I'm posting this because I'm curious about what others think. It's quite an interesting situation, and one we only recently experienced ourselves.
I'm American, and I've been with my wife for almost 25 years. We have kids and are close in age. We met through a mutual friend in a third country and got married there. My in-laws are solid middle class—neither poor nor rich—and all around great people. Not long ago when we visited the Philippines, they would drive us around in their car and we'd pitch in for gas, and whenever we ate out, who paid was pretty much the luck of the draw that day haha.
For a long time in the U.S., we didn't have many Filipino people around us, but that was totally fine. My wife occasionally likes going to Asian supermarkets, but she's not the type who actively feels the need to hang out with other Filipinos. If it happens, great. There's one family we met a few years ago and are now as close as relatives with, though they live a few states away now.
However, over the past year or two, we've gotten to know some people living in the U.S. who come from somewhat well-off families back in the Philippines. But I could actually feel these people subtly looking down on my wife. The reason? Because she married an American. They seem to hold onto this stereotype that any woman who marries an American only did it for the money.
Well, as you all know, it's a pretty common mindset, so you can brush it off as just ignorance. But what I really don't get is something else.
"It's that even other Filipinas living in the U.S. who *also* married Americans are doing the exact same thing. It's like she thinks she's the only properly educated, decent Filipino woman in the entire world who married an American :)"
Could it be that they're feeling guilty and projecting, just in case someone might say that kind of thing about them? (A guilty conscience needs no accuser.) And why does this sort of thing seem to be happening more often lately, of all times?
