I'm Dave Grant. I've spent fifteen years going back and forth to the Philippines, and I wrote down everything I wish somebody had handed me before my first flight, instead of the forum posts and matchmaking-tour marketing I actually had to work it out from.
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Every man who ends up here has a version of the same story. He's tired, not of women, of a dating market back home that stopped rewarding basic kindness and consistency. He's not looking for a fantasy. He's looking for something that used to be ordinary, before dating turned into a marketplace where everybody's holding out for a better offer that never comes.
That tiredness is real. So is what happens next: a first trip that feels like relief mistaken for love, a relationship built too fast on that relief, and, for a lot of men, a version of the disaster stories you've already half-heard about — the retirement savings, the house that never got finished, the family that turned out to be one-directional.
Every chapter carries the same honest shape: a short entry in my own voice, What I've seen (a real pattern, never a specific woman's name), What to do with every step labeled by cost, and, in most chapters, The honest part — the contrarian, unflattering truth the rest of the internet skips.
Why the Philippines and why now, the apps and sites that actually work, meeting a good woman beyond the apps, the myth of "the most faithful province," the stereotype that's dead wrong, the age gap conversation, spotting a gold digger before it costs you, and her side of the story.
Where to live and the real cost of living, visas and paperwork without a lawyer's price tag, stretching a pension without looking like a target, the boots-on-the-ground hacks, and how the Philippines compares to Thailand, Vietnam and Colombia.
Why her family isn't optional, the money conversation, son-in-law or ATM, courtship customs, the K-1 visa and green card step by step, when she comes home, two households one family, if you just want to have fun honestly, the red flags that aren't hers, and the tone that gets you nowhere.
What critics get right and what they don't, when it works and when it doesn't, the bar you don't want to become, and fifteen years later — what I'd tell my younger self.
Not a mail-order bride catalog, not a sex tourism guide, not a substitute for a real immigration lawyer, and not a promise that any specific relationship will work out. It's what I'd tell a friend at my own kitchen table in Cebu, the good parts and the bad ones, in that order when the order matters.
I'm seventy years old. I ran an HVAC business for thirty years before I ever got on a plane. Divorced from my first wife after twenty-two years, I went back and forth to the Philippines for a decade and a half, got it wrong once with a relationship I call Elena, and got it right with a woman named Grace, who I've been with for seven years now. My son Kevin didn't speak to me for almost a year when I told him I was serious about someone. He calls to ask about her by name now.
Every chapter in this book is built on that, and on real accounts from the actual community of men living this life — not secondhand assumptions, not a matchmaking tour's marketing copy.
$49.99 is the regular price. $27 is the launch price while the book keeps growing.
No. It's a guide to dating and living honestly in the Philippines, including an entire chapter on why the "leverage and replaceable" mindset fails on its own terms. There's no catalog, no matchmaking service, and no promise attached.
No. Part 1 is written for a man who's still deciding whether any of this is for him. The whole book is built to be read before you go, not after you've already made the expensive mistakes.
A PDF laid out like a printed book, and an EPUB for e-readers, tablets and phones. Both arrive by email within a minute or two of paying. No copy protection.
Reach out through the contact link on the Gumroad product page and I'll sort it out directly.