What people should or should not do is always based on the rule book in accordance with the society to which we were brought up.

It is not a relationship based on sex, that is something that is growing and improving with the mutual enjoyment of each others company, and with that a gradual but true love.

There are couples that are engaged for 6/7 years that get divorced after a year or two of marraige, so why wait if it is something I have not yet tried, I don't have much to lose and it conforms with the culture of her family - the one who have been my hosts.

I am assuming that the divorce rate is higher in the west tha it is here and that more effort is put into a relationship.

Physically, I still look at her with the same awe that I did from the start, and I know she won't stay like that for long but now the actual and genuine love has started to develp after 4 months, that doesn't matter.

On Slimboy's thread somebody said something about familiarity and security keeping a relationship solid even after the love has idled into like, or even tolerance.

Finally, I can see why many relationships don't work in Thailand. As westerners who have spent considerable time in Asia we have become used to doing what we want and getting what we want and it can make us selfish, it is also so so so easy to be unfaithful.

Sandra is the first very attractive woman I have been with that I have felt safe with. I don't feel I would lose her to a richer or more handsome man, i can't explain this. Maybe because she's had all that working in HK and she knows a Brad Pitt look-a-like wouldn't make her secure as he would be a fanny magnet to potential rivals.

I am beyond any hope of a 'normal' relationship/engagement/marraige with a middle class British girl called Emma or Kate who works as an estate agent and drives a Renault Clio. "So how many girls have you slept with?" Come on mum and dad, that just isn't going to happen.

So I should not lose this chance, and I have made the decision with the pressure off and not under the whim of pregnancy, though I am not out of the woods yet in that department and if she is then she is, i'll stay anyway.