Since I try to spend Christmas with my family every year, I made time and dated a few Filipinas.
And boy, was that a breath of fresh air.
Since then, I’ve been thinking about the key characteristics that separate Filipinas from Kiwi women. Here’s what I can tell:
There’s something deep and organic within the Philippine culture that makes connecting with other Filipinas more natural and sincere. Part of it comes from our shared frustration with the daily struggle of living in Manila, and our tendency to use humour as a coping mechanism.
This naturally introduces a sense of lightheartedness even in the midst of frustrating or otherwise unpleasant conversation. It also allows humour to serve as a safe anchor point when starting a relationship with most Filipinas.
Manila is a cesspool of pollution and traffic, sprinkled in with a healthy dose of young and bright Filipinos fighting over droplets of opportunities just to make ends meet.
This has been the status quo for several years now and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
Two key reasons for this current situation is the extreme surplus of intelligent young Filipinos scattered all over Manila, and the severely low standards the country has for appropriate compensation. It also does not help that the majority of sharp-minded Filipino fresh graduates get hammered, twisted, beat up, and slammed by the factory line of Manila’s toxic work routine.
What once were dreams of independence, entrepreneurial success, and personal fulfilment get watered down by the acceptance of the mediocre status quo: below 30k PHP salaries, shacking up with the parents for the foreseeable future (even when already married), and occasional 2–3 day escapades to Japan or Thailand just to escape Manila.
Whenever I talk to Filipinos in their twenties, it feels like I’m talking to veterans that went past their prime. The grind adds what seems like years to their natural gaze. However, instead of reminiscing about the “good old days”, the twenties Filipino takes solace in the humble acceptance of their reality, makes a dumb joke about it, and moves on with their day.
However, the desire to “beat the system” and somehow seize what you can potentially achieve remains as a core passion that most Filipino youth share. This is why, even in the sleazy, insincere, and somewhat dubious confines of online dating apps such as Tinder, I manage to connect with Filipinas on a genuine and personal level.
Although there has been an increasing amount of agnosticism and atheism when it comes to Filipino youth, our value systems remain heavily influenced by fundamental Christian teachings. This, coupled with being raised within a Filipino household, give rise to women who still embody traditional family values and structures. In contrast, Western women, especially those who subscribe to the toxic beliefs of third-wave feminism, may view these values and structures as dated, degrading, or downright sexist. As an example, while most Western women would fight tooth and nail to juggle both of their responsibilities as a career woman and a mother, a traditional Filipina views the act of raising her kids full-time as a luxury to aspire to, rather than a degrading chore that her man uses to establish dominance over her.
While relationships and compromises are often synonymous with one another, there are fundamental things which must remain clear and concrete right from the beginning. And, among these things, is the decision to allow the man to either lead the relationship or not.
Agreeing to this basic structure allows the whole relationship dynamic to flow more naturally. The man provides, not because this is what society expects of him, but because he wants to take care of his partner. The woman nurtures her man, not because she’s being prevented by her man or the “patriarchy” from achieving her dreams, but because she is confident in her man’s ability to protect and secure her future.
In contrast, dating within Westernised societies influenced by third-wave feminism has degraded into a stressful exercise of navigating through verbal minefields. Trigger warnings lay buried, primed to explode the moment a man mistakenly disrupts the status quo of political correctness or violates the obscure laws of the language police.
Dating is already complicated, time-consuming, and emotionally draining as is. Sadly, some women (and men, to be fair) choose to tack on more rules to compensate for their grievances and general oversensitivity rather than taking a much-needed break from the dating space.
In the end, it’s all about giving each other a fair shot. Knowing where each person stands right from the get-go makes it easier to avoid stepping on each other’s toes as both man and woman waltz their way further into the relationship.
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