Reader question: Does work take precedence over love in Thailand?

Sorry but the question doesn't seem quite right to me, maybe you're asking whether your partner puts her work above love. How 2 people relate to each other and react to each other depends of course on their personality and situation. You can't steal how "the Belgian", "the Dutchman" or "the Thai" is, because there is none. The Belgian/Dutch/Thai does not exist, the individual does.

You may have known or noticed that people in Thailand have a lot fewer vacation days, often only official days off. Of course it depends on the job... a better job has a higher salary and other benefits such as vacation days. So I assume for the sake of convenience that your girlfriend has few vacation days or other employment rights, it is hard work for the average Thai. You don't want to jeopardize your job, there has to be something on the table... Now I wasn't there, but it doesn't seem strange to me that continuing to work weighed very heavily, but that doesn't mean that love is less important but you have to set priorities. At a later time (better job, migration to Belgium, etc.) some pressure will be released, hopefully leaving more time for you and love.

In Europe we are often well endowed with relatively many vacation days, so you can easily go on holiday for 3-4 weeks without any worries. Only you (you together!!) can determine whether the love is enough, but I don't see any red signals yet. Of course, it is also normal for your partner to worry about her family. The social system is also of little value, so the children often have to support or fully support their parents. There is plenty written about that on this blog. Follow your heart (enjoy the love and attention), use your mind too: if you don't feel good about something, see if that gut feeling is due to being unfamiliar with each other's culture and situation OR if something is not normal, if alarm bells are ringing start ringing, then you know enough: if you get the idea that her family is more important than you are to her, or if she is asking for a lot and your wallet seems more important, then you should take a closer look at how the relationship is going. now stands for. The other way around, of course, she also doesn't know whether all your intentions and expressions are completely sincere. Assume the good, enjoy yourself, but don't be fooled in case you or she is unlucky enough to have met a “wrong person”. But with what you write here I mainly say: enjoy the limited time you have together, it's difficult enough for both of you, isn't it? 🙂

Dear French,
You have to keep work and private life (love) separate from each other everywhere in the world, so the question of work over love does not apply.
Without going too much into the differences, I don't have to explain to you that having a job in Thailand is nothing like ours in the west!

You have been to Thailand for the first time after 9 weeks of chatting and Skype.
Were you already familiar with the country and culture? If not, I would advise you to delve into this a bit more, here on the TB it is also full of good and of course less good advice.

Because if I read it like this you are going very fast and without pointing the finger, the sentence of she tells me that she is unhappy because of her work but has to take care of her family, I have heard that before.
And love sometimes makes blind, I don't mean to say that this is the case in your case.

But the fact that you ask how can I win her heart says that it's not mutual yet.
My advice would be to let the relationship develop at its own pace.

greeting

haha, exactly the opposite here

I had been looking forward to a week together with my beloved, but then she had to go to Bali for four days from work.

She unhappy and wanted to tell her boss that she really couldn't. I think she should prioritize her job.

So she wants to choose love, I think her work is more important.