In Thailand it is not always easy to distinguish between prostitution and legitimate relationships. Let’s say a foreign man hires a woman to be his girlfriend for a certain amount of time – quite a common scenario in Thailand – and pays her a fixed salary. That must be prostitution, you would think.

But what if that same man gets involved in a relationship with a Thai woman, lives with her indefinitely, but still pays her a certain amount of money every month, which she expects from him, and she would not stay with him once he stops paying. Now is it still prostitution? There is no clear and easy answer, since I have just described a high percentage of western man/Thai woman relationships.

Culture clash

From the point of view of the Thai woman it is clearly not prostitution. Economic considerations play a bigger role in Thai relationships than in western ones, and traditionally Thai men have paid a good amount of money to their wife’s parents as part of the marriage arrangement. But many westerners would label such relationships a kind of prostitution. So the answer is that it depends on the cultural lens we are looking through. East and West will not agree on this issue, and what we have here is a typical culture clash.

Love, prostitution and grey areas

The western man is expected to conform since he is in Thailand and since he is always seen as wealthy. Unless this money issue gradually transforms into a true connection, an actual loving relationship, it can always be a sticking point. Maybe we have to compromise here and invent a new term, somewhere between a love-based relationship and prostitution, like conditional relationship, or relationship with negotiated benefits.

However I am not putting any blame on Thai women. They just do what is part of their culture, their upbringing and their often limited understanding of western values. The truth is that many western men actually feed this kind of thinking by flashing their money and offering to pay the woman. Often they feel that they are really helping out, they want to show generosity, or they know that this is the easiest way to start up a relationship. So we are still in this grey area between love and prostitution. If you try to draw fixed lines between those two concepts, you will have problems in Thailand. This is just not a black and white issue here, and our labels simply don’t fit.

What does marriage mean in Thailand?

Even the Thai language is not so clear cut. One word can mean girlfriend/boyfriend or wife/husband. If the Thais talk about their “faen” you won’t know if they are referring to their lover or their spouse. Here the language reflects the cultural ambiguity between those two terms. In Thailand it is also quite common to refer to one’s partner as “husband” or “wife” just because they have been living together for some time, even if they are not legally married.

Then there is a marriage ceremony in Thailand which is conducted by monks, but it does not convey any legal status. So a couple can be married by a monk, and they will consider themselves husband and wife, but legally they are not married.  Last but not least there is the formal legal marriage.

Relationships in Thailand often defy western attempts to classify them according to our understanding. Western men have generally no problem finding a Thai partner, but to find a Thai women who really loves them for who they are and not for the economic security they provide is not so easy at all. Fortunately I can speak from personal experience that it is possible.

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Filed under: Relationships in Thailand

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