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“Vietnamese and Thai women have not progressed so far yet. They are Marriage Olympics gold.”

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So it’s just like shopping for a car?????

Take it how you will. Arranged and purchased marriages which are the norm in some societies work out much better than love matches. It's a long discussion. In Việt Nam, at least, women are actually freer to do what they want than in most other places in Asia. You can see the differences between city populations made up of people who have left extended families in the smaller places and the still traditional people outside the metropoli. City folks do not have families to arrange matches and their marriages turn out rather like American arrangements do, lots of divorce. In the countryside marriages are deals between families and they work much better. Divorce is easy in Việt Nam but very rare outside the big cities. An American man is every mother's dream for a mate for her daughter for several reasons and wealth is not the biggest one.

9 years ago my son was getting serious about a young lady. She was very fat and had been from infancy. I told him it was not a good idea, that she was totally self centered as evidenced by her physique. It is ̣ years later. He is an Army helicopter pilot and just found out that two of his three girls are not his and she is conniving with the latest boyfriend to tie up his income in a divorce. He is quite devastated as he had not understood what was happening. She kept her activities to times he was TDY. He will try now to keep all three girls because he, and I, fear what she will do to them. He loves the girls, even now knowing he has no genetic link to two of them. He says he has been their dad since their births and that doesn't change. Wife cannot see anything beyond today.

Nine years ago I offered to take him with me to Việt Nam to find a wife. I knew several candidates . All are very intelligent and would keep house and/or work, whatever the situation requires. An American woman is a major risk for a man unless he has known her all his life. We are Catholics and marriage is not something you do for a little while until something else comes along.

So it’s just like shopping for a car?????

I have known enough women who do that as a matter of course. It is not a bad way to approach the subject if you really commit yourself to whatever product you have settled on.