Monday, March 11, 2013

Further Thoughts on Chinese women versus Western Women (older guy edition)


So in my latest blog I detailed a relationship I had with a Western woman while I was in dating in China. And at the end of this essay, I urged Western men in China to consider limiting themselves to Chinese women and not make the foolish error that I painstakingly detailed. I suggested as well this might not be a bad policy for Western men not in China. Interestingly, the woman who was the subject of the article herself had a sort of parallel policy: As a rule she refused to have anything to do with Western guys while in China. To hear her rant on the subject reminded me of an entry in one of my favorite websites, stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. Number 11 on the list of stuff White people like is Asian women. Here is part of the entry: “Another factor that draws white guys to Asian women is that white women are jealous of them.Take for instance the fact that Asian women well into their 30s and 40s retain teen / college girl looks without the help of Botox, yoga or a trendy diet (future posts). Asian women also avoid key white women characteristics such as having a mid-life crisis, divorce, and hobbies that don’t involve taking care of the children (also future posts).”

Humor aside, there are a couple of reasons there are two reasons for guys in their forties and fifties and beyond to prefer Chinese women whether or not they are dating in China (I’ll leave it to another place and/or other folks to discuss the situation for younger guys). The first is the fact that guys in their forties and fifties can generally go out with much younger women in China than if they were dating a Western woman. In part this has to do with a couple of things. One it is one situation that is as far as I know unique to China which is that women over thirty are particularly stigmatized by this culture and so do not feel they have a lot of choices. By contrast, my experience on Western Internet dating sites as a 50-year-old guy is that it is difficult to go much below a 45-year-old woman. Another reason Western men can find younger women on CLM than on its Western equivalents is the fact that—as you will see if you look at a lot of the profiles on the website—Chinese females tend to give a lot of weight to characteristics like responsibility (including financial responsibility) and maturity—characteristics that older men tend to do better in than younger men.

(Is this particularly fair, that Western guys can date younger women but—unless you are incredibly wealthy or Demi Moore an older Western woman will generally not be able to date a much younger man? No. In a just world, men and women would have the same options available to them. Unfortunately, this is not a just world.)

The second reason for Western men to prefer Chinese companions over their Western counterparts is emotional. Emotionally—again, going by my own experience—I found that the Western women whom I would be dating were either raising kids or already had raised kids. This meant they were either too exhausted by work and kids to have the energy or interest in developing a deep emotional commitment or, if they had completed their task as a parent, had felt like they had already devoted an incredible amount of emotional energy in caring for another being and were really ready to focus on themselves. In neither case did they seem particularly interested in intimacy as a relationship goal. This may in part not be unrelated to the first reason. For the fact is the belief that you can make a true emotional connection with another human being is one that can get beaten out of you by bitter experience and as a result a younger woman is less likely to have lost hope for this cherished goal. By contrast for women in China of all ages, the intimacy that is often taken for granted as an integral part of a relationship has never gone over big with Chinese guys. For a number of reasons, most notably, I would argue the influence of Western (especially American) television and movies, a close emotional bond is something many Chinese ladies realize they are more likely to get with a Western man.

Peter Vernezze blogs on various topics about Chinese dating, Chinese women and things Chinese. For the most reputable Chinese dating services and for beautiful Chinese Women join http://www.ChinaLoveMatch.net

No comments:

Post a Comment