For anyone who is outside looking in, the most amazing - and maybe downright baffling - thing about Filipino women is that most of them seem to have this thing for older men.And by older men, we don't mean men who are only ten years older, we mean men who are old enough to be their grandfathers.And there's enough proof of this when you go to the Philippines.It's quite common to see 20 to 30-year old Filipino women with 50 or even 60-year old men from the United States, Canada and Europe.Even for us fellow Filipinos, such a site is actually freaky, and I pity the woman because she will often get stared at because of her choice in men.This May-December phenomenon really begs the question.Is it really possible for a Filipino woman who is 20 years or even 30 years her senior?As a Filipino woman who is also married to a much older man (to a Korean 20 years older than me), the reasons for marrying really has less to do with love than maintaining our sense of safety.It has more to do with the head than with the heart.But it is NOT about the money, mind you.When I first decided that I wanted to get married, I put it in my criteria right away that my husband should be exactly 20 years older than me.I don't know why but I've always found older men more attractive, more sure of themselves than younger men.(Trust me I know the difference, I've dated both younger and older men, as well as men about my age.).My opinion about marriage is that it should NOT be the cause of my misery.Growing up in a culture where philandering Filipino men are condoned even when they are bad bread winners, I vowed never to have a husband like that.And that's how I began to set my sights on men from foreign countries.I always felt older men would be good for me, specifically in the order of self-development, that's why I married someone 20 years my senior.And it's been a good marriage so far - I have no complaints, except for my occasional jealousy over his cat.But I really am just one Filipino woman with one point-of-view on what type of man Filipino women should get married to.There should be others who have the same reasons as I do for marrying an older man, but then again there could be others who got married because they want to be better off financially.My point is, it's unfair for people to judge that all Filipino women who marry older foreign men are just there for the money.Often it has little to do with the money - it has a lot to do with sparing ourselves the pain of a miserable marriage, where the man cheats but everybody's okay with it.
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