The Realities of Overseas Dating for American Men
Why are more and more Americans getting into overseas dating? And how are online matchmaking companies helping them find wives abroad?
Dating in the United States varies from one region to another and can vary even within the same state. Dating in a small town can differ greatly from dating in a big city.
In small towns, the dating culture is more conservative and marriage-focused, with a man courting a woman with the intention of them eventually getting married and having children. Dating in a big city can be more casual, often done to fulfill an immediate need for companionship and physical intimacy.
That sort of dichotomy can present a problem for a marriage-minded man. Dating in a small town can mean having slim pickings. Small towns have small populations and the percentage of single, eligible women in small towns is going to be rather low. Dating in a big city, however, can mean increased competition.
Dating in the United States is also more individualistic, with people courting those that match their preferences with little to no regard as to how their paramour would be received by their families.
While there are some instances where parents veto the romantic relationships of their children, for the most part, people date and marry who they want and their families will just have to deal with their choices.
Conversely, there are some communities wherein it is not just accepted but expected for parents to choose who their child marries. If the parents do not choose their child’s partners outright, then their opinions will weigh heavily on their child’s selection process.
What’s Online Dating like in the United States?
Nowadays, online dating is all the rage in the USA. But online dating depersonalizes courtship to some extent. Instead of seeing someone face to face, the first impression is of a profile – some biodata, a few pictures, and maybe a paragraph or two about that person.
Despite its impersonal nature, online dating is the most popular way for (heterosexual) couples to meet, with around 39 percent of heterosexual couples disclosing having met their partner on a dating app.
Dating apps also allow people to filter out their preferences. For example, women who have the option to filter height often show a preference for tall men.
It’s not just height, either. Political differences play a role in who a person chooses to match with on a dating app, with most people stating that they wouldn’t consider dating someone from the other side of the political aisle.
There’s also the general wariness of American women. An increased awareness of sexual violence and harassment has made women fearful of connecting with men and has made men more careful in their interactions with women.
Are American men having a more challenging time online?
Men, in general, seem to have a difficult time getting attention through online dating.
Research shows that women are more selective of their potential partners than men are. While the studies suggest that both men and women are attracted to
higher-income individuals, this preference was more pronounced in female users than it was
in males.
Overall, 55 percent of women and 39 percent of men in the United States have stated that they felt that dating has become harder in the last ten years, and online dating was one of the main reasons given by respondents.
It should be noted that technology was the main reason given by those who felt that dating had gotten easier, so to say that online dating by itself has made dating harder does not paint an accurate picture of the dating scene in the United States.
American Men Dating Abroad
Because of how hard the dating scene has become in the United States, many men have turned to dating abroad to find a “traditional” wife.
In essence, these are men who are either dissatisfied with or unable to adapt to the changing landscape of the American dating scene. They travel abroad - generally to Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia - where such radical changes have not taken place and where they perceive the women as being more feminine and more willing to engage in traditional gender roles within the relationship.
Foreign Relationships Have Unique Challenges
But the reality of Americans marrying foreigners is that there are a lot of difficulties involved. The most immediate obstacle is the distance. No matter how much two people want to be together, there will be a significant part of their relationship that is going to be long-distance.
More often than not, a long-distance relationship will involve a lot of flying back and forth in order to spend time together. That means that a couple who engages in a long-distance relationship will incur significant travel-related costs even with the most conscientious budgeting.
What Kind of Red Tape Is Involved in Foreign Marriage?
If an American citizen marries a foreigner, that foreigner becomes eligible to apply for permanent residence in the United States and can apply to become a U.S. citizen after three years of marriage. The process of getting a green card as a noncitizen spouse can vary, but it usually takes between 12 to 22 months to process a green card.
Now, the above timeline is if the noncitizen spouse is already living in the United States. In the case of a noncitizen spouse who does not live in the United States, the total processing time for a marriage-based green card is between 9 to 13 months.
The wait times above are for noncitizen spouses. The wait time is much longer for engaged couples.
Keep in mind that the noncitizen partner’s home country will affect the waiting time to process a K-1 visa. For example, a citizen of the Philippines waits an average of 16 months for their application to be processed, whereas a citizen of Colombia averages a wait time of just 8 months.
There’s also the scrutiny that comes with such a marriage. Regardless of how the two met, immigration officials will still want to know the details of the relationship. They’ll look to establish a timeline and they’ll want to make sure that the relationship is fully legitimate and not a scheme to get the noncitizen a green card.
Therefore, couples who want to go through the process will have to prepare for interviews and for their relationship to be run through with a fine-toothed comb.
All in all, the process from applying for a K-1 visa to marry a foreign citizen to getting a green card can take around five years depending on the foreign spouse’s country of origin and how quickly the couple gets married after the K-1 visa is approved because the green card application process can only begin after the couple has been legally wed.
How Do Men Find Foreign Partners?
Before any of the above can take place, an American man first needs to find a noncitizen who is willing to marry them. There are multiple ways to find people from foreign countries to date. There are multiple avenues for overseas dating.
Some people will use social media to find people from their preferred country of origin. They’ll add them as friends or contacts there and start exchanging messages. If they play their cards right, things will eventually take a romantic turn.
Others take a cold approach. They book a flight to their desired country, get on the plane, and hope for the best when they land.
There’s the aforementioned online dating. Typically, a dating app or website will show its users potential matches within a certain area, usually within the user’s own city or within a designated radius of the user’s own location. The user can adjust this radius, but there’s a limit to how far they can go without paying for the premium version of the app.
Users who pay for premium features, however, can freely change their location to any city where the app/site is allowed to operate. This allows them to be able to find potential matches from almost anywhere in the world.
There are also professional matchmakers. These are professionals who take it upon themselves to find potential partners for people.
Let us take a closer view at these four methods:
1. The Cold Approach
Of the above, the cold approach is the least advantageous. Booking a ticket and hoping for the best is optimistic, but it’s also unprepared. The cold approach generally involves the least amount of planning and failing to plan is planning to fail.
Also, unless you have had prior experience in that country, mere differences in culture and language can prevent you from freely meeting and dating the local women.
2. Social Media
For business reasons, social media apps and sites have to be free. So using them to find a potential partner will cost a user nothing. The main drawback is that most people on social media aren’t on the sites to look for love, so they’re not likely to be open to any amorous overtures.
Of the ways in which people can find a partner in a foreign country, dating apps and matchmakers are the ones that are explicitly about romance. On the surface, it may seem like they’re both the same thing. However, it should be noted that there are quite a number of differences between the two.
3. Dating Apps and Websites
Dating apps, even the premium versions, do not cost that much money. In the United States, a subscription to the premium versions of popular dating apps will cost around 40 dollars a month. That’s not an insignificant amount, but it’s not an exorbitant one either.
One of the main advantages of a dating app is the convenience. Many dating apps do not function as websites, but solely as apps on a mobile phone. Because of this, it’s easy for a person to just start swiping left or right to find potential matches. It doesn’t matter if they’re in the bathroom, in a café, or in the backseat of a car. As long as they have their phone or their tablet, then they’re able to peruse potential partners.
The biggest drawback of a dating app is the lack of control. Users can set some preferences, like an age range or a location, but they have no control over who the app shows them. If a person wants to date someone with a specific hair color, then they’re out of luck unless the algorithm shows them someone with that hair color.
Dating apps take a shotgun-style approach to matching people. They show users as many people within their preferences as possible and users are supposed to hope for the best. There’s almost no personalization when it comes to the choices with which users are presented.
There’s also almost no barrier to entry with dating apps. Anyone with a working smartphone and a SIM card can sign up for one and there’s no foolproof way to verify if there’s a real person behind the profile other than meeting them in real life.
4. Matchmakers
Matchmakers, on the other hand, have a much more rigorous screening process. More often than not, they meet with their clients and then get a sense of what they want in a relationship and what they’re looking for in a partner. So it’s a more personalized experience.
The biggest drawback of professional matchmakers is the cost. Even at the low end, they can cost around 2,000 dollars, more than 4 times what it would cost to have a premium dating subscription for a year. The highest-end matchmakers can command a 500,000 dollar fee for their services.
But for a man specifically seeking foreign women, there are other fees that he has to consider. Online matchmaking agencies that specialize in pairing up international couples charge fees for services on top of whatever membership dues they have.
One example of an extra charge is a processing fee to release personal contact information. This is because any US-based foreign matchmaking agencies must comply with the International Marriage Brokerage Regulation Act (IMBRA), which dictates that someone must give their explicit consent before their personal information is released to someone who is romantically interested in them.
Our Company Gives You the Best of Online and Offline Dating
What is the best recourse for a man who wants to ultimately find a partner abroad but is unsure of which way he should begin?
While the four methods of foreign dating—the cold approach, social media, dating sites/apps, and online matchmaking—have their downsides, they each have their merits and can be effective in your search to date internationally.
Medellin Singles takes the best features of each approach, creating a holistic, efficient, and convenient way to meet foreign women.
The website itself is an online platform where you can meet and message women who have registered for the sole reason of looking for a husband. Because these women have been interviewed and vetted, you do not have to worry about wasting your time with profiles who aren’t looking for the same thing as you.
Medellin Singles believes that online dating must always result in an authentic offline, face-to-face dating experience. You can be on the best international dating app ever created, but if you aren’t given services that can lead to that in-person meet-up, then that experience is not complete.
While you can begin your journey through the online dating features of the Medellin Singles website, our services go far beyond that. Our main highlight is the Singles Tours. Here, you can take part in an expertly organized, hassle-free travel-romance tour to Medellin, Colombia to meet marriage-minded Colombian women.
Our company puts you in the most advantaged position to meet the woman of your dreams. We’ve taken the risk out of dating. But it doesn’t end there.
We are all too familiar with the amount of red tape and legal hoops to jump through just so you can marry someone from another country. Which is why we offer expert assistance to get the paperwork done if you so choose to marry the woman we helped you meet.
Many happy men have found their love overseas. They have taken the risk to travel to a new country to meet their potential partners. Many men have failed at that as well. The reality of overseas dating is that it isn’t as simple as it sounds. But if you are convinced that your soulmate is out there, then Medellin Singles can help make things a lot easier for you.
