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MrMan1
Newbie
Posts: 0
Registered: 10-09-2018 Location:
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posted on 10-09-2018 at 19:02 |
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Marrying an Indonesian Woman
Hi guys,
I am new here. I married an Indonesian woman. We are getting closer and closer to 20 years of marriage.
Well, Indonesia is a majority Muslim country. But the official stats are that there are about 11% Christian there. I'd guess it is more like 20% or so these days. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world behind China, India, and the USA so 10% of 261 million people is more than the population of a lot of other countries. There are people-groups that are majority Christian. Bali is majority Hindu and there are some Chinese Buddhists, still.
What are Indonesian women like? Indonesia has a multitude of peoplegroups and cultures, so there is a lot of variety. There is one national language, Indonesian. Indonesians who went to school should know the language, though some of the wealthier Indonesians are schooled primarily in English nowadays, but still take Indonesian class.
In general, Indonesians tend to be conservative and traditional compared to western woman. I think I met one woman who was a feminist. She was Chinese. She'd studied in the US, and when my wife and I spoke with her at length, she was grieving over an older Chinese man she liked who'd married another woman. I haven't encountered the type of feminism that makes women out to be the perpetual victims of men.
There are still traditional ideas there about woman being good mothers and homemakers. A lot of women there run businesses or work in the home, but still value cooking for the family and taking care of kids.
The culture is extremely marriage oriented. Sex jokes are usually about sex in the context of marriage, teasing newlyweds. There seems to be a kind of positive attitude toward sex if it is in marriage. There is a cultural expecation to have a baby the first year of marriage. It seems like all single people want to get married and have babies.
I am making generalizations. I lived in the Jakarta area and travelled a bit elsewhere. Jakarta is a bit of a melting pot, and a stew where the bits don't melt, where you can get a flavor of what people from all around are like. I have visited Sumatra many times, and I've visited other islands a bit. I think my comments probably apply from Sumatera to Manado. I had an Irian/Papuan maid, and my comments may apply that far to some extent for urban dwellers.
In general, I get the impression that virginity is more highly valued there than here. I overheard my wife and her young cousin from the village lamenting that some girl who lived in the city had lost her virginity before marriage. It's a big deal not to be a virgin at marriage. It is a stigma for either male or female not to be one before marriage. I know Christians and Muslims both expect it should be that way based on their religious beliefs. I also suspect a very high percentage of young married couples are virgins at marriage, maybe moreso for brides than grooms, but many grooms as well.
Marrying a virgin woman is good. She hasn't bonded with other men and broken up with them. She hasn't trained herself to think lightly of meeting a guy and sleeping with him. The sex will likely mean more. And there is much less risk of her having a disease. Statisically in the US, chances of 'marital disruption' are quite a bit lower if you marry a virgin.
Maybe 15 years ago or so, large families seemed the norm, like five or more kids. But it seems like nowadays urban dwellers are having fewer children, maybe two or three.
What are the girls like? For me personally, I'd guess out of a room of 100 reasonably thin girls aged 20 to 30, I'd probably find 5 or 8% attractive. But with Chinese or Filippinas or whites that might go as high as 10 or 12% of them. I married a very pretty young woman in Indonesia. But women that struck my fancy for looks just seemed to be fewer. Just being honest. Looks are all subjective anyway. I'd say women tend to be curvier than say, Koreans or Japanese, though there are many thin framed women as well. There are not many really fat women in the young single age range. Women can be a little stout or stocky or whatever. But really fat is rather rare.
If you marry an Indonesian woman, you may be expected to help support her parents or to be okay with her helping support them. For me, this has been kind of a light requirement. Or maybe it is lighter to me because I think supporting parents is okay. The dollar has been stronger than the rupiah in terms of buying power, too. I think the support obligations may be heavier for Filippinas. If you have some successful brothers and sisters-in-law, or rich parent-in-laws, the expectations may be lower.
Getting engaged in Indonesia means going to her parents (preferrably with your parents or possibly some stand-ins for parents) and getting their permission to marry her and planning the wedding.
If you date an Indonesian girl, your friends start making little jokes and comments about when you are going to get married. A lot of them like a nosey aunt or grandmother if you take a girl home for Christmas. I've seen Indonesian go around together, male and female, and say they are just friends, then announce they will be getting married. I think they just talk about getting married all through dating without the man formally proposing.
I did the whole ring one knee thing. My wife loved it. But I could have just asked her and went to talk to her parents. Maybe with western influence, they might know about the ring and all that. Mine did not.
Being Indonesian is not going to make a woman a good wife. You have to find a decent, moral woman, vet her, etc. A wild bar is probably not the best way to find a wife.
I have not heard of Indonesians scamming online like I have with Filippinas. Back in the early 2000's, I suggested one woman from church, who'd turned 40, which suprised me because she looked 30, consider going to an Internet cafe and trying to meet a man online. She did and got married. Two other women from church who were probably in their 30s and single found white men from Virginia and married them.
I've known of Indonesian women in the US who met online. I can think of two off the top of my head, but I've been told that this was common in one Indonesian community in a city I spent some time in.
I've met a couple of couples who met in Bali, a Balinese girl, and a man who met her on vacation. One older couple was a Balinese man who used to be a beach boy, and his white wife. They met when they were young.
I've also known a lot of white-foreigner man and Indonesian-woman couples who met while the man was working overseas. I was an English teacher when I met my wife.
Anyway, I'd do it again if I had the chance. If I could transport my consciousness into the body of my younger self, I might go over there a little younger, find my wife and marry her to spend more time with her.
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issacc1965
Member
Posts: 33
Registered: 04-14-2020 Location:
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posted on 06-19-2020 at 18:00 |
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Indonesian women and their families
Great post. Very informative. Thanks for that.
Sorry, but it sounds to me like Indonesian marriage comes with a lot of family baggage and headaches. I don't like nosey mother-in-laws or others who try to pin their ideas or ideals on me to do something they want. No thank you. It's not that I don't appreciate a devout woman who honors the husband, but you can leave all that family interference stuff that causes tourmoil in the marriage. A marriage is between husband and wife, that's all. The rest of the family can go screw off. So if that's what Indonesian marriages are like, I'll pass.
I mean, who the hell do they think they are? Stay out of the business of the married couple. The thought of having a mother or father in law, whoever, knitpicking all the time with their off-handed barbs of influence, fuck them.
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WealthyHugePenis
Member
Posts: 6
Registered: 09-17-2020 Location: Los Angeles, CA
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posted on 09-23-2020 at 09:13 |
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Foreign women AND American women bring family to marriages
Responding to issacc1965, it isn't Indonesian women only that bring family and their issues to a marriage. No culture can lay claim to that bag of rocks. All women bring family attached, and the grooms too. It is in the DNA of 'family' and the fact that families are made of people, and people just naturally bring their baggage to a marriage.
Maybe some foreign women come from cultures that are more family oriented. Philippine women come to mind. Asian women in general come from family oriented cultures. If you marry into those families, sure, you get the good and the bad. Same for American women and their families.
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