There's a pattern.
If I want to know what advice I will get when I ask a friend what I should do, they will tell me to follow in their footsteps. Whatever relationship they are currently in, that's the one they recommend that I try.
In the end, the advice isn't about me it's about them.
I am having my usual crisis - who do I want to spend the rest of my life wife? What is the best direction to go?
This is compounded by a worse-than-usual work situation. I was laid off for a week, and I suspect that my time with my "employer" (as I am only working on a verbal contract basis) is almost at an end. As a result, I am actively looking for a replacement.
But as always, the biggest questions in my life revolve around women and sex.
What is slightly different is that my focus is much more on the idea of settling down with someone before I get too old to have any choices.
I've always complained that the dating pool in my city goes downhill like a bobsled at the Winter Olympics once you hit the 40s. And I really feel that now at 49. This place is unhealthy, the effects show on most people, and I'm just not interested in anyone who isn't at least somewhat taking pride how they act and look.
My current choices are:
A 24 year old Thai girl that I love dearly, but I know that I will never have a long-term relationship with because we are too different and too far apart. If I stay with her, we will see each other for a few weeks every 5 or 6 months, and if she were to move here to be with me, she'd be relegating herself to minimum wage jobs, a limited size Thai community, and frigid weather.
My 37 year old Filipina ex-girlfriend that I still love, and would be a loyal, loving and supportive companion for the rest of my life. She has a couple of major flaws - jealousy, regular bouts depression, a limited sense of humour, and a dangerously mentally ill ex-husband. She is also intelligent, beautiful and giving. Yesterday was the second time that I saw her from a distance, walking across the intersection towards the coffee shop where we were meeting, and I said to myself, "oh, but I don't want to give up looking at hot girls like that", and as she got closer I realized who it was. A good sign for a bad boy with a wandering eye - it wanders naturally towards her.
Someone I haven't met yet. This is in one way the best option, because it has the greatest possibility. But because it's the unknown, so intangible, and so hard to predict, it feels like it's not an option. Will I find someone better than who I have now? Of course it's possible! But it feels impossible.
So... when I ask my Thai friend, who is also dating a Canadian who came to Southeast Asia for a few months of remote work and travel, of course she says that I shouldn't rush to a decision, that I should give the relationship with my Thai girlfriend a chance.
When I ask my best friend here, who is a reformed polyamorist who decided to settle down with the monogamous love of her life and get married, she says that I should try to settle down with the Filipina because the regular breakup/reunite cycle we have shows that there's definitely a connection there.
When I ask almost anyone else, they say that I should be starting over from scratch. Except the guy who met his wife overseas. He says follow love and try to stay with the Thai girl.
I can ask for advice of a stranger, and what I'll most likely receive is a summary of their own choices.
Which means all the advice is, well, perhaps not useless, but suspect.
I'm going to try to settle down. Work with the relationship I know. I'm not even going to try to put my face between any new girl's legs - I'll be monogamous. ("Monogamous!" Cue ominous music).
My friend gave me one useful clue. When I asked if I was more mopey with or without the Filipina, she said "without".
Maybe asking for advice isn't way to do things. Maybe I just have to make sure that I'm asking the right questions.
(laughs) I'm pretty sure that I'm not.
But we'll try this course. And we'll see what the future brings.
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