The Bridal Influx
Want to buy a wife?
Have you been thinking about ways to move to Chile? The author knows that many women have. It turns out that there is a whole industry bringing women to Chile on a continuous basis. And it is called the mail-order bride.
Some men use the typical websites that are matchmaking agencies, others prefer to find women in discussion forums or language learning sites. However, all these are veiled forms of clandestine women exchange.
Sadly, it is a widespread phenomenon that has been disparaging feminine position since the Internet proliferation.
Why Do They Do That?
Chilean men tend to seek love outside Chile.
The reasons are many, but to be honest, they like light-skinned representatives with light eyes, educated, and able to give a striking impression on men’s friends and family. Besides, it’s great to have a personal cook, as Chilean women don’t have a good command of the cooking machine.
It is a tendency for men to use their women as an impression weapon to show off. They brag to have grabbed the best piece of pie bought abroad. A piece that beats local women in beauty, skills, and intelligence most of the time.
They leverage their social status with a wife.
Sad but true.
What About The Women?
Mail-order bride services are widespread in many countries and women come from different origins too.
In Chile, there is a strong flow of women being imported for relationships. And the ones who officially use the verb to import are men.
If we search in Google for mail-order bride, the second and following links we see are about Russian women:
They are products on the market just like other commodities traded worldwide. Not all, but many Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian women seize the opportunity to change their fate and improve the place of living. They dream about the promise of a beautiful fairytale abroad and embark on an adventure literally into the unknown. The grass is always greener on the other side. Strangely enough, there is a cult of foreign countries in the post-USSR territory, where people think that foreign is a synonym of high-quality standards.
Besides, in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus there is a huge disproportion of women in comparison with men (86,8, 86,3, and 86,6 women per 100 men respectively). Beautiful, skillful, educated women can’t find men in their own countries and look for happiness on new continents.
They make the mistake to trust in the promised land without getting to know it well, not even superficially. The author of this article has seen cases of total despair. Young girls throw away their old lives, leave families and friends behind to follow the prince charming who turns out to be not a prince, but an ordinary man, a commoner, in the best-case scenario. A worse fate is a man that appears to live on the edge of poverty, in the worst parts of the capital (Santiago), and from the lowest social classes. Particularly the latest example is the most representative, as men from the lowest classes are in the position to boast about some possession that would raise them above the competition. This possession is an effortlessly gained woman.
While the worst-case scenario can end up in a nightmare.
Some of the lamentable cases observed:
- The girl gets married to her partner after arriving in Chile. Soon she finds out that he has a parallel life with other women in real life, or the man holds romantic and erotic conversations with another foreign (mostly Slavic) women on the Internet. Very common situation. Eventually, the couple breaks up and the girl ends in the street without any support.
- The girl comes to Chile. Whether she gets married or not (lives with her partner without legalization of their status), she is kept almost blind about her conditions. Meaning that the man has no intention to raise her status to his wife or to include the woman neither into the healthcare nor the retirement system. He does so to maintain his expenses as low as possible. It is rather understandable from his point of view: the girl sold herself so easily and cheap that the man can’t consider her as a longtime project, but a shirt-term adventure not worthy of investing money. Basically, he doesn't love her. She is an exotic entertainment. You can guess how this ends.
- Many girls who come here to get married believe that they will find a secure lifelong shelter, so they don’t want to work. Or maybe they can’t work because their original diploma gets no convalidation with the Chilean educational requirements. So while the precious time goes by, these girls lose experience, lose opportunities, and gain their partner’s disapproval and resentment. The opportunity cost soars. The author has also seen cases when the husband gets very disappointed with the impossibility of his foreign wife to gain money on her own that he gets upset starting family conflicts. It’s how a total dependence develops split-ups
- The love ends and the man dumps the woman with children.
How To Avoid These Problems?
If you are a woman that met a Chilean guy and he offers you to start a relationship, here is a piece of advice:
- get to know your potential partner. Ask him where he lives and study the average income of that comuna, especially if he is from Santiago, where the socio-economic gradation reflects on the comuna. At least you won’t get the tremendous surprise of broken expectations
- study about the aspects of living that are essential for a secure existence, such as the healthcare system (FONASA, Isapre), the retirement system (chose an AFP)
- study beforehand and prepare the documentation you will need to make a recognition of your diploma (reconocimiento de título). The documents must be as minimum apostilled
- study the labor market conjuncture to know the fields and grab professional opportunities, it would be even better if you came to Chile with a job offer
- have your savings in case the relationship doesn’t work out and you have to move out of your ex’s apartment; you could need that money for renting a place to live or to buy a ticket home
- God helps those who help themselves — you can love your partner and think he loves you back, and this can be true, but if it isn’t, you must have predeveloped emergency plans. A woman has to be able to help herself or at least have a safety net of loyal friends
- learn the language. Many women come to Chile without knowing Spanish. It is an absolute must to learn it before or in the initial period of the stay in the country.
It sounds like a guide for an arranged money marriage. However, the reality shows that many women who come to Chile following a Chilean man do it searching for better opportunities outside their countries. Or they pursuit the utopian belief that everything abroad is better. Anyway, women go along with the idea of a relationship of convenience.
The author of this article begs tearfully to pay attention to the details that the partner provides and to prepare for the possible adversities in an unknown country whether you marry for love or other reasons.
And of course, the best solution is to stop this meat trading.
