The Philippines is home to Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) who are tagged as the country’s modern-day heroes. Ironically, they are far from home. They work in distant countries with the aim to provide a better future for their families.
Poverty, lack of work opportunities, low-paying jobs are some of the reasons why Filipinos go abroad. In 2018, the Survey on Overseas Filipinos (SOF) as conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed there are 2.3 million registered Overseas Contract Workers (OCWs) worldwide.
In search of greener pastures, many OFWs endure the separation. Luckily, communications become much easier with the aid of social media. Families can talk real-time using their cell phones or gadgets. Facebook, messenger among others have become efficient applications to lessen homesickness.
OFWs also find comfort in the friendships formed abroad. Unfortunately, some friendships become detrimental to their marital relationships back home. Adultery is a form of infidelity that causes OFW families apart.
Many OFWs have succumbed to temptation forgetting the ultimate reason why they are there in the first place — their families. Infidelity has become an OFW’s armor against homesickness. Some OFWs enter coterminous relationships. Meaning their relationship is as good as their work contract, it ends when they return to the Philippines. Some of them do not return to their families anymore.
Situations like these pinched our hearts. It is unfortunate that OFW families go through this home-wrecking experience. We cannot point accusing fingers on who is to blame why these things happened. We can only surmise the reasons behind such actions.
We have listed 8 reasons why OFWs commit adultery and they are as follows:
- Homesickness. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say. However, physical distance makes OFWs lonely. Meeting a fellow OFW in a foreign land is closer to home. This very thing keeps OFWs closer. The attempt to make each other happy sometimes results in the inevitable: illicit relationships.
- An escape to abusive relationships. OFWs find an excuse to leave an abusive spouse, especially when they find someone who makes them special, respected, and loved.
- OFWs as victims of infidelity themselves. Their spouses cheat on them while they work their asses off abroad so as a form of revenge, they make their erring spouse drink their own medicine, so to speak.
- Temporary freedom. This paves the way for OFWs to cheat. OFWs can flirt around without the prying eyes of their spouses.
- Singlehood. It is a known fact that when someone leaves the country for work, as in the case of male OFWs, they leave behind their marital status as well.
- Culture. The culture of adultery abroad is rampant, acceptable, and being tolerated. Thus many OFWs join the bandwagon without any guilt or remorse.
- Money matters. Many OFWs feel that they have become milking cows of their families and relatives at home. They feel tired of working for people who only think of the money they send each month.
- Feelings. They just change wherever, whenever.
There may be other reasons why OFWs commit adultery. Whether they are valid or not, adultery is punishable under the Philippine law.
Not only that, adultery destroys the very essence of why people work overseas: the family. The mere mention of the family should be enough reason to stop.
