Show Them Who is Boss

I’ve lived in Thailand for more than 25 years. Came here for a one-week holiday and never went back. Longest darn holiday I’ve ever had!!

After reading many of the stories from men who have had various relationships with Thai women, I was struck by one very obvious notion. None of them had ever defined their relationship with the women, and none of them had ever told their women where the boundaries lay that could not be overstepped, especially the jealousy boundary. Jealousy seems to be the most common reason why relationships break up.

Over the years I’ve had my fair share of Thai women and even married two of them. But after my first marriage I had the misfortune to take up with a bar girl from Soi Cowboy. Man! Could that girl push the right buttons to get what she wanted. She was a real pro at the job. When she was in a loving mood she could be an absolute darling. These moods rarely lasted long and then it was time for the demon to kick in. After almost six years of living in heaven and hell, I had had enough. The break came after she returned to her home city telling me she was going to build a house for the two of us.

How was she going to pay with it? Not with my money!

She was married to another farung who would come to Thailand every couple of months and stay a 2 or 3 weeks most of the time. She was using his money instead. You begin to see why it was hell. We had many fights over her insistence on going back to stay with him, so when she went and told me she wasn’t coming back for a while I decided to start looking around the field again. Only this time I stayed away from bar girls.

When she called me up one day and told me she was coming back to live with me again after a 12 month absence she was astounded when I told her not to bother.

By then I had met my current wife-to-be. I had lost interest in miss bargirl.

My new girlfriend and I had only just met when I got the phone call. However, I already knew there was no way I wanted to go back.

Even though my new lady was a ‘good’ girl and wouldn’t even sleep with me for the first couple of months, she wasn’t immune to the jealousy disease so many Thai women seem to suffer from. The first time it happened we had been together about a month. She called me up on my mobile phone to ask me why I was walking around Robinson Sukhumvit with another girl on my arm.

Mystified, I told her that I was at home so it couldn’t possibly be me, because I had been at home all day in Nonthaburi, miles from Sukhumvit road.

Nope, it was definitely me. One of her girlfriends working in the cosmetic department had seen me, she told me.

“OK,” I said, “I’ll prove it to you. Hang up the phone now and call me on the land line at my home.”

She did and when I picked up she was full of apologies. But when I picked her up that evening I had already decided it was time to define the boundaries of our relationship if it was going to survive.

I sat her down and told her that if she ever accused me of being with another woman again when I was away from her that I would end the relationship immediately. If she really loved me, I told her, she should trust me. Of course, she was already feeling guilty so she readily agreed.

Being a Thai lady though, she had to see if I was serious. A couple of weeks later she slyly asked me if I had slept with another woman after I returned from a business trip down south. Without a word I walked to the door, opened it and told her to leave.

Her jaw dropped and she asked me if I was serious. “Of course I am. I already told you that I wouldn’t tolerate being accused of cheating on you without any proof. So there’s the door.”

“I won’t do it again. I promise. Please let me stay.”

That defined our relationship from then on. She knew I was serious and she never tried to accuse me of sleeping with another woman again. It also put me in control of the relationship and we have never had any problems since that day. We eventually got married and settled down to a very good marriage that has lasted seven years so far. We have two beautiful daughters and we are very happy together. But if I hadn’t laid down the law back in the early days of our relationship I doubt we would be where we are today.

So, if you are contemplating a serious relationship with a Thai girl, make sure you define the rules in the relationship early, and make sure she knows who is the boss. If you don’t we will probably be reading your sob story soon enough.

© Marc Holt. All rights reserved by the author.