Are you dating a DDD? (Definitely Different Dominican)

I sometimes think people look way too deep and analyze way too much.
Some people need to get their heads out of "Cosmo" and into the "real" world.

And woman wonder what the attraction is for men in countries like the DR, Brazil, Colombia etc

The reality, with an Australian slant

HER STORY :

He was in an odd mood Saturday night. We planned to meet at the pub for a drink. I spent the afternoon shopping with the girls and I thought it might have been my fault because I was a bit later than I had promised ? but he didn?t say anything much about it.

The conversation was very slow going so I thought that we would go off somewhere more intimate so we could talk privately.

We went to this restaurant and he was STILL acting a bit funny . I tried to cheer him up, and wondered whether it was me or something else. I asked him, and he said no. But I wasn?t really sure.

So, anyway ? in the car on the way home I told him that I loved him deeply, and he just put his arm around me. I don?t know what the hell that means because, you know, he didn?t say it back or anything. This really worries me.

We finally got home and I was wondering if he was going to leave me! So I tried to get him to talk but he just switched on the TV, and sat with a distant look in his eyes that seemed to say that it?s all over between us.

Reluctantly, I said that I was going to go to bed. Then after about 10 minutes he joined me, and to my surprise , he responded to my advances and we made love. But, he still seemed really distracted, so afterwards I just wanted to confront him ? but I just cried myself to sleep.

I just don?t know what to do anymore. I mean, I really think that he is seeing someone else and that my life is a disaster.

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HIS STORY :

Australia lost the cricket. Got a root though.

going to print out this novel for the commute home tonight....

Leja:

Men flaunting women is not uniquely Dominican. It's just a men's trait. (I also know women who like to flaunt their men. No harm done.)
Game playing it indigenous to couples, although your aim to enlighten women on the generic Dominican games is valid.
All of the points you made, all well taken, the most important is the one you made re: the cultural differences. Without a doubt it is important to know one can adapt to a very different way of life when thinking of a long-term relationship.

Great post, leja! Very valid questions and something to think about on the commute home
The question is with all of your knowledge, are you dating a ddd? Did I miss that? I forget

Yes, Leja, how did you compile this wealth of info?

LOL AtlantaBob?no, no PhD. Not yet at any rate . As for where I got the info, it?s a mixture of both personal experience and what I?ve learned through friends and acquaintances - both Dominican & American, male & female. But no, Meredith, I?m not currently with a DDD. Who knows what the future will hold, but for right now I?m living in the US, and I?m just not a big fan of the whole long distance thing.

Thanks for reading that fricking long post guys, and thanks for all the feedback!

~Leja

......A final side note on the family and friends issue ? many foreigners do not realize that it is not such an extremely uncommon thing in the DR for some children to be raised by extended family members or even in orphanages rather than by their mother (and father). Is your boyfriend introducing you to the people who actually raised him or to the people he may potentially see as having abandoned him? (and to whom he therefore may have a deep need to impress and prove something to)?



I WONDER WERE YOU LEARN SO MUCH ABOUT DOMINICANS, BECAUSE YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT US OTHERWISE YOU WILL NEVER MADE A COMMENT SO FAR FROM REALITY LIKE THE ABOVE.

.....Yes , we are raise for extended family but is because there is a lot of love in the family, and every body is willing to help, but ORPHANAGES, what are you talking about?

Come on over to Juan Dolio and I'll take you on a tour of the three orphanages that are operating in the vicinity!
Do you actually LIVE in the DR? If you do Leonardo1267 then you know that there are MANY orphanages in the country.

Well, dont tell me about Juan Dolio, because I work for several years in the area. it's true that are 3 orphanages in Juan Dolio. but Juan Dolio is not the whole country, and apparently you don't know anything else about the rest of the population.
the 3 orphanages from Juan Dolio have kids from different parts of the country. I bet you that there are orphanages in you country too, and that not necessarilly is because they don't care about their kids.
I wonder why you live in DR since you have, such opinion about Dominicans in general.


"Do you actually LIVE in the DR? If you do Leonardo1267 then you know that there are MANY orphanages in the country"

....what do you called too many orphanages? just because there are three in Juan Dolio, you are guessing that dominican men don't want to take care of their kids? You must have a bad experience with a sanki-panki and are bitter about it, but remember , you just get what you are looking for!!

Well how about the orphanages that are in San Pedro and Consuelo? La Romana? I'm not familiar with the ones on the North Coast but I do remember threads or posts in threads of people that have spent time working in them. There is a college in the US that sends students every year to help maintain and build an orphanage that is in the north - I just don't remember where exactly.
As for my experience Leonardo I was and am happily married and I come to the DR with my "other" half every year for about half of the year. Shall I talk to you about the street kids that we have seen and helped over the years??? They don't live in orphanages (only the "lucky" kids do!).
We kinda think of Dominican children as "insurance" or "pension" plans for their parents/parent. The more you have the more likely it is they will "help" feed the rest and look after you when you get old!
Do you know how many 12 and 13 year olds we've met over the years who have children? Children having children and they "play" with them the way North American girls "play" with Barbie dolls. When they get tired of "playing" or when they need to find work to feed them or when a "gringo" comes along that maybe they can "hook" for a few bucks or a ticket out of the country the child get shuffled off to an abuela or tia or dumped ont the street or in an orphanage. Have you ever watched poor, young, uneducated Dominicans with their children? Doesn't look much like love to me.......JMHO. (just my humble opinion)

clearly off the OT, but anyway...

leonardo1267 said:

"Do you actually LIVE in the DR? If you do Leonardo1267 then you know that there are MANY orphanages in the country"

....what do you called too many orphanages? just because there are three in Juan Dolio, you are guessing that dominican men don't want to take care of their kids? You must have a bad experience with a sanki-panki and are bitter about it, but remember , you just get what you are looking for!!

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Orphanages in the DR are absolutely overrun right now, Leonardo, I know from personally seeing kids being turned away because of space restraints.

Oddly enough, it is not Dominican men who are always to blame. I personally know about 15 or 20 kids who are in orphanages because their mothers have up and left the family, and the father cannot handle caring for all the kids at once so he has to send some of them away. I have definetly been very surprised at the number of moms who have done that.

It is definetly more accepted there (culturally) for one's children to be living with other family members or at an orphanage then it is in any other country that I have been to. There could be many reasons for that, but you can't deny it.

You raise some interesting points in your posts. My suggestion to those who are involved in a relationship with a Dominican is to follow your mind and heart. Don't let someone's else bad experience influence your decision. For one, you don't know what happened in their relationship. Or You don't know who was at fault in the relationship. There are two sides to every story. Whose to say that this domican man or woman could be the person for you. Its a gamble, when you open your heart to someone.

Well, DR is a third world country, it is not USA, Canada or Europe, our levels of poverty are higher than the countries were you come from. yes there are orphans , you are right in that, but we don't abandon our kids in the way that you portrait it.
is more the lack of oportunities, and the lack of a future that those parents see for their kids, that make those parents to give their kids to and orphanage, at least they will be able to eat and have some education. you don't see the orphans or kids living in the street in you country, because they live with foster parents, or live in goverment institutions with fancy names, but in the bottom , it is the same thing with different names and hide from the public eye, unfortunatelly, we don't have the resources they have in you country, there is the difference.

you mention that some mothers are only waiting for some gringo to hook and get some money or a ticket out of the country, well, you may be true in that, but instead of criticize you should think for a second, what made a human being do that kind of things..don't tell me , I got the answer, is called "survival".
I wonder what will you do, when all the doors are closed and you see not lights after the tunnel?.

Unlike you, we are economic travelers, and we have to travel to other lands in search of better things for our families and us, things we can't get in our land. I assure you that is not one dominican that want to live out of the country, for reason other than economics.

Of course, I don't expect you to understand this, after all, you must live it to understand it.

Orphanages?.this is a long one

I go away for a couple of days, and wow! You guys have been busy! We?re obviously straying a bit from the original topic, but I guess I don?t mind if you don?t. Okay, first of all Leonardo, I think you misunderstood what I said or at least presumed that I was saying more than I actually was. If you reread the portion of my post that you quoted, I think you?ll see what I mean:

A final side note on the family and friends issue ? many foreigners do not realize that it is not such an extremely uncommon thing in the DR for some children to be raised by extended family members or even in orphanages rather than by their mother (and father). Is your boyfriend introducing you to the people who actually raised him or to the people he may potentially see as having abandoned him? (and to whom he therefore may have a deep need to impress and prove something to)?

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Nowhere here did I say that being raised by an extended family or by an orphanage is necessarily bad. I simply said that it sometimes happens, that it may involve its own particular type of emotional baggage (mind you, we all grow up with emotional baggage of some sort), and that foreign women dating Dominican men may not realize this. I was simply speaking to how this misunderstanding can potentially affect an American-Dominican relationship, I was not making judgements about Dominican families.

Of course, as you say, there are orphans in the US as well. And as you may know, we not only have orphans, but we also have abandoned children, abused children, neglected children, etc. ? I know all too well that the United States is far from a paradise for all of its kids. I actually work with especially ?behaviorally problematic? foster children in the United States. Most of these children have been through foster home after foster home after foster home. These particular kids have had acute difficulty adjusting to their new foster homes because of problems within their new families or because of old, unaddressed scars the children are carrying with them from previous relationships. Is our system perfect? Absolutely not.

As for parental blame, when I see a child (American, Dominican, whatever) suffering from scars inflicted by his/her parents, of course I?m angry at the parents. But do I think they?re to blame? No, not exactly. They should be held accountable, yes, but I also believe that they should be helped ? many abusive/neglectful parents are well-meaning but simply don?t have the tools to raise their children in a healthy manner ? many are adults who themselves experienced abuse/neglect as children.

As for parents who abandon their children, there can be many factors that lead a parent to do this. As you suggested, Leonardo, economics certainly can play a role ? is the better parent the one who keeps a child he/she cannot feed or the one who places his/her child in an orphanage where the child will be fed, clothed, and educated? That?s not such an easy question. In the United States as well as in the Dominican Republic, economics can play a role in why parents give up their children. There are also questions of lifestyle?is it healthier for a child to be raised by a loving mother who works at night as a prostitute or for that child to be placed in an orphanage/foster home where he will be unaware of his mother?s occupation? Again, that?s not such an easy question to answer. In the United States as well as in the Dominican Republic, there are extremely complex reasons for why a child may end up in a foster home/orphanage. And although there are many American children in foster homes as well as many Dominican children in orphanages, for both countries this is the exception (even if a large one), but definitely not the norm.

Also as you said, Leonardo:

originally posted by leonardo1267
Yes , we are raise for extended family but is because there is a lot of love in the family, and every body is willing to help

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I completely agree with you. I said nothing about Dominican men being bad fathers, about Dominican women being bad mothers, or about extended families being bad. From my experience, most Dominican families, like most American families, are very loving and concerned about their children?s well being. In my opinion, being raised by an extended family is in itself no better or worse than being raised by a nuclear family (there are positive & negative aspects that go along with each), it just simply carries with it slightly different dynamics. My point was that if a foreign woman dating a Dominican man does not realize that families sometimes take on different forms in the Dominican Republic, she might misinterpret the meaning behind his introducing her to mami and papi. That was all I was saying.

Now, back to the original topic for just a minute , I?d be really interested in hearing what advice other people have when it comes to foreign women dating Dominican men. Although I have seen a large number of American-Dominican relationships, I certainly don?t have all the answers, and I?d love to hear some of the advice that all of you have from your experiences?those of you currently dating Dominican men as well as not. Thanks again for all of the opinions and insights?this is turning into an interesting discussion!

~Leja

Nowhere near an expert

Wait a moment for my reply.

Women are all the same. I have dated and "seen" women from El Salvador, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Higuey, Boca Chica, Capotillo, La Romana, Pittsburgh, Alma Rosa, el Bronx, Providence, Jersey City, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Little Rock, Kansas City, Las Ca?itas, Ensanche La Fe, San Jos? de Ocoa, Ironton (Ohio), Atlanta, and I've concluded that they are all the same. Oh, yeah, there is one from Iran who swears that she will love ONLY me. Yeah, and I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale. Todas son iguales. Sorry for the unsolicited cynicism.
Hmmn, now if I could just find a cibae?a from Mao...

so by your comment jose... you're basically genralizing all women and saying they can't love one man solely? quite a harsh statement i would say.

maybe there's a pattern with the women YOU date... but i wouldn't go as far as saying that all women are the way you describe them to be. it's like saying that all men are players... not true. the non-players are simply hiding somewhere... and when i find mine i'll let you know. lol

lee-lee, you are correct.

OK, I must admit that there are good women all over the place, I just don't believe them when they "promise" me their love. See, a couple of girls ruined everything for me. Now I just pretend to believe them, but WILL NOT be surprised if they fail to keep their promises. Wait a minute, what am I talking about? I forgot...hey, all the good women are taken! Is it true that ONLY the bad boys get the good girls? It's gotta be me. That's it.