Why I fight so much with my Chinese wife due to listening

[FrankM20764]

I been married to a chinse woman for 3 years now going on 4 , I constantly have the problem she will listen to her Chinese  friends or teachers before she will listen to me and it causes so many huge fights I find myself screaming at her , because I am constantly fixing the problems for her . They give her such bad advise -They dont know about American rules and laws but they convince her they know everything . I always wanted to Marry a Chinese woman due to the values they hold for family , But dear god this Chinese woman fights about everything only to basically find out 98 percent I tell her -I was right . she is great woman good wife , I struggle to have her stop listening to the bad advise from them it makes me crazy , From simple things as doing a garden since I was raised on a farm and i know the land -- to getting a drivers license when they teach her everything wrong . its like living in a nightmare , She even has Chinese woman trying to get into her bank account for investment's and have her convinced not to tell me about it until it was done and I accidently came across what was happening and had to get angry and prove this woman was a thief , its constant problem -- How can i get her to stop doing this its going to ruin our marriage -I feel like i married a child , i dont understand please help .

frank 

[Lu]

First, make sure not to have children with her as long as this is not resolved.

What else... Do not scream at her, that resolves nothing. Do not view her as a child, she's a grown woman.

Make sure she has access to enough money that she can buy what she needs, but also make sure you keep some money that she cannot reach, if she's prone to falling for scams.

Perhaps let her make her own mistakes sometimes, with the driver's lessons and the garden and whatnot.

 

And maybe don't choose a life partner based on prejudices about her ethnicity. But I suppose it's too late for that.

[Tomsima]

Are you learning Chinese?

[FrankM20764]

We met and we did not fight at all for the first 2 years , it seems we are fighting a lot now - she keeps telling me she is sorry and cries , I keep telling her I am trying so hard to understand , I dont need her money she has her own money and I never touch it . I dont tell her what to do -I let her be herself , but when she asks my opinion I tell her what I think is best .when she almost got scammed and I caught it I had the woman on the phone and i called her out and the scam and proved she was a thief to my wife , but while proving this she got back on the phone with the woman as if they was friends. What gets under my skin is why ask me to help then listen to someone else because they are Chinese , When I am the American i know my country and its rules better than anyone , She is a fantastic wife other than this , I am asking her to stop , and I am telling her she is causing major issues in our relationship , I try and explain to her the only people who care about her is her family brothers-sisters mother father and husband and children - that most people dont care and most people have their hands out and are willing to take what she has - I am struggling so struggling - its like she doesn't want to believe the Chinese will cheat the Chinese here in the USA , I tell her its ever culture has thief's and cons , I became ok in life with what I own , by paying attention , she is like lost- but its our 3rd year and I am concerned its going to end breaking up , which she swears she doesn't want to happen and I dont want it either -I want her to be her own person , but stop taking peoples words over your husband especially when you dont know these people I just dont get it . Her real best friends are not like this its the new friends she somehow is running into causing issues , like the one on the money that woman told her dont tell your husband what we are doing she met me and told my wife wow your husband watches everything and doesn't trust a lot of people, but i never talked to this woman other than hi how are you .

[nicklinjm]

I don't know whether this will help you at all, but over 10 years of working in China I have observed that Chinese people have a strong inbuilt trust of other Chinese (over foreigners). It is one of the reasons there are so many Chinese-on-Chinese fraud scams in US, UK, etc - a lot of Chinese find it pretty hard to believe that one of their own would deliberately cheat them. To illustrate, I speak Chinese to v high level, and have a colleague who is same level as me, doing much the same job, facing Chinese clients.

 

The Chinese clients will always go to her first, even though I am actually in charge of projects! When I eventually asked about this over dinner, I was told it's about trust.

 

It sounds like your wife is listening to the scammers that prey on Chinese-majority communities in the US, hope she eventually realises how dangerous that is! 

[sanchuan]

Is she well integrated, culturally, socially and linguistically? It's possible she wouldn't feel so desperate for a friendly face if she were. 

 

One might even speculate that she was far more socially discerning in her homeland but that, now she lives abroad, finds herself lonely and vulnerable. If you feel lonely and vulnerable in a foreign space, anything foreign becomes subconsciously suspect. And if anything foreign is perceived as fundamentally untrustworthy... it's no wonder that anything Chinese will be perceived as fundamentally trustworthy. It's just a case of split thinking, likely due to a feeling of disconnection. 

 

Maximising activities and relationships geared at learning to trust, belong to and integrate with 'foreigners' (crucially, outside of work or family settings) might help her regain some balance, and remind her that the 'foreign ways' are not all bad and that the Chinese ways are not all good. 

 

It would take some time and effort for her to address this, but at least you know it's got nothing to do with you, love, money or other things like that. All pure speculation on my part, of course.

[abcdefg]

Sounds like a serious problem. The core issue is doubtless that she doesn't trust you and doesn't respect you. All the rest is camouflage. 

[vellocet]

On 6/5/2024 at 3:58 PM, nicklinjm said:

a lot of Chinese find it pretty hard to believe that one of their own would deliberately cheat them.

Chinese in China have a huge trust problem with other Chinese because they get constantly cheated. 

I guess when they go overseas they instantly unite against us foreigners. Then it becomes an ingroup/outgroup situation and when you tell anyone not to trust Chinese just because they're Chinese, then what they hear you saying is that they're  not part of the ingroup. This is very hurtful. 

I have also noticed that my wife is essentially a big child. She kept hitting me up for money so I got fed up once and asked to see her monthly budget. 15,000 per month salary and she spent 5,000 per month on clothes. I said, there's your problem  right there, stop buying clothes. This was very hurtful because she needs a new designer suit every month(seriously, she has her own designer) and wearing fancy clothes are how she feels worth in society (as is common among foreigners' wives, she's one of the "flower that grew out of the pot of dirt" types. She grew up poor and never forgets it.  She was scammed out of 10,000 yuan by a man she used to work with. When I asked to see if there was any legal recourse, did he sign anything that says he owed the money, or whatever? Because we can go after him in civil court.  Even a copy of his ID card? No. No signed paper with a thumbprint, nothing.  So we don't even know who the hell this man is or how to find him. 

I was thunderstruck.  She said he was an honest man and  wouldn't  cheat her.  When I told her to to press him to pay, at least make a payment, I told her to ask how much he had on hand and pay that, then suddenly, whoops! His family said he died. When I asked to see a death certificate of course there was none. My wife got angry at me for that.  There wasn't any because I'm sure he started some kind of business with her money, failed horribly (because I've seen Chinese start businesses, they have no idea what they're doing. They can't even do simple things like identify who their customer will be, how to reach this customer with advertising, etc. To them it's just "I should open a business and make money." 

Three months after the whole covid nonsense started, she came to me asking to loan her money so that she could invest in her place of work.  It's service industry so they  had just taken a huge hit from being closed and the future looked no better. I asked why and she said the company needed money. I told her you don't invest in any business that's losing money. You invest in a business that is making money.  You use the dividends to pay back the loan. I asked what kind of ownership certificates she'd get in the company, dividend payment percent, etc.  and there were none.   Just give the money and she'll make money every month. 

And guess who she was angry with  because it was a terrible  use of money?  Me.  The reaction of a child. I said no, it's a bad investment, you get no assurance or stock certificates  or anything and she threw a fit about it.  Evidently her manager was badgering her to invest and not doing as he wanted was causing her to lose face because loyal employees respond when the company puts out its need.  No, fricken loyal employees don't pressure other employees  to invest in a money-losing location. It blows my mind because I have known plenty of Chinese women who are hard-nosed and shrewd about business. They're all laughs until it comes to money and then they're impossible to pry a jiao out of. 

 Her friend, of who she has precious few, ended up lending her the money. She used to go out to her house and spend an evening but she hasn't done that in years because I'm sure she alienated her when she didn't pay back the loan. I was right, but don't dare point this out as I'm sure it would cause yet another rage eruption. 

 

[Lu]

If you find yourself referring to your life partner as 'a child' and complaining about them at length on the internet, you have a real problem in your marriage, if you ask me. You don't respect your partner if you do that. Perhaps you feel your partner isn't worthy of respect, and in that case you should not be married to this partner. A person who respects and loves their partner discusses things like this with their partner.

 

And putting my moderator hat on: this forum has, fortunately, never been the kind of place where laowai come to bitch about their Chinese wives. If this thread moves further in that direction, I will close it. I'm sure there are plenty of other places on the internet for that discourse.

[Guest realmayo]

Wasn't there a book quite popular in China a few years ago describing China as a nation of children? I remember them discussing it on 锵锵三人行 also. Can't remember what it's called though I have a feeling I actually started reading it last year on a friend's advice.

 

Edit: the book is 巨婴国 by a psychologist, 武志红. Here's the discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CXQGKaMtsw

[suMMit]

Reading your posts you sound like a hard guy to live with - whining, moaning, blaming, you know it all. Doubt all the problems are because of her.

[abcdefg]

What I dislike the most about threads like this is that some first-time-poster appears out of nowhere in great distress asking for help with a difficult problem and then disappears without a trace after a few members make a genuine effort to understand and assist. It strikes me as a form of intellectual dishonesty and I feel as though I have been set up and duped by a scammer, tricked into caring by someone who wasn't sincere. 

[vellocet]

It means the poster got what he came for.  Happens a lot.  

Boy, we sure don't like threads cancelled and locked, especially if they don't violate any rules. And nobody complains.  Cancelling is super unpopular worldwide.   Moderators are here to put posts in the  correct subforums and delete spam and that's it. I've been a moderator before many times and it's much like being a janitor.  

[jannesan]

 

On 6/16/2024 at 2:21 PM, vellocet said:

Moderators are here to put posts in the  correct subforums and delete spam and that's it.

 

Hard disagree, even the literal meaning of “moderator” suggests otherwise. I appreciate the work the moderators of this forum do here and that includes calling out misogynist attitudes.

[Lu]

I have flagged mysogynist posts well before I became a moderator, and I will continue to do my best to keep these forums a pleasant place for women and men, Chinese and non-Chinese.

 

Since the thread is now veering off-topic even further, I will now abuse my powers to close it. For complaints, feel free to contact the admin.