Disclaimer:
What follows is my opinion. You may agree or disagree, flame or not as you see fit.
I really couldn't possibly care about the predictible response this is bound to draw from the resident agency owner and his friends and employees.
I have no intention of waging any more stupid debates. I rarely read this board anymore, but someone saw a post I made elsewhere and asked if I would post it here.
So, here it is:
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OK, with Valentine's Day coming up, I guess I am waxing philosophical on my courtship with my lady (wait... that's no lady, that's my wife :-)
I started thinking when I read this:
quote:
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Personally I think a person that wants to visit OW is just fine... Maybe I am the exception to the rule, I wrote one woman for 6 months, went to see her, and everything was great...
Not every guy will be successful at WOVO approach, but there are just as many guys that see many and receive nothing, with the same amount of money if not more spent.
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Well said.
Personally, from the guys I have "met" on this board and others -- I know many more who were successful through WOVO than who were successful the casting call approach favored by many.
That's not a statistic, btw, just an observation.
I think it is also worth noting -- at least for a moment -- that agencies make far more money if you DON'T go the WOVO route, so I think some of the advice from "experts" might be tainted somewhat.
Don't flame me for that. I don't mean that all Agencies are money-grubbing capitalists. I know that several are sincerely interested in men being successful.
But that doesn't make the economics go away, does it?
Think about it for a moment...
You have agencies that make money by organizing dates for a man. This is something that is clearly much harder for him to accomplish by himself. Travel, interpreters, tours, apartments for (maybe) weeks, dates (maybe three a day...) Who can do this by himself? To pull this off, you need connections.
(And it doesn't ALWAYS go this way... but I have seen it go this way:)
A guy bites the bullet and signs up to an Agency. He guy shells out the bucks and goes over. Meeting many women is certainly an ego boost. The guy has a good time, even if he doesn't find the one, he is now excited abut the possibilities, and starts saving up for his next trip. At some point, the search becomes as consuming as the original desire to simply have a woman in your life and be happy.
Now, he doesn't want to "settle." Yeah, she's an eight, or even a nine, but, hey, a ten might be just around the corner. Better go back over and meet fifty more... (Never mind asking if HE is a ten... after all he is an AMERICAN, and that makes him a ten... right?)
(I had one agency owner tell me that even after you meet the one you know is right, that you still should visit three more to be "sure." That's what he did, he told me. He met his wife, knew she was the one, and still went off to another city to spend a weekend with another girl to make sure...)
By this time, the guy is into some serious coin ... After several trips over, and thousands of dollars spent, he is viewed as an expert - just as much as the agency owner is. But.. where did this expertise come from? And what is his expertise truly in?
And along comes a "newbie" who asks: "Should I write just one?"
Well... what are the agency owners going to say?
What are the translators and guides who make money on the guys meeting and visiting many going to say?
And what are the guys who have just invested thousands of dollars in "the system" going to say?
And, if someone else reads that question and says: "Hey, you know what? I only wrote one... went to meet her, and everything turned out great..." what happens?
The naysayers come out of the woodwork:
"You're a fool."
"It will never work."
"It's easy to do that, wait five years and then we'll see if you were successful... until then, I ain't buying it!"
... on and on...
But the fact is that if 5 years of happy marriage is the baseline for "success" then almost half of the American/American marriages fail the test as well, and there are very few bona fide experts on here, indeed.
As you may suspect, I did a WOVO. That doesn't make it the "right way" but it sure doesn't make it wrong, either... does it?
The fact is that using WOVO, I met the woman of my dreams, and she is here with me even as I write this. We go to bed together each night, wake up each morning together, and spend the days together. She makes me happier than I could have dreamed. She is absolutely incredible.
You can try to belittle that "success" all you want, but to my way of thinking that was what I wanted when I started this search, and now I have it.
And I did it with the WOVO "method".
Prior to that, I tried: the place a personal ad, visit an agency, and visit many (with more back-up plans in place that the Allies had for the invasion of Normandy...) and I discovered that it felt unnatural and forced.
It just wasn't me.
This didn't make me foolish, and anyone who insists that it does is either just stupid or selling something.
Above all else, you have to do what makes you comfortable, I think.
I corresponded with the woman who was to become my wife for months before we met. She was the only person I was writing to. I didn't have a girlfriend here to keep me "warm" either.
We courted long distance, using letters. You know, one hundred years ago, that wasn't so unheard of. In fact, some of the greatest literary pieces in history have been love letters. Courtship through letters is a time honored thing.
Now... can you end up meeting someone and having it not work out? Sure. You can also line up 50 dates, spend a month playing "Joe Millionare" and have it not work out, also.
But by the time I "met" my wife in person, we already knew each other. Very, very well. She was EXACTLY what I thought she would be. By the time we met, after exchanging hundreds of letters, we weren't strangers -- we were lovers who had been separated by distance and circumstance, finally coming together...
It amuses me that some people have tried to make an issue of how soon my wife and I went to the bedroom. The answer is: it came after months of courting. (Not that it is anyone's business)
In fact, after we got engaged, my brother's wife wrote to her to welcome her to the family. They corresponded for months. When they finally met a few weeks ago, I asked my sister-in-law if she was surprised at all. Her answer: "No, she was exactly what I thought she was. We knew each other pretty well after our emails. We’ve been writing for months you know."
And I thought: Exactly.
So it's not just "falling in love with a letter and a picture." It can be that, but done right, it can also be much more.
People CAN really get to know someone via correspondence. It has happened for centuries.
If YOU can't... maybe the problem isn't with letter-writing... maybe it's with you...
