Anyone with any experience bringing their Khmer lady to the west to live? How has it been integrating her? What is the hardest thing for her (and you) to deal with? Does she hang on to certain ideas, habits, notions, that are really inconvenient or has she adapted well and westernized ok?

Interested to hear some of the details and a few stories.

No experience with Khmer ladies but over the years I've seen a lot of friends get married in Asia and have known a lot of mixed-race couples. I imagine the challenges and issues would be similar wherever she's from.

The couples who went home (back to whatever western country he's from) are mostly still together and seem happy enough but I've seen a couple of absolute train wreck marriages too.

Just from my perspective, some things to consider are ;

How comfortable is she with the western lifestyle? The couples I know who are working out had something in common - the lady is a modern thinking, adventurous type, she's comfortable hanging out with him and his foreign mates, she comes traveling with us, is ok eating foreign food and has the English ability to be an active part in any conversation. If they can't do that where you are now a foreign country is going to be tough and probably lonely.

Not assuming anything or making judgments about your lady or you here but - money. In a lot of Asian countries, there's the expectation that the kids will provide for their families. That means if you can't do that there may be pressure on her. There's also the change in lifestyle to consider, you might be living large now but if you go home and all of a sudden you're experiencing the usual western country money issues, it can be difficult, especially if her expectations were unrealistic before you moved.

Not being able to visit her parents every day, or at least regularly. It can be tough for anyone, especially if they're living close to each other now. It's something to consider.

I guy I knew got married in China - really nice girl, spoke great English, was able to hang out and have a good time at parties but she had never left China until they moved back to the US. My girlfriend and her knew each other pretty well so I got to hear her perspective via my GF. For the first month she was excited, showing off cool pictures of the US etc but then reality kicked in, hard in her case.
He had a well-paying job in China with a nice apartment and lots of money to throw around. When they moved back they were living with his mother while he tried to find a reasonable job (last I heard they were still living with the mother) and that obviously caused issues. She'd never left her country before that so she went through massive culture shock, she was used to city living - a job she liked, walk downstairs to get her nails done, shopping and lunch with her friends, going to restaurants etc - all of a sudden she's living with a bitchy mother in law, no job, no social life, no money,small town living and he's spending hours on his x-box which wasn't a problem before because she had her own life but now she resents hell out of it. And she's wickedly homesick.

armchairlawyer wrote:https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fl ... 0fishermen.

Recommended.

Episode not available. Synopsis sounds good.

My ex grew up as young girl up until she was graduating university in the U.S.

She had lots of American friends, she spoke English at a native level, but when it came down to it she couldn't detach herself from the culture and her family and as a result, she never kept up with any of her connections "back home" and hasn't been back for over 10 years now.

Besides her American accent in English, if you met and talked to her today you'd never think she'd ever left Cambodia or grew up anywhere else than here. She's literally indistinguishable from any number of women I've met here in the way she thinks, acts and behaves, so my personal opinion is that...

"You can take the girl out of Cambodia, but not the Cambodia out of the girl."

And personally after 14 years of knowing her, I feel like a girl that is really "Cambodian" at heart, is completely incompatible with many Western ways of thinking...

...so just hope she's open minded in the true sense if you want it to work.

We’ve been living in England with our three and a half year old son for little over a year and a half so far. We live in a quaint little village in the Lake District about 10 minutes drive from Windermere. She loves it. She misses her parents as to be expected, and occasionally misses prahok enough to try and make it at home but aside from that she seems completely content here. Not really sure what else to say about it but happy to answer any specific questions you may have about it.

Random Dude - a big city girl moving to a small town or village is often a deal breaker. So is having an independent lifestyle to moving in with bitchy mother in law because her husband has no job, no money is also a deal breaker, too.

Nothing to do with being Chinese and adjusting to Western life.

I’m sure the guy would be equally unhappy if he was forced to move to a rural Chinese village and live with the in laws because he was broke and jobless.

newkidontheblock wrote: ↑Sun Aug 28, 2022 1:17 am Random Dude - a big city girl moving to a small town or village is often a deal breaker. So is having an independent lifestyle to moving in with bitchy mother in law because her husband has no job, no money is also a deal breaker, too.

Nothing to do with being Chinese and adjusting to Western life.

I’m sure the guy would be equally unhappy if he was forced to move to a rural Chinese village and live with the in laws because he was broke and jobless.

I agree, it's the same across all cultures. My example wasn't about the fact that she was Chinese, it was just an example where I saw it play out in real life and happened to be in China. It could have been anywhere though and any combination of cultures.

One of the train wreck marriages I saw was an Aussie mate who married a local girl and moved to her city in Asia. He hated the place, turned to drugs and alcohol, got fired from his job, and the last I heard from them he'd gone back to Oz and she stayed where she was. I've seen enough ex-pats hit the wall after their first year or two living in Asia to know that some people just aren't suited to live long-term in another culture, and it's usually hard to predict how someone will handle it until they're actually doing it.