Third Culture.
That’s how Jakub Barc refers to the book he recently published online. No, it’s not a science fiction novel about traveling to a distant world and getting captured by snarling aliens. Nor is it a lesson on cooking exotic third-world foods.
In fact, the 46-page pamphlet is about dating a particular brand of woman; namely, single Filipino moms. Which interests me personally because, well, I once married one of them. But more about that later.
Barc, 40, first embarked on his long journey toward expertise in this esoteric field back in 2013 when he stuffed his belongings into a backpack and bought a one-way ticket to Indonesia from his native Poland. Wait, I can hear you objecting; what in the you-know-what does that have to do with single moms in the Philippines? Ok, Ok, I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but please hear me out.
Six months of backpacking in Southeast Asia convinced the restless young Pole to make that region his home. And so he did: first in Indonesia and, since 2021, here the Philippines. More specifically, Cebu, where he now works as a business consultant for a company based in Europe.
And in his spare time dates lots of Filipinas. They haven’t all been moms. His first girlfriend, in fact, was your run-of-the-mill gorgeous young woman with no major attachments except to her parents, siblings, first-second-and-third cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and, well, you get the picture. That relationship lasted a year.
Then he met his next sweetheart; a 35-year-old with two little girls. And it was with her, Barc says, that he “unwittingly entered the single mom realm.” Which actually isn’t all that surprising since, according to his well-documented book, 24-25% of all Filipino women are single moms. Why? Because, Barc writes, the country doesn’t allow divorce and seldom enforces child support laws, which means “women can’t legally exit bad marriages, and men can just leave without legal consequences.” So the Filipino dating market features loads of, yup, single moms.
I once even married one myself. Having become acquainted on a dating website, I rushed to Zamboanga City to meet her and her then-one-year-old daughter. Both of them eventually emigrated to California. Then, after three years of what I thought was a long-term commitment, she thanked me for the green card and said she’d met someone better.
Barc’s relationship didn’t last even that long. For a year-and-a-half, he says, everything went swimmingly with his girlfriend, her parents, and her daughters. Then, voila, the couple realized they had different priorities and went their separate ways.
From that experience, though, came the inspiration for his booklet entitled She’s More Than What They Told You. It’s about the joys, challenges, and complexities of being a foreigner dating a single Filippino mom. And at its center lies a simple concept: that to succeed you must rely, not just on his culture or hers, but on a shared space including elements of both. A space Barc calls the Third Culture.
“You need to create your own way of doing things,” he explains; a sort of “middle ground” fostering unity, compromise, sensitivity, and, most of all, shared and effective communication.
I can vouch for that. After 18 years of marriage to my second Filipino wife—who, incidentally, didn’t attain motherhood until after we became a pair—I can attest to the wisdom of his words. And second much of the advice offered in the book’s seven chapters: Why This Was Written; Who Filipina Single Moms Actually Are; Why They Became Single Moms; The Myths, Addressed Directly; The Legal Landscape, Plainly Explained; What the Right Man Looks Like; and What Third Culture Is.
The guide is available free at https://thirdculture.love/Third_Culture_Guide.pdf where those interested can also soon register for a paid online course opening in November. And what of Barc’s own dating experiences since coming up with his grand Third Culture concept?
“Oh,” he confesses, “I haven’t had a date in three months; I’m too busy with the book.”
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist and author with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book is Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
