10 Major Problems Living with My Crazy Thai Girlfriend

Let me tell you my top 10 major problems are living with my crazy Thai girlfriend in Thailand.

I’ll cover things like:

1. Cultural Misunderstanding
2. Language Barrier
3. TV
4. Household Chores & Cooking
5. Whether Are You A Walking ATM
6. Thai Visa
7. Social life
8. Money
9. Giving Her A Salary Or Not
10. Sex

Life as an expat in Thailand can be tricky sometimes, especially if you are living with your Thai girlfriend. It can be more challenging if you are brand new and trying to understand the dating scene in Southeast Asia.

When I first moved to Thailand, I was not really interested in a long-term relationship or looking for anything permanent with a Thai woman.

Nevertheless, sometimes you find yourself hooking up with a Thai woman with an office job. Then, before you know it, you’ve asked her to quit her job and move in with you.

It is not that easy to integrate the two different cultures; also, don’t be deceived into thinking that the women in Thailand will be submissive or obedient to the point where they can’t think on their own. Those are folk tales by Western men who only meet Thai women in shady beer bars or other annoying places responsible for this story.

However, with some planning and understanding—perhaps a healthy balance of alcohol and cash—you can enjoy a peaceful life living with your Thai girlfriend regardless of your differences.

Here are my analyses of some of the major sources of misunderstanding or problems when living with your Thai girlfriend and how to tackle them. They are not in any particular order.

Misinterpretation of cultural norms is the most common form of misunderstanding. We all know that Western culture and Thai culture are vastly different.

The subject could and has been the subject of numerous books.

When it comes to interracial relationships with Thai women, most western men aren’t willing to try to learn about what they’re getting into because they don’t realize that their lifestyle isn’t the only one out there.

If you’re going to move to Thailand or you’re getting her to move to your country. The responsibility is on you in this case, particularly when you’re moving to a foreign country, and I’m going to be blunt about it.

Aside from reading this article, you can also learn more about Thai culture from expat blogs and ebooks.

For the last two, you’ll have to sift through a lot of irrelevant information to find the gold nuggets. But if you buy our ebooks, there are many gold nuggets to be found.

Language is a big deal. In my experience, I’ve encountered many western men who do not speak Thai and their Thai partners who don’t speak English.

What could possibly stand in the way of true love, right?

When I asked them how they got along with the language barrier, the men would say, “We have a special connection,” and blah, blah. That is a complete B. S. It’s never a success.

Google Translation, of course, is available. But honestly, what are those relationships going to turn out to be?

Google Translation is great, but it’s not perfect. Some words or phrases can get lost in translation, which often leads to a wrong understanding.

I know because I use it almost daily to translate labels and Thai writing. Since I understand and can speak two Thai dialects but cannot read or write Thai, it’s an excellent tool. However, as I said, it is not perfect, and there will be something lost in translation that a non-Thai speaker will not know.

When you’re in the honeymoon phase and wearing your love goggles, it’s all sweetness and romance. But once you’re back on the grind, things worsen.

I strongly think that a relationship is at a dead end if you rely on Google Translator unless you both make a concerted effort to become fluent in the other’s language. The main focus of your language learning should be the language spoken in the country you want to move to.

If you’re living in Thailand with her as your sole companion, you’ll have to rely on her. By learning Thai, you would also expand your social circle, improve relationships with your Thai family members, and make life easier for your partner and yourself.

Most Thai ladies find it challenging to grasp the concept of watching a particular channel for more than 60 seconds – they’ll be demanding to have the remote before you know what is happening.

Also, she’s probably used to playing Thai music at a high volume every time she’s around the room and might not understand why you find that weird.

However, if you succeed in winning her off those habits, then she goes off to learn how to use a DVD player.

Just be ready to buy a separate TV or prepare to watch your Thai girlfriend’s favourite Korean and Thai soap operas.

As you move in with your Thai girlfriend, or in this case, she moved in with me. She’ll try to change many things. Throwing away your household cleaner and cookware is probably at the top of her list.

She might start complaining about your job and making accusations about your boss’s honesty. She’s not doing this because she wants to clean up after you; she’s doing it because it means you’ll have a little more money to lavish on her at the end of the month.

The best thing is to avoid getting involved, especially when it comes to cleaning because when it comes down to it, women are likely more clean than the average guy.

However, when it comes to cooking, I assume many of you watching can not eat rice 2 or 3 times per day. This might be strange to her, but you have to put down your feet from the beginning.

The good news is that I love Thai food and am also a decent chef. So I have no problem with eating Thai food and other cuisines. If you can’t eat rice 2 or 3 times per day, you might have to teach her how to cook a few Western dishes. You can also get some cooking books for her to learn to cook your favourite Western dishes. And if you’re really desperate, you can eat out all the time, or you can take her to any cooking class for a few cooking lessons.

A typical Thai woman has an extensive network of relatives and friends. So dating someone from this network means you are going into a relationship with a large number of individuals, although you won’t notice it at first. You’ve heard before that when you marry a Chinese, Flipina, or Thai lady, you marry the family.

If you have been dating a Thai lady for a few years, your relationship may be doomed if you’re not invited into the network or meet her family at all. If so, it means that she either doesn’t trust or believe in you any longer, or she just likes having a walking ATM around her house, and that’s it.

Assuming you are moving to Thailand to live with your partner. If you have to do a visa run every month, it can be exhausting, not to mention forgetting the dates, overstaying, and being hit with a huge fee.

Having to deal with family concerns back home, making money, and adapting to cultural differences can all take a toll while living in another country.

There will be significant pressure on your relationship as a result of this. Also, please don’t underestimate the difficulties of living abroad, even though it may initially seem like a paradise. This stage lasts only briefly before becoming a normal part of life.

As you adjust to a new culture, you’ll have to deal with concerns like establishing new social networks, figuring out how to get your driver’s license, finding a place to live, and making money, among other things. Not a trivial matter.

It can be a lot of fun most of the time, but it can also be stressful, especially when you are not financially secure. It complicates things even further, but for some couples, it’s the glue that holds them together.

The outcome of that is entirely up to you.

Social life will intersect with money because you and your girlfriend will probably have different ideas of what constitutes a fun night out. Many Thais don’t really understand the concept of spending the evening at a bar with a couple of beers to relax. Most of their social hangouts are very purpose-based.

They seem to go something like this:
You go out to eat, which is all you do because you can’t really have a meaningful conversation with the loud music from the karaoke singers.

If you still want to go out after that, you’ll visit a Thai-style nightclub, suffer through the same ear-splitting music, then have a few drinks and perhaps dance a little.

Or you might end up at a karaoke bar if you don’t really have hip Thai friends whose main agenda is to get drunk.

This is why an average Thai girl finds it difficult to understand the idea of just chilling out with a couple of friends and drinking beer. She’ll probably grow tired of going on outings where all she does is sit in the same spot and nurse the same Spy bottle for the entire evening.

Depending on her English proficiency, she might try to join the conversation with you and your friends, but eventually, you’ll both get tired of the back-and-forth translations. Just try to imagine explaining every idiom or phrase used by drunken expats.

At the end of the day, she’ll give up and just sit there nursing her almost warm Spy or coke or playing on her phone.

Going out with your Thai girlfriend also restricts your choice of bars; you obviously can’t go to a gentleman’s bar unless she’s into that herself. Neither can you go to most tourist or expat bars because you’ll be seen as scum by other people. Because other Thai women might automatically assume your babe is a working girl, this can be very annoying.

However, if you look around, you’ll find many bars owned by expats around your city. These bars are owned by guys who have been around the block a few times, most of whom are married to Thai women. These places are some of the best places you can go with your Thai girlfriend.

A bonus is the fact that there are usually other Thai women around for your Thai girlfriend to chat with. At the same time, you hang out with your boys and complain about the difficulties of living in Thailand as an Englishman or an American or talk about sports.

Money is very important; we need it to buy food, pay rent, and transport, and the not-so-bright ones pay for those sick buffalos.

In many circumstances, her entire family network will welcome you as a foreigner and embrace you as the provider. The lady herself might have a taste for extravagance and/or travel that is out of your price range. It’s crucial to know what the girl’s potential future expectations are so you can decide whether you want to or can meet them.

Most Thai women I meet are not interested in a lifestyle of living off a paycheck each month. Understandably, many seek opportunities to advance their social position or having face and protect their future, as one might anticipate. So if she doesn’t see those in you, she’ll look elsewhere.

No woman wants to spend years being some guy’s plaything just to have that person dump her for a younger woman and then discover that her best years are over and she has nothing.

Without any form of financial stability in old age, life is really, really difficult, especially in Thailand. But many Thai women work hard and are proud of being able to take care of themselves. They also see relationships as a 50/50 deal with occasional benefits.

If she moves in with you, money will always be her leading cause of concern. It’s like they have a spreadsheet between their ears to calculate every dime you spend. You’ll be surprised to find out that your Thai girlfriend knows exactly how much money you spend every month and can tell you about it whenever she needs to.

Also, money will almost always be the main reason for your arguments, and sometimes you might not even be aware that you’re arguing about money.

For instance, you may think she’s mad because you came home late and told her you just wanted to step out for a few hours.

But the truth is that she’s not really angry that you stayed out late to have fun. What she’s actually mad at is the money you just wasted for that night. To her, that money could have been spent on groceries, rental payments for her parents, and a million other things she considers less wasteful.

I avoided this problem by telling my Thai girlfriend my real income is about 50% or something less than what I really make. This is probably the top solution to this problem. But if you do that, you must ensure the rest of the money is secretly hidden.

Next time you’re going out at night, be sure to act as if you’re leaving all your cash behind and take something as low as $20 USD or about 500 THB with you. But you have other money hidden away that you can use without her knowing.

This is by far the biggest problem you might have to face when dating a Thai lady.

As a foreigner, your income is certainly more than your partner’s. The person with the most money will look after the others. This is natural, but it is not ideal at the beginning of a relationship in a foreign country.

If your partner needs help paying bills or aiding their parents, they’ll ask you. But not all Thai women anticipate or request support.

Early in the relationship, it’s common for the foreign partner to offer regular financial support because they feel bad for their new lover.

People should examine whether they would do this in their own nation. Would you date a woman in your home country for a few weeks and then start giving her money?

In some circumstances, yes, especially sugar daddy or mistress relationships. Or a busy, wealthy businessman who maintains a woman on the side and ensures she’s happy.

I’m not here to judge anyone’s relationship, just to offer my experiences.

Men in the West spend a lot of money on dating women in the early months: restaurants, flowers, weekend getaways, and so on. We all know that. But living in Thailand is cheap. Well, that’s arguable now, but outside big Thai cities. It is still cheap, and the money might be better spent on the girlfriend’s bills rather than romantic things.

Remember, if your Thai partner becomes financially dependent on you early in the relationship, the relationship may become conditional on your help financially. There are pros and cons to that.

Instead of being frugal and saving money, your Thai lady may begin spending on things they could not previously afford. They might have to pay more each month for things like a better phone plan, a TV subscription, braces, or plastic surgery.

The first few months of a relationship should be filled with joy and passion, with two independent people sharing their lives and intimacy.

Financial dependence robs the honeymoon period of its romance and mystique. The problem starts when she may be wondering if you are a suitable life partner or a cash cow.

The problem might be that your partner may overestimate your wealth. People may assume you are wealthy if you provide money quickly in a society where people are hesitant to lend or give money.

I could go on and on about this, but you can find more info and other topics in our YouTube channel membership section.

The person you’re dating may feel pressured by family members who are aware of your wealth to ask you for money to help them out, so it’s important that you set clear expectations and boundaries from the start.

I don’t have a solution to giving your Thai partner a salary or not, because I think it depends. Again, there are pros and cons. Personally, I would not and have not done it. However, I can see that changing if we’re married, and that’s another article. I think if there are children involved, that will make it more complicated, but I’m only talking about the early stages of a relationship between a Thai lady and a foreign man, not a married couple. I guess it would work if you were financially secure, not in debt, and got to live your dream with a beautiful lady. Maybe no salary for the rest of us who still need to work.

My question to you is: what good is it to move or retire to Thailand to gain freedom and control over your life and live your dream if you end up with a financially dependent partner? But what do you think? Should foreign man give their Thai, Chinese, or Filipina partners a salary in the early stages of their relationship?

So this is probably the part all of you are waiting anxiously for. Making love will be determined by your woman’s experience if she is shy and not very experienced. She usually requires more training for mutual appreciation; it will take time for you to convey that the experience should be mutually pleasurable.

Funny enough, most of them appreciate visual aids regardless of their experience. An excellent place to start is the good ol’ internet, or perhaps you have a list of websites you bookmark that you can watch together to get you and her in the mood.

During the first couple of months, your Thai girlfriend might sleep fully clothed, all wrapped up in a sheet. She’ll probably wear clothes during nocturnal activities.

However, as time goes on, the shyness will go away. Just make sure you try not to force anything. She’ll eventually come around. It would help if you took things slowly and gradually. You’ll both be fine.

What is your experience of living with your Thai girlfriend? Did any of these problems happen to you? What are the weirdest, funniest, or craziest things your Thai girlfriend has done? Leave your comments below.