The problem is that there is an unequal power dynamic (at least here in China.)
These teachers are not dating other teachers. They are not dating independent women with varied life experiences looking for an equal partner. They are not dating people who- like themselves- have jobs, ex’s, savings accounts, etc.
They are dating mixed up teenage or young early twenties students with a maturity level far lower than we’d expect of teenagers.
In China, young people in generally are less mature. Students go to school until late at night throughout high school. So they have not developed hobbies, dated, held part-time jobs or done any of the things that we expect young adults to have done. In college they live in guarded sex-segregated dorms with gates locked and lights out at eleven. It’s not unusual for students to be forbidden to leave campus during the week. Even when that’s not the rule, it ends up being the norm. My female freshman students reported that during the last year, most of them only went to my small cities downtown area (a ten minute walk from campus) once or twice. mostly because they are afraid of non-existent crime.
It is VERY different than an American’s college experience!
Since women in my part of China get married as soon out of college as possible, and most have a long-term fiancé/boyfriend well before then, that means that the guys here are dating girls in the 18-22 age range. There are no women in their mid-twenties age range to date.
That’s too young. My college students barely have a middle school maturity level. They giggle uncontrollably when I mention someone in a book getting pregnant. They have never been out of town without their parents, They have never earned their own money. Most of them have never dated. Remember, these kids are too scared to go downtown in a tiny city with almost no crime.
Suddenly swoops in this exotic foreigner. And even more exciting- that foreigner likes them! He shows them the attention they aren’t getting from their equally immature male classmates and their chronically overworked parents. He makes them feel mature by teaching them English cuss words and how to drink beer. He buys them clothes they could never afford and takes them to movies and restaurants. He teaches them about sex. Most of them are virgins or have only had one or two awkward high-school style sexual experiences.
They fall in love. They fall hard, middle school style. They are picking out baby names and doodling hearts in their notebooks. They drop their friends and shrug off their families to spend all of their afternoons in this foreigner’s bed. It’s full on obsession.
And then he gets bored and picks out a new girl.
It’s devastating. And the ends of these relationships get ugly. We are talking tears, a hundred answering machine messages, suicide threats, and everything else you’d expect from a scorned infatuated middle school student.
The guys who take advantage of women who are signifigantly less mature than them, mislead them into believing it is a relationship among equals with a shared goal, and them leave them high and dry when they get bored are predators, pure and simple. It’s not right.
I have no beef with people who date girls their own age, who make it clear if they have no intention of the relationship lasting more than a few months, who make it clear if they are not in love and are not going to fall in love (and do not continue the relationship if the woman really doesn’t understand that), who do not encourage their girlfriends to become infatuated when they are not equally infatuated, and who take care of the messes they make with these women’s lives when they are finished. But in my experience most guys don’t. They get want they want, go on and on about how they live in a virtual paradise where the girls are just throwing themselves at them, and don’t give a fuck what the girls they are screwing get out of it.