Like a finger in the eye!..(I LOVE you...but I don't want to see you any more). Here's my advise, and this may piss off a few woman, and coming from a 49 year old happily married for *28* years. GET AWAY FROM AMERICAN WOMAN. they've been culturized, as soon as the puppy love wares off, it's time to move on. Walking away, divorce is the accepted way of life now. My wife is German, stubborn, hard headed...just like me. The best prospects for marriage now are foreign woman. I do realize there are still a *very* few woman left that are worth the effort, but they are far and few inbetween.
On the bright side, hey, you weren't married so she won't be taking half your stuff, your house and your money.
Well, that's ONE way of looking at it... but then again, you have to ask yourself (not so much with a German woman from a similar level of affluence, but with a foreign wife from a poorer nation) "Is she marrying ME, or is she just marrying to get the GREEN CARD?"
The REAL trick nowdays is finding someone who's worth a d@mn, that's for sure... as time goes by, seems like people are just sorrier and sorrier-- I know we used to have renters in our farmhouse at Shiner, and over the decades as I grew up and eventually graduated and ran the farms for my grandmother and helped her with it, we just kept getting lousier and lousier people... kinda goes hand in hand with the general degeneration of society at large... Finally got SO bad that I convinced her to just quit renting the farmhouse altogether-- better to sit empty and risk rotting down or burning down than have scumbags "rent" it for six months to a year, get behind in their rent, take advantage of your attempts to "help" them by allowing them to "catch up" and have them move out and destroy the place, leaving you with a repair bill that was as much or more than they paid the entire time they were there... IOW, a break-even situation at best... just not worth the time/trouble/effort.
Much the same is true of dating... most of the people I went to school with were turds or alcoholics or dope smokers or sex-crazed or just general scumbags... There were basically only about maybe a half-dozen people I would even associate with when I was in school, because MOST of my schoolmates morals were so non-existant. I only dated two girls when I was in high school-- a girl I went to church with from time to time, and a sister of one of my friends...
When I started dating, I did internet dating... I'd go to dating sites, most church-affiliated or 'Christian pen-pal and dating' type sites, and started off being "pen-pals". You get to know people first, and find out about them... either you find things in common and interest grows, or it doesn't... if you're "not her type" or whatever, then it's usually over and done with after a few emails or in a couple weeks or so. IF there's potential there, you get to know each other better, and then get together... IMHO a MUCH better way of doing it than going to bars or dances or whatever, where you're likely only to meet barflies, alcoholics, or 'loose women', or people with dissimilar moral and ethical views and values than yourself.
I met a lot of girls online... online "dating" was just getting started good when I was looking back in the mid-late 90's... Even looking for women with similar moral standards as myself, it was still like looking for a needle in a haystack-- I wrote to many dozens of girls, met probably a couple dozen, and dated about a dozen or so over a period of a few years... it was definitely a learning experience-- about myself, as well as about the female half of the species... Even when you find someone that shares your moral and ethical standards, finding one with their head screwed on straight is a whole other matter. I dated a couple girls who were "23 going on 14" as I called it... they had "Princess Syndrome" where they were still in this starry-eyed teenager mode where they were utterly convinced that they'd meet Prince Charming, who'd be handsome, happy, wealthy, and wise, who'd sweep them off their feet, buy them everything they ever dreamed of, and live happily ever after... They hadn't discovered this thing called "REAL LIFE" where that sort of thing just doesn't happen, or doesn't happen very often... and some of them hadn't realized that they weren't likely to get that either... having a nose like a doorknob and being a plain-Jane gal, or being a 5-3 girl weighing 200 pounds doesn't exactly have Prince Charmings lining up outside your door... (though I could see past that sort of thing, but the Prince Charming type guys usually don't... they want Snow Whites or Sleeping Beauties or Princess Jasmine's... IOW, HOT CHICKS!! I parted ways with one girl who we were talking about getting engaged to, because she was "embarrassed" by me-- she was always trying to change me, to make me more acceptable to her "friends", who were all upper-crust types... the "beautiful people", young professional executive types and such that look like they belong on TV... fit and trim and very refined... whereas my girlfriend who was SO desperate to fit in with them and gain their approval was 5-3 and 200 pounds, and I was 6-1 and 250 pounds at the time, and very much a "country boy" whereas she was a young teacher working at the church school (and thus near penniless). I realized that she wanted the 'big house on the hill' and the "new Mercedes in the garage", and I could care less about those things-- so long as I have a vehicle that runs and nice quiet home in the country, and can do what I like, I'm happy...
In the rampant commercialism, consumerism type society we've become, especially now with the "me generation" mentality and "entitlement" philosophy that seems to drive most people, it's darn hard to find someone who's worth a darn... VERY hard...
BUT, you have to KEEP LOOKING. It's true you MAY find a diamond in the local bar, just like you MIGHT find a diamond sifting through acres of mud in central Arkansas... BUT your odds are MUCH BETTER looking in places where people with the kinds of beliefs and values you want in a mate are more likely to be... and it makes NO sense to 'settle' for someone who doesn't share your values, on the hope that you'll change them later... I read a pamphlet one time on dating at church when I was a teenager, and something it said has stuck with me all these years-- "If you want a Cadillac, go GET a Cadillac-- don't get a busted Chevy and try to MAKE it into a Cadillac". IOW, if you date someone who's lousy, they are likely going to REMAIN lousy, despite your best efforts to change them. People have to WANT to change, on their OWN, and attempting to "force" someone to change, or to "guide" them or "lead" them to change from outside usually never works. "Helping" someone is one thing, but basically, you don't want to get into a situation where you're trying to MAKE someone into the type of person you want to marry... because the odds are incalculably high against it working.
The other thing I always thought was a good idea was, "don't date someone you wouldn't consider marrying." Now, sure, you go out with someone you hardly know, and get to know them over time, both good and bad things.... but if it comes out that there are problems that would preclude you marrying them, then it's better to part company rather than continuing a relationship that will hurt more to end later on, or worse yet, lead to an incompatible marriage that ends in failure and divorce. There were a few girls I dated that I figured out, over time, that I wouldn't marry, or if I *did* marry, I'd have a miserable and lousy life... so I ended it... and I'm sure there were more than a few that figured out that I wasn't ambitious enough for them, or not as driven to be rich or whatever, as they wanted to be, and thus wouldn't be a good match for them, either, and THEY ended it.
The point is, you have to STICK WITH IT and just keep searching until you find that special one, the one where all the stars align and things just "click"... at that point, it will "just happen" with very little help from either of you... (not to say it requires NO effort, but you definitely will not have to "force it" to happen, to be sure!) And believe me, the rewards are well worth the effort...
"Be not unequally yoked..." Learn it, live it... it's worth it...
Later! OL JR