Okay, caveats first:
None of this information is current in the social context sense, because it is all about people I first knew thirty years ago. The people themselves are exceptional in a number of ways, and may not be representative of population averages then, or now.
I only ever met one “mail order bride” in my life. She married a guy I knew in college. He was a sweet, shy, brilliant man, with absolutely no social graces. She was a Cambodian. (Think about Cambodia in the nineteen seventies.) He answered an ad in a not quite pornographic meet an Asian woman magazine of the period. They exchanged three letters each, over less than six months. He agreed to pay her passage to Canada, which had more amenable laws for immigration at the time. He went to Canada to meet her. They got married, and moved back to the US.
She was a dutiful and subservient spouse, with fear in her eyes, and her head habitually bowed. He was absolutely enthralled by the fact that she was stunningly beautiful, and seemed to fairly worship him. Ten years went by. She got her Masters in Business Administration. She had three children, girls, all just beautiful, all smart, all getting fantastic grades in school, and all just deferential to their dad, but downright brassy to the rest of the world. He was still doing whatever utterly secret thing he did for whatever very quiet branch of the US Government it is that he works for. He was very happy, and believed in his deepest self that she was the entire reason that he was not a desperate, lonely, and probably suicidal Cave Geek.
Five years ago, the family (now five children, mostly adults) were planning to take their sailing ship back to Cambodia, on a world tour. Mom is a work at home consultant, Dad still some kind of REMF Spook. Said sailing ship is a big assed sea going thing, although I know nothing about boats. It looks expensive to me. But the thread specific thing is that they are wildly happy, she is hardly “less well educated and a lot less well off financially” than he is now, although she certainly was when the got married. Do they have real love? Hell, no one but they know if they do. But they seem to me to be as happy as any “childhood sweethearts who met at the church social” couple I know.
Understanding the nature of your own marriage is pretty tough. Making judgments of other peoples marriages is just ludicrous.
Tris