Meeting My Filipino Wife's Family for the First Time: What I Got Wrong

I was 31 when I met my Filipino wife's family for the first time. I wasn't new to the Philippines or to Australian-Filipino relationships. I'd had two previous Filipino relationships behind me, and a pretty clear idea of the good and bad sides of Filipino family culture. I was also a hard-headed, self-made-man style of Australian, not a cowering young bloke in the throes of romancing his high school sweetheart. With all that in mind, it's not so surprising the first meeting didn't go smoothly.

I've titled this article "What I Got Wrong," but I wrote that contrary to my own view that there is no single right or wrong way to do this. Neither Australian culture nor Filipino culture holds a monopoly on truth. If you want to build a cross-cultural relationship you can actually live with, be clear from the start that all relationships (mono-cultural or cross-cultural) require balance and compromise. No happy relationship thrives when one culture dominates the other.

And be aware that you'll need to think on your feet. Keep your mind open, and don't follow advice blindly that says "all Filipino families follow this or that tradition" or that you must "serenade her outside her window" because that's what the guidebook says. Some families are more traditional than others. Some are quite modern. Yours might be anywhere on the spectrum.

So there's no single right way. But there are smooth meetings and rocky meetings, and either can be deemed successful if it brings about an outcome you can live with.

How we got there

I met my wife online through a dating site. She was a single mother with a four-year-old daughter. She'd got pregnant while working in the Middle East to a Filipino overseas worker (an OFW) who was hiding the fact that he was already married. Not an unheard-of scenario, sadly. She gave birth in the Philippines and went back to working overseas to support her daughter when the child was two. During that time she built her family a nice house.

Me? Self-employed, educated, Australian divorcee, raising a couple of kids on my own. I had two previous Filipino relationships behind me and was definitely not prepared to forget myself in the meeting-the-family process, regardless of how it turned out. Letting your own culture take a back seat and letting another culture dominate rarely leads to a relationship that's fair to both parties.

We'd developed our relationship over four or five months of letters, emails, and phone calls before we were committed enough to meet in person. We met in Manila about a week before we met her family together.

The family, meanwhile, had not forgiven or forgotten what they viewed as her act of "bringing shame on the family" by getting pregnant out of wedlock. They'd been guilt-tripping her for five years over it. When we met in person, she hadn't told them I existed, and she was dodging "where are you, what are you doing, who are you with" phone calls the entire time we were together, to the point I asked her, nicely, to turn off her phone.

The protocol I was supposed to follow

For context, here's the cultural etiquette for meeting the family in a more conventional Filipino courtship:

• Before a couple begins courting, the young man visits the parents' house, accompanied by his own parents.
• The parents talk together while the young man sits humbly and waits. The girl's parents ask about his plans, his intentions, and how he'd support their daughter if they gave permission.
• If they're satisfied, a courtship period is agreed to, ending in marriage.

That's the framework. I knew it. I just wasn't going to walk into a hostile situation and perform it.

The meeting

We arrived at the family home unannounced after spending a week together in a Manila hotel and a beachside resort. They weren't expecting her, and they certainly weren't expecting me. I felt OK about it. My wife was petrified.

I met my future father-in-law and brothers-in-law first. They were happy to meet me. All smiles, handshakes all round, no issues. I was instructed to do mano po with Papa, the blessing where you take an elder's hand and touch it to your forehead. I explained that in Australia we prefer to shake hands.

Mama? I don't think she greeted me at all, from memory. She was too busy shouting at her daughter, calling her a liar. My wife's older sister left the house in disgust. Her aunt and uncle, who spoke better English, were summoned. They arrived in their best clothes and proceeded to interview me, and to explain why I should have followed protocol. Specifically:

• We should have met them before committing to each other.
• I specifically should have asked permission.
• Their daughter had brought shame on the family by becoming a single mother.
• It also turned out she hadn't told them the previous boyfriend was already married, so they explained how stubborn and stupid they considered her for not marrying him.

This is the Filipino way, and it probably works well in a culture that's set up to expect it. The trouble is it's not easy for an Australian, because it's not how things are done in Australia, and it's even less likely to feel natural when the couple are in their thirties and not pristine virgins.

Please don't misunderstand me. I would have been far more flexible if my own situation hadn't been hostile. I would have been far more diplomatic if things had been friendlier, and I was also defending my wife at this point. If we'd met for the first time at her parents' house, with them aware of the relationship, I'd have absolutely gone through the asking-for-her-hand-in-marriage and the blessing. It's actually charming when the situation isn't like the one I walked into. My own daughter (the four-year-old from this story, now grown) brought her 24-year-old suitor to me a few years ago to ask for my blessing, and I gave it gladly, after making him promise to take good care of her.

So yes: try to keep them happy, as long as they do the same for you in return.

I did try to explain to the family that while I understood this is the normal protocol in the Philippines, they should allow some flexibility for someone who's not of that culture, particularly someone older, established in life, fiercely independent, and who'd met and committed to their daughter before they'd had a chance to weigh in. I also explained:

• My wife was no longer a child.
• She'd done nothing wrong. She hadn't known the previous boyfriend was married.
• She'd brought a beautiful child into the world.
• She'd worked hard and built them all a house they wouldn't otherwise have had.

I explained all this directly and bluntly, as is the Australian way when the situation is confrontational. Filipino culture hasn't a lot of patience for a prospective courtier being direct and blunt, so again, it didn't go over well. I didn't speak the local language at the time, so I didn't catch much of what was being said between family members and my wife. But the tone and body language were clear enough. I wasn't saving face for anyone, including myself.

For what it's worth, I didn't share their view of her situation at all. She'd been deceived by a man who was hiding a wife from her. That wasn't her shame to carry. But she'd been carrying it for five years anyway.

The bright spots

The odd thing was that Papa was fine throughout, as were the brothers, who were looking forward to a drinking session with me later. This wasn't a normal Filipino family situation. They were and are a fairly volatile family, especially the women.

The more delightful side of it was that the extended-family children found me to be wonderful fun. That included my new daughter, whom I met for the first time. Picture the scene: me, the bad guy, covered in giggling kids while the women raged on in anger.

The drinking session didn't happen, because I came down with a fever later that day and spent the rest of the day and night sweating it out. My wife stayed with me. The ranting and raving had got too much for her. We left the next day.

The aftermath

We headed to the airport to fly back to Manila and spend a night before my flight home.

The meeting hadn't gone smoothly. But I saw it as a personal victory for both of us.

If you want to lead a happy life, both parties need to set their ground rules clearly in the early stages. If they don't, if they bend too easily in either direction, they'll most likely regret it. Good relationships are personally fulfilling for both parties, not for one at the expense of the other.

We all have areas where we're comfortable to compromise, and those "deal breaker" areas we hold close to our souls that we simply can't let go of. For me, bowing and scraping and asking permission when I'm an adult who's already committed to another adult is a deal breaker.

Now, it was hard for my wife. She'd lived her life trying to keep the peace, and that had often meant heavy compromises and sacrifices of her own happiness, to the extent that she'd become a bit of what an Australian would call a doormat. Some members of her family had taken advantage of her passivity. Those same unspoken tensions in Filipino family dynamics later show up in specific patterns like tampo, the silent treatment, which is worth understanding early.

The positive outcome was that the meeting set up a dynamic that ended up working for both of us. On the way to Manila she told me she "wanted to make everyone happy." I told her that wouldn't always be possible, that when her husband and her family wanted different things, she'd have to choose a side. The good thing was that she chose me.

Most Australian-Filipino relationships are much like mine: normal, loving relationships built on trust. But I've also seen many relationships where the wife consistently chooses her parents and siblings over her husband and children. Parents and siblings remind her of what they feel she owes them for past kindnesses, and ask her to override decisions she's made with her husband. In a lot of cases this leads to lies and to sending money without mutual agreement. That sense of obligation is rooted in utang na loob, the Filipino debt of gratitude, which I unpack in its own article.

Twenty years later, because we set those ground rules early, I've never had to deal with those issues. And her family and my wife now have a much fairer, more balanced way of relating to each other. So yes, I'd call it a victory.