The men who pay for mail order brides, and what their friends and family think

'My friend dropped off the map. Then I found out him and his wife are bounty hunters'

Kashmira Gander
Wednesday 19 October 2016 18:34 BST
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One man apparently became a bounty hunter with his mail-order bride
One man apparently became a bounty hunter with his mail-order bride

People have been sharing bizarre stories of mail order brides, from the couple who teamed up to become bounty hunters to the woman who realised that is how her parents met.

The accounts were in response to a question on the Ask Reddit forum, which asked: “To anyone who has ordered a mail order bride, what was it like and what happened?”

The practice of finding mail order brides dates back to 1614 in the US, when lonely men on the frontier would post adverts in newspapers in the East for women to join them.

Dr Frank T. McAndrew of Knox College in the US has studied mail order brides.

“Our interviews captured the irony of situations in which women who were attempting to escape from traditional constraints were being matched with men who were attempting to find a wife whom they believed would embrace these very constraints,” he wrote in Psychology Today.

The answers on Reddit revealed how complex using so-called international marriage agencies is for both parties.

Here are some of the most fascinating tales.

"They ended up as bounty hunters"

Reddit user Signalnin described how a friend-of-a-friend who met a Ukranian woman on a website and “sort of dropped off the map”.

“A couple years later I ran into him at a thrift store and he told me about how they're both bounty hunters now," Signalnin said.

A bounty hunter captures criminals and fugitives in return for a monetary reward. It is an occupation which exists mainly in the US.

"My mum was a mail order bride"

Dragonflie described how her father found her Filipino mother in a magazine and sent her letters over the course of a year. She then moved to his hometown where they had two daughters, including herself.

While their clashed culturally, "they were both looking for a better life, and someone who would treat them better than past partners had," she said. "And they both got that, plus it turns out they both have the travel bug. So now they're retired, living a nomadic life travelling the globe, and they got more than they ever hoped for.”

“Their love of travel and culture has inspired me to study Anthropology and travel around the globe," she said.

"My dad got arrested"

“My dad had a mail order bride few years back. He met her online and flew out to get her after a while,” wrote ThatJuiceHead of his 56-year-old father and his 29-year-old wife.

“She was a shut in and was legitimately afraid of me because she thought I was smoking pot. The funny thing was that I had never smoked weed at the time (I was 17).

“It was a weird dynamic. The few times we crossed paths she would see me, gasp and then run to her room. My dad never saw this as a problem.

“A year later I moved out. Since then she has attacked him on two occasions and had him arrested.”

"I am a mail order bride"

“Well, sort of,” wrote Heer98. “More like ‘mail order husband’.”

The Reddit user met a Korean woman on Tinder over a year ago.

“After a month or so, she offered to fly me to Korea for a week in order to get to know me better. I've been back to see her about 7 times now, we're totally in love and I'm planning to move there next year!”

“She's 12 years older than I am, has two kids from her previous marriage and makes a lot more than I do. She speaks English fluently, but I'm learning Korean!”

"My dad sent her to the wrong language lessons"

“I dated a girl whose dad had a mail order bride,” wrote YerMomsASherpa.

“It took them two months to figure out why she wasn't learning anything from her English classes. Turns out the school had messed up and put her in German.”

"She was very adamant about the chickens"

“Here’s my dad's friend's story as my dad tells it and as I've observed,” said Mr_Gilmore_Jr. “She's Asian and he paid for her to go to school to become a pharmacist and they live in a newly built house and raise chickens. She was very adamant about the chickens.”

"She made us guacamole popsicles"

"Buckle up, this one's weird," said Haplodiploidy. "My grandfather had a mail order bride from the Philippines. They got married within a couple of weeks. She made us popsicles from guacamole. We got them a dog named Sasha, she thought we said Tasha and now its name is Tasha. Married like 2 years, she took the dog's husband and daughter (Pretty Boy and Pretty Girl), and fled the state after she got her drivers license. I don't know how my grandfather got the dogs back."

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