I was contacted by a young woman from overseas asking me a delicate question. I wasn’t sure if she was serious but also wouldn’t want to take the risk to offend her. Read how I have solved the split.
Dear Subscriber,
it took me some time and effort to come up with the information below so I would like to share it with all the other women out there as I wouldn’t like to have to go through my stack of data once again due to future requests. Hence I will publish your question and my answer anonymously, so that you don’t have to worry about someone recognizing you. But be aware that comments of other users might be of unpleasant nature and therefore you shouldn’t read them if you don’t feel up to this kind of anonymous feedback. As you have allowed me, I have been as honest as possible. Here we go…
I was Asked
I was wondering what are my chances in finding a future spouse there. Im a very beautiful lighter skinned African American. Im nearly whiter than my ex white boyfriends if not the same color. How likely is it for me to find a mate in 4 weeks? Would German men be open to marrying me? Please be very honest.
My Answer
that‘s a tough question and as I am not really an expert in this field my mere opinion would not contribute any reliable information. But let me approach your problem from an analytical point of view spiced with a bit of wisdom that I‘ve gathered over the last 40 years. Are you ready?
Let‘s take a look at some facts. There are 81,8 Million Germans of which 50% are of male gender. Of those approx. 16,7mio are between the age of 20 and 50 which I simply assume might be your preferred age-range.
Now, there were ~378.000 marriages in 2011. Of those ~24,800 were marriages of German men with non-German women or roughly 6,5%.
The Top 10
Unfortunately the US do not rank among the top 10 of nationalities preferred by German men. That means that less than 539 marriages might have involved females from the US. That‘s lowering the odds to 0.14% for marrying a German guy.
So much for the statistical chances of getting a German guy. Now let‘s take a quick look at the odds of keeping him for a while before spreading the wisdom:
Everything Ends
While there were 24,800 new binational marriages (German male, non-German female) ~10,200 old ones were divorced in 2011. It took them 14,5 years in average to get divorced and women usually turned 42 before they took this step. Please take this under consideration for your long term planning. You can prolong this period significantly by joining almost any monogamous religious cult and by moving to a rural area with not more than 100,000 inhabitants. Also living together before marrying is beneficial to the length of your marriage unless your cult disapproves this lifeform. You should also consider to wait until you turn 30 (if not already) as with every year before getting married your chance of getting divorced sinks by 7% (men 2%). The final measure to undertake against getting divorced is having a child (minus 40%).
Interlude
So as you can see it is not that easy for a woman of your origin to find a willing groom and it takes a little bit of planning to keep one should you be lucky enough to have found one. But that‘s just the numbers. Let‘s breathe some life(experience) into them:
Odem
A few words on my background. I was actively married to a Polish woman (Top nationality in the ranking of non-German partners) for ~2.5 years from 2001-2003 when I turned 29. My divorce came through in 2009. I have a 12 year old son, am an atheist and live in the biggest city of Germany. So not all the above factors apply. We lived together for 6 months before marrying. My parents, though having had their period of separation, are still married, although I wouldn‘t take them as THE ideal couple. That‘s fourty years now. My grandparents have lived together for over sixty years until my Grandfather died happily.
Now, people marry out of different reasons. Let‘s ignore ,love‘ for now as it rarely is what people claim it is and even if it were what people claim it is, it can not overcome grave gaps in a couple’s attitudes and worldviews.
Die Katze im Sack
The question here is, why would you want to marry a German man, I mean why not an Italian or a Turkish one, not to speak of an US-citizen? Have you got any idea about the German culture and relationship traditions? What requirements besides being ,German‘ would HE have to fullfill? And would you like to have any friends besides your husband? Should they also be German? How would you deal with German culture that might seem pretty odd to you at times compared to your own.
Let me just take a quick look into your direction: What do you bring with you into the marriage? Why should HE marry you? I mean besides maybe being a good looking female of younger age.
Epilogue
Well, I hope to have answered your question insofar as my arguendo might have led you to overthink your idea of marrying a German man one more time to be prepared for the eventualities that might come up when undertaking such an endeavor. I haven’t put under consideration the fact that you would like to find your future husband in the short period of four weeks, which surely doesn’t contribute to the chances of getting things done the way you’d like to.
In any case I wish you all the luck you need and hope to be invited to the wedding in case you find Herrn Richtig.
Sources
- https://www.focus.de/panorama/boulevard/gesellschaft-welche-ehe-haelt-wie-lange_aid_194737.html
- Eheschließungen von Deutschen mit Ausländern
- https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-situation-in-deutschland/61538/altersgruppen