DEAR EMILY,

I am a 48-year-old widow with four grown-up kids.

I fell in love with a Middle Eastern guy I met online. He is only 20 years old. We have been Internet lovers for almost one year now. We chat through Skype three to four hours almost every day.

We’ve decided to get married and he will come and live with me in the Philippines. He is Muslim, but it’s no problem since the Catholic Church allows mixed marriages. He is open to a prenup and there’s really no problem with that as he will sign anything, he told me. All he wants is to work and study at the same time.

He requests, though, that he send part of his earnings to his family back home, but that I will get the bigger share of what he will invest in the Philippines. He is not rich but not poor either. He belongs to the top three in his graduating class.

My kids are not so happy, but they are not adamantly against it, either, because they know there is a prenup.

My concern is what my friends in my social circle, religious community, and former in-laws will say when they hear I’ll marry this young guy. You see, I am regarded as a conservative, no-nonsense type.

I tried breaking up with him so many times because I think I will go crazy from all my fears. But he really makes me happy.

DEMI

There are guys who can shepherd a family at age 14, while others are still immature at 51, never growing up and continuing to cling to mommy’s skirt at the slightest discomfort. There truly are no clear-cut rules for going into marriage. Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks?

Have you ever met this Middle Eastern guy? If not, are you simply basing the absoluteness of your feelings on your interminable Skype conversations?

This is not to undervalue the sincerity of his intentions, but words are cheap, especially when they are just delightful-sounding flotsam uttered in cyberspace. At 20, he is just barely out of his teens.

But love is love, no matter if it can also be misconstrued as lust. Or loneliness. Or excitement. Even so, who is to decipher what you truly feel for him?

Does the guy have any idea how free and independent-minded Filipino women are? How worlds apart they are culturally from the women in his country?

Is marriage really the next best leap for you two? Don’t you want to get to know each other better in person?

You say you’re going “crazy from all your fears” now. Wait till you really go crazy meeting reality in the face. You may go bonkers over the surprise awaiting you.

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