I just want to rant about Sg males
I saw an answer on Quora and I wanted to write as well as the author Patricia but I couldn’t so I am sharing it here because it is 100% what being married to a Sg male is like:
I am a Singapore PR who is a Malaysian only by birth. Otherwise, I live in Singapore all my life.
I married and divorced two Singaporean men so I would deem myself rather qualified to provide some insights about this issue.
I had thought that Singaporean Chinese would mostly share similar values where marriage and child-raising are concerned. I must say Singaporean men generally adopt only values that are beneficial to them.
They tend to be your perfect boyfriends at first. I understand that everybody will put their best foot forward to impress on dates, but to lie that you have the same values and beliefs about sharing housework, household expenses and child raising is so wrong.
A relationship before marriage is meant to explore the possibility of spending the rest of your life together, but Singaporean men tend to be very shortsighted. They just want to get married for their own selfish reasons. They don’t care if what they are doing destroy lives.
I would generalise Singaporean men based on my own experience and observation of some of my friends’ husbands:
They lack a sense of responsibility. This trait was evident in both of the men that I divorced. The first one did not see the relevance of having a house when you have a child while the second one didn’t see the relevance of having a car to ferry kids from places to places. I was the one who was taking public transport fetching and sending the kids to different places while he cabbed to and from everywhere he went.
They are immature. Both men could not resolve conflicts in a mature way. The first one would avoid talking about the issues that we had problems with. The other one would shout and scream at me or run away during a fight. Neither of them could sit down and carry out a proper conversation to resolve problems.
They are lazy. Both men didn’t lift a finger to do housework. Both their mothers were working mothers who after work would return home to do housework. They expected me to do the same.
They expect their wives to share half or more of the household expenses since their wives work. Singaporean men would quote gender equality for this. They would sneer at you,”Haven’t you women been fighting for equality? You should pay at least half of what we men pay.” But the housework and child-minding are deemed as a “woman’s job” and men have no share in them.
They expect their wives to look young and beautiful after having to work, give birth, do housework and supervise the kids. While I was able to look my part, I can’t say the same for the men. They started to grow fat after marriage due to laziness. The second one was near obese and was advised by the doc to keep his weight down.
They see marriage as the destination. They stop courting or romancing their wives after the wedding because they feel that they have achieved the aim of getting a free maid-cum-mother-cum-someone-to-sleep-with. This is where they tell you, ”Women ought to stop expecting to be treated like a princess.”
They do not share the load. Despite being a developed country, Singaporean men are backward in their thinking when it comes to women. They still expect women to play their traditional roles as a full time mother as well as the new role of a working woman. Most women who marry Singaporean men work from morning till evening and rush home to tend to their kids and do housework till night. And men would still expect their wives to please them in bed when the wives finally get to rest, before they wake up 6h later to get ready for work the next day.
They are unfaithful. In Singapore, it’s very common to have divorces filed due to husband’s infidelity. I am not saying that all women are faithful but the divorces around me are due to men’s unfaithfulness.
They are stingy and petty/They can’t keep up with the cost of living in Singapore. Singaporean men put up a good act before they marry the women. They act gentlemanly footing bills for every meal and everything. They would also tell the women that it’s the men’s duty to feed the family. After marriage, they complain about having to pay for everything. This is where you get the “Singaporean women are materialistic” because they find it stressful to have to pay for the groceries and household bills. When women pay off their credit card debts, gambling debts for them, or take over the renovation loan or housing loan solely, they say the women are living off them because they are paying for groceries.
They are a nightmare to marry. Basically, Singaporean men are not suitable candidates for marriage. They are looking for a new mother to take care of them, not a wife or a partner for life.
In a nutshell, Singaporean women tend to see marrying a Singaporean man as increasing their cost of living while lowering their standard of living – which Singaporean men would label as being “materialistic”. Singaporean men think it’s totally justified for women to suffer in a marriage because they believe that women are “made for men”. They don’t see what women do as “sacrifices” because they think it’s what women ought to do so they are not even appreciative, grateful or ashamed that a women suffer with them after marriage.
I must qualify that not all Singaporean men fall into my description of a typical Singaporean men. I have seen good Christian men exhibiting traditional values and shouldering the traditional father’s duty of putting the food on the table while the wife stays home to care for the kids. These marriages are often blissful and enviable. However, I would classify such marriages as the minority.
And I am not typing these out of bitterness or resentment. It’s a collection of my experience and observation from the marriages around me. Feel free to disagree but I will stand by my view.
