had no idea how lucky I was to have chosen to be with someone who knew what she wanted out of life, and who had her own goals and interests.

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Are you single now, can I date you? :wink:

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But don’t you just move on? And wasn’t the sex fantastic?

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I’m not that cold, wolf. I do move on, but the process of ending the relationship, and what leads to it, wears me out. In both cases that I’m referring to here, I realized that I was partly to blame for coming to the party better emotionally equipped to play than my partner. The first time, I thought it might be an anomaly. Now, I’m convinced that it is pure folly to get involved with a woman in her early 20s.

MiaKa wrote:

Well, you know what I’m looking for now, don’t you? :wink:

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Yes, we know what you are looking for now, and that was my point.
Others’ failings are not always (usually never) under your control. Go for the easy enjoyment. Leave the heavy stuff for the saps.

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Two words - Psycho Xiao Jie :laughing:

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You aren’t the guy who was being screamed at outside and then followed down the street outside of Brass Monkey by a Psycho Xiaojie a while ago, are you?

Don’t feel bad, just move on. You picked up damaged goods. Not all young women in Taiwan are like this. But I think a big age difference means an unlevel playing field, no matter which country you are in. Additionally, if you were truly the mature, older person, you wouldn’t allow yourself to be manipulated by suicide threats nor would you waste your time playing guidance counselor.

Why not try an older woman next time? There are tons of horny women, bored with their husbands, that want some no-strings attached fun. I know Taiwanese men that do nothing but screw around with women whose husbands are in the mainland doing business, out getting drunk every night, etc.

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I think this is a problem more prevalent in Taiwan than elsewhere. I always subtract 10 from a Taiwanese girl’s age to get her emotional age.

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That’s right, just the other day I met a 65-year-old who acted like some kind of carefree 55-year-old. C’est terrible!

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I need a few more data points to evaluate this one. How long did you know her before you started dating? And how long after you started dating did you two sleep together? And do you know her dating history? How many boyfriends had she had before? I’m not sure there are easy rules like “no girls under 25” but I usually find it common sense that with a less experienced girl (of any culture), she will get more attached more quickly and have less emotional resources and experience to draw from in getting over a relationship.

11

The warning also applies to me

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Most peolple who have been here for a while will agree with everything that Tomas and Hexuan said.

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Yes, the younger ones are often disastrously clingy and emotionally fragile, but they’re gut-wrenchingly lovely to look at and touch. And for all we know of the trouble we’ll be letting ourselves in for by and by, it’s oh-so-hard to resist when they come on to us bright-eyed and eager with their winsome charm and seductive ways.

14

Agree.

But it’s annoying…I have a long-time Western male friend here (I don’t think he reads Forumosa, but I won’t say his name, anyway) who has been notoriously unlucky in love here. But the thing is, he insists on only dating young, “model-quality” Taiwanese women. Expanding his available universe to older, not-so-knockout-lovely, and even possibly (gasp!) not Taiwanese women might allow him to meet someone he could LIVE with, not merely date for a few months and then have to extricate himself from.

I think that after a decade or so he’s slowly coming around to the “not always having to look like a model” part anyway, although I don’t think he would consider dating a Western woman. And heck, we’re the obvious choice: we get those great health exams every so often, and most of us can make a decent Western meal without adding corn to everything. :laughing:

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Surely that should be ‘A word from the wiser single man’? Or are you asking for words from us, the less wise?

You want to try having a gf that is always late, regularly stands you up, has to report to her mother every ten minutes, can’t stay out overnight, and has no idea how to do ANYTHING for you at all.

It’s kind of fun.

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The Pervert’s Dilemma

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[quote=“Tomas”]To all of you over-25 Lotharios out there, Tomas has word of advice, learned through hard experience:

Here’s the bottom line, for me:
In most cases, it is pure folly to pursue or agree to a romantic relationship with any local woman under the age of about 25. You are asking for major, major trouble.

[/quote]
Dude, so you got burnt. Grow up, take it like a man and stfu.

cliche 1: “if you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen, ie, Taiwan”
cliche 2: “I knew Lotharios, Lotharious was a friend of mine, Tomas, you’re no Lotharios”.

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How about some words for the wiser married man in Taiwan :wink:

Wear blinkers to stop side vision.
Wear shades so the wife stops beating you for roaming eyes
Wear shades after the wife discovers the above plan and gives you a couple of shiners.
When driving keep your eyes on THE ROAD and not the stands beside the road.

Anything else…???

19

Wait… Tomas, my wife was under 25 when we got married. That was 3 years ago. So, I don’t really agree with your statement.

The wife is a babe. (happy now honey? Would you like a foot massage?)
:sunglasses: Yeah, sitting beside me.

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Come on people, let’s give Tomas some credit. The situation he mentioned must be very familiar to anyone who’s spent some time here. If it hasn’t happened to you directly it will have happened to a friend. Sure, Boss Hogg’s wife and numerous others may be exceptions, but the ‘psycho xiaojie’ phenomenon is well known enough to have its own name.

Double good on Tomas for being very human about it; both in terms of his needs and those of the woman or women concerned. Joking aside, you would have to be very cold to remain unaffected by the kind of emotional stuff he describes. I regret that his warning will probably go unheeded by xiaojies and lotharios alike.