I have an Australian friend staying with  me at the moment. He has recently come out of a 3 year “relationship” with a Thai Bar Girl. He’s a bit of mess. He can’t concentrate on anything, he’s been messing around with very powerful drugs, he’s not taking care of himself, he zones out more than in, he can’t complete a task to its conclusion, is unreliable and clearly in a world of his own. Population 1. She took his life savings, his self-respect, his self worth, his dignity and his sense of self. He has a long way to go to get back to where he needs to be.

I can’t help but think back 5 months to when all this reminded me of…me. OK, she was not a Thai Bar girl and she didn’t get her hands on my money, but she took everything else. It’s good to have “John” around for a bit – he reminds me of the work I have done and the mistakes I shall never make again. Quite how a Woman, and not a even a good woman at that, is capable of totally relieving a grown man of his free will and duty to be the best he can be, and not the worst, is something I don’t think I will ever understand. It must be a strength of females and a weakness of males. I really don’t know. Is it as simple as men clearly being the weaker of the sexes emotionally? Is it a woman’s natural ability to entice through a mixture of beauty and causing arousal in the male? It’s probably both of those things and more. And I know I am not qualified to discuss this much further. But I do know it is something the male specie needs to correct in himself. All these decades of equality have clearly upset the balance in the scheme of things. Men are not quite sure how to be men any more, and woman seemed to have ascended to the zenith of all things powerful.

Men are in trouble in the world over. Where I live here in Asia there seems to be an endless supply of men that have given up on finding a Western Woman to love and to cherish, and to spend their life with. Western woman are seen as evil, conniving, ugly and untrustworthy. I am not saying these views are correct, or that I even agree with them, but it a worrying sign that this is viewed as the norm here.

Instead the male here behaves in a way that almost guarantees he will not go through the same experience that made him take up residence in Asia in the first place. Woman are disposable, throwaway items that are replaced almost as keenly as a BIC razor. There is no love, there is no closeness, no complications. There is only desire, lust, and the urge to move on to the next one as quickly as possible. In return for this hassle-free existence, a sum of money is normally exchanged at the end of the encounter, which can last anything from 20 minutes, to 24 hours, to a month or a year and so on. Or 3 years..

But it is a clear business transaction. My friend “John” clearly forgot that. And it’s not his fault. These ladies are the masters of extortion. They can either play the short game, when things are a lot easier for both parties to understand, or they go for the long game, where there is less of a clear monetary reward, but the whole “girlfriend experience” can end up costing the male far more in real terms. Clothes, food, payments to the family, trips “home” to meet his kin, houses built, health bills, motorbikes, sick buffalo, land about to be repossessed and whole myriad of other scams these girls have got down to perfection. You name it… the list is endless.

So who is the most honest? The Thai Bar girl or the western woman that declares true love only to end up fucking the lodger the minute your back is turned? Clearly the short time exchange is an honest one, with both parties knowing exactly where they stand. The long game can get very confusing, but again it’s not too hard to deal with as long as you remember rule number 1. It’s business – Nothing else. Personally, I prefer the Thai model. As long as I don’t ever get confused I will stay safe, so will my heart and hopefully most of my life savings. But there a many men here, like “John”, whom have been equally, if not worse, rinsed by the Thai lady more than the western girl he came here to forget in the first place.

Now does any of this make me happy and content? Knowing that “love” is a commodity to be traded like a natural resource on the stock market. To be bought and sold for a price that fluctuates due to supply and demand and other factors, which can change day by day? Do I miss the togetherness and the feeling of being loved and cared for by the “girl of my dreams” back in the UK? Do I miss “family”?

Not one bit. I am businessman at heart, and so I can get my head around this no problem. If anything, it makes more sense to me than the previous 30 odd years of not really understanding women. I have become as hard as the women that led me here in the first place. But I want for nothing, and I am content in knowing my place in the world and how I fit in to it. I am the boss of me and no one else. I have clarity.

And that is all I’ve ever really wanted.