A Man Refused To Marry His Foreign Girlfriend — And She Died As A Result
This Reddit thread is so awful, I feel like I need to talk about it.
Butsaya / Shutterstock You know, there are certain moments where a man’s actions make me lose just a little more faith in the gender. I actively have to work to remind myself that men can be decent people after I read certain stories.
This Reddit thread is one of those moments where I feel like I need to send out a PSA for women in the dating scene.
I’m so disgusted that I can’t even get myself to think about anything else right now.
This is the Reddit post that I read, which had a very similar path to one major discussion on R/TwoXChromosomes. Here’s a quick run-through.
- The man is dating a woman who is here on a student visa. She earns quite a bit of money, and wants to stay here, but is depressed. He is happily dating her, even though she is depressed about the possibility of being deported.
- Her visa runs out and he says he’ll support her. He goes and gets the paperwork. She’s hoping to get married.
- He decides he "didn’t want to be responsible for her" because he wouldn’t be able to sponsor anyone else. He also mentioned that he would have to pay for any welfare(!?) she got for three years. He backpedals on the marriage but she stays trying to make things better.
- She continues to apply for jobs until the visa runs out. She gets kicked out of the country, so she gives him the car and some money saying that she hopes this helps support him.
- He offers to visit her but she said she can no longer trust him. At this point, his friends also call him a jerk. Her friends are worried about the girl’s mental health.
- She dies by suicide, and the only things he’s upset about are the loss of her cooking and the fact that his friends won’t talk to him. What a horrible person.
In the comments, I saw others saying similar stories, including men who had children with women. They refused to marry their baby mamas, which meant that the mothers had kids ripped from their arms, never to see them again.
This brings me to a very important point about the plight of female immigrants.
Women who want to immigrate to a new country often find themselves in a Catch-22 that is absolutely nightmarish. It feels like a lot of women who come here via marriage licenses end up in one of three positions:
- They can marry men who are often twice their age with a potentially horrible track record with women. I’ve gone through this before, but basically, it’s a "mail-order bride" type of situation. The guy is actively looking for a woman who cannot divorce him. This can lead to horrible abuse and exploitation. Not all "mail order" marriages are bad, but a much higher than average percentage are. I mean, it’s legal sex trafficking. What do you expect?
- They can try to marry a guy they actually love who they met stateside. Obviously, this isn’t always doable because men, like the one above, waste their time. If things fall through, they end up having to return back home.
- They have a kid with an American who refuses to marry them. This ends with the woman being deported and the child stuck here. The man may or may not abandon the child but the woman never sees her kid again.
The reason I’m saying it’s a no-win is that the women here get accused of being a burden no matter what they do.
Think about it. There’s no winning as a woman who wants to immigrate and get married at the same time:
- If the woman marries via an international dating service, everyone assumes she’s a mail-order bride who’s out for money. Her spouse may abuse her because she’s "only after a paycheck."
- If she meets him and marries him here, people assume she’s only there for a green card. Maybe she ends up with people making fun of her husband until he dumps her. It’s happened to one couple I know.
- If she has a kid with a guy who refuses to marry her, then people say she’s stupid and a burden on society. The laws don’t care if the kid ends up an orphan or what trauma it does to the woman. We have American immigration to thank for that.
Meanwhile, men seem to be okay with getting a pass by saying, "I don’t want to be responsible for her," or "I don’t want to have to deal with the immigration thing, but I do want to stay with her."
Sorry guys, but you can’t wipe your hands of responsibility for loved ones like that.
What gets me about these stories is how often the guy swears he loved the woman.
You know, he totally did. But he didn’t love her enough to marry her and let her stay stateside for him. Nah, she has to fend for herself there.
If you are not willing to put a ring on it to keep the person you love in the same country as you, you never loved them. You just loved what they offered you as long as there are no strings attached.
Now that there are legal ramifications, you don’t care enough to keep her around.
If you are not willing to care for your partner when they need you there, you don’t love your partner.
What would you do if your future wife decides to leave you after a cancer diagnosis? Maybe she should tell you to fend for yourself because "she doesn’t want to be responsible for that."
Personally, I’m glad his friends ditched him. It’s not like he’d be there for them when s*** hits the fan either.
You can tell a lot about a person by the way they behave when their loved ones are in a vulnerable position.
A man who refuses to marry a woman but remains happy to have her cook, clean, and provide for him is not a man who loves women.
He’s an exploiter taking advantage of a desperate woman who probably does care for him.
This is doubly true when the woman he "loves" needs a wedding ring to stay in the country or needs a roof over her head that he refuses to provide. Like, if you love her, why don’t you want her safe and living with you, bro?
Oh right, you don’t actually love her.
Just admit it. And better yet, walk away if you are not ready to marry someone so that she can find a better person. Be upfront and say you can’t provide what they need.
That’s the most ethical thing you can do if you don’t want to marry her when her livelihood and home depend on finding Mr. Right. Really. I’d respect that more.
Most women in that position will walk away, even if they are hurt because they know you’ve already made it clear that you can’t be the person they need.
But to lead her on like that? That’s scum. She deserves better. You know, someone who actually is capable of loving someone other than themselves.
I’m also tired of men making excuses for this behavior.
FYI, women see it when guys excuse away a man’s refusal to commit.
They see it loud and clear. And they take note. And to many of us, this behavior makes us rethink dating after we get to a certain level of stability.
After all, we can’t tell whether you’re with us for our money or for us. We can’t tell if you’d be willing to save us from a vulnerable situation or if you’d start accusing us of being golddiggers, too.
So it shouldn’t be that big of a deal, all things considered, that more and more women don’t want marriage anymore.
Hey, at least you don’t have to worry about girls harping for a ring stateside, right?
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.