Establishing a career abroad can be rather intimidating to Russian women because of the language barrier. Unless her language skills are perfect, she will certainly not be thinking about finding a job in the first few months of her stay which is recommended anyway because she will need time to get adjusted to the new country, new setting, and new customs. However, once she has adjusted and gained enough confidence that she can find a job and will be able to cope with it, she might surprise you with her effort and vigor.
If your lady decides to build a career when she moves to your country, she will need you to support her throughout the process. Degrees from Russia are not recognized abroad, so your wife will most likely not be able to work in the same field as she did at home or she will require quite additional training, learning or practice before she is able to hold the same position as she did at home. For example, medical degrees from Russia are certainly not accepted abroad, and if your woman will be interested in a medical field, she will probably have to settle for a much lower position in the hospital and can definitely expect additional internships, exams, and studies before she can advance.
A lot can also depend on the family status and the age of your Russian bride. Older women seem to be more content with having modest, sometimes part-time, jobs which allow them to take care of their family in Russia as well as to contribute to the family budget. If you are marrying a younger woman, you should be prepared that she will be interested to continue her education and, naturally, go on to have a career of her own. Most women see a job as a way to keep their social and intellectual abilities sharp as well as a way to not feel completely dependent on their husband. However, most women from Russia will rarely make their career a priority and certainly will not let it get in the way of family needs (i.e. after having a baby most women will want to stay at home with the child as long as possible). Naturally, there will be some women who expect to be taken care of by their mates and will not be interested in work once married.
How can you know what to expect? The answer is very simple – bring it up in your communication/correspondence. Of course, you should be tactful. Do not say that you expect your wife to pay her own expenses; it can make a woman feel insecure, especially when she does not know if she will be able to find a job. But you can easily ask a woman you are writing to how she sees her future after marriage, if she is interested to continue her career after getting married, etc. You can tell her that you are OK either way.
If you choose not to discuss the issue prior to marriage, you should wait to discuss her possible activities and plans until your Russian bride becomes comfortable with the new home and environment. If both of you see her as a housewife, it is a good idea for her to get involved in community or charity work. If both of you are willing for her to work, she might look for a simple part-time job before moving on to something more serious. The main advantage of this approach lies in finding an activity for your lady to keep her busy (read: not bored and home sick), to provide language practice, to make her comfortable in the new surroundings without you by her side 24/7, and to help her meet new people.
Her answer in most cases will be that she wants to be involved in something, and very often you will find women interested in establishing their own business – something they might not have had a chance to do at home, something that might be a lot easier to set up in your country than it was in her own. It is a very good idea because she might just be able to create something unique thanks to her exposure to different culture and ideas. Normally women prefer to stay within service businesses such as a café or a restaurant, a beauty salon or a child care center.
Introducing your Russian bride to family and friends
After you and your Russian bride have been together for a while, time will come for you to introduce her to your family and friends. This can be a fairly stressful ordeal for all parties involved. Here I will give you a few suggestions on how to prepare for this occasion and make it go as smooth as possible.
You will want to make sure that everyone involved is prepared for this meeting, including your Russian bride. You can help her by discussing your family and friends long before she meets them in person. Show her their photos; describe briefly what each person is like. Tell her the most outstanding things about each member of the family – it will help her make associations to remember people better. You may share likes and dislikes of each person, information about their families, careers, etc. It is also important to help her remember the names of the people she will be meeting – coming from a different culture it can be a challenge; helping your sweetheart remember everyone’s names properly will save your sweetheart a lot of embarrassment and discomfort. If she is not fluent in the language, you should also take the time to teach her a few basic phrases or slang words which are used during small talk – it will make her feel more comfortable during the introduction. Doing all these things will help you Russian lady feel more confident because she will know what to expect.
You also must prepare your family for the meeting. Describe your sweetheart to them – share where she is from, tell them some things that you like the most about her, describe her most attractive traits, tell them how you’ve met. All these things will help your family and friends get to know your bride before meeting her in person and create a positive image of her because they will see her through your eyes. It is also important that you take time to talk about cultural differences. Make sure your family and friends are aware of the language issues if they exist: if your sweetheart does not know your native tongue, it will take an effort from all the native speakers (you, first of all!) to make sure she does not feel excluded from the conversation; if she has basic language skills, you might need to warn your friends and family that they should talk a bit slower, make them aware of differences in pronunciations and difficulties of understanding accents, etc. Share with them some information about the culture your sweetheart is coming from – what are some things unique to her home and family, what some of her home country traditions are, etc. It will not only make your friends and family feel like they know your Russian bride better, but also give them something to talk to her about when they finally meet.
Naturally, you will be the main conductor of the event. Being familiar with both parties, it will be up to you to make sure everything goes smoothly. Be prepared that it might be stressful and will require a lot of participation and patience on your part. Introduction of your Russian lady to your family and friends will require a lot of preliminary work from you: getting both sides acquainted with each other in advance, making sure you give both necessary information, and making sure everything goes smoothly during the introduction. For example, you will have to be the one to keep track of the conversation flow to make sure no one feels left out and minimize awkward moments. Think in advance of the things you wouldn’t want your family asking your Russian lady (and vice versa) because they might be considered offensive or impolite. You might want to prepare a few things to keep on hand in order to avoid awkward pauses as well as things that can keep the conversation flowing (family picture albums are great for this purpose).
During the conversation, make sure to bring up your trip experiences in her country, remember all the funny moments you experienced while visiting her or while meeting her (if you met overseas), the memories of your first meeting will uplift her spirit as you will be talking about moments when you first fell in love. If you speak of funny moments you and your bride shared during your meetings, she will feel quite at home during the conversation even if she doesn’t speak much English as she will know what you are talking about.
When telling your friends and family about your travel experience, speak highly of people who are close to her and make sure you are ready to pick and up where she stumbles, make sure to encourage her when she makes mistakes, forgets words, or uses phrases incorrectly. Do not be critical of her during this time – this will be 10 times harder for her than it would be under normal circumstances because she will
be very nervous wanting to be accepted and make a good impression on your family.
Easy ways to ruin your marriage
Most men wanting to marry a Russian woman have no idea what the world is like through her eyes. While you might know that things in your country will be pretty unusual for her, you cannot imagine how many new things she will face and how she will deal with them. Below I list a few things you should be prepared for when you bride arrives to your country.
Credit. This is a big deal, you must explain to your bride how credit cards work and what credit history means. Even though former Soviet countries have been introducing use of credit in the recent years, it is processed and treated quite differently than in the US. If you do not explain how this concept works, you might end up with a ruined credit history (trust me, I’ve seen it happen more than once!). If you think you can hide credit cards from her – think again: there always will be a girlfriend in America who will “teach” her to use credit cards.
Driver’s license and social security. You need to explain what both these things are. In Russia and neighboring countries, a passport is the main means of identification; individual national code (similar to social security number) is used for many things, including bank paperwork, big purchases, etc.
Driving. Even if she has a license in Russia, she will be very cautious driving in your country. She will be endlessly surprised by the quality of the roads (in a good way) and get nervous every time she sees a police car. She will find it a pleasant surprise to drive on straight roads without potholes, where everyone follows the rules and police don’t ask for bribes if they stop you even without your fault. She will probably stick with the back roads for a few months and will think she is not brave enough to drive on an expressway with all that traffic!
Schooling system. In Russia there is free and paid education. Paid educational programs are not nearly as expensive as they are abroad. Parents pay for their children’s education 99% of the time. Unless you plan to do the same, you need to explain how things work and discuss this issue with her before you have children, otherwise she might be offended and upset when she finds out that you are not going to fund your children’s education. School system is completely different – in Russia, students never select their courses, whether they attend a high school or a university.
Prenuptial agreements. This is a hot topic that needs to be addressed correctly. You should protect your assets, no doubt. Most Russian women sign prenups without a problem, but you need to explain things correctly and tactfully. All of my female clients with whom I discussed the issue signed a prenup without a second thought.
Dress code. Foreign men like the fact that Russian women wear short skirts and sexy dresses; however, they often don’t like seeing Russian women wear the same outfits once they come to their men’s country. You need to address the issue, but, please, be delicate and tactful.
Appliances. You already know that many people wash dishes (sometimes clothes too) by hand. Your bride will take time getting used to appliances and the comfort of using a dish washer, a dryer, and other things that make household duties so much easier. Women often think the reason for using so many appliances is that Americans are lazy and don’t want to get their hands dirty; Russian are, on the contrary, tough and hardworking, so they don’t need to use all this fancy stuff. Because of such thinking, they will often criticize the use of so many appliances and want to do things the way they did them at home. You must explain to your bride that these things will not diminish her input towards taking care of the house and will, in fact, give her an opportunity to have more time to do other things that are more important and exciting.
Being friendly. Russians are very hospitable to everyone who comes to their home, but they are not used to being friendly and open to strangers on the streets. You need to explain that people can smile without any reason. You also need to find a way to explain to her that she can’t cut in front of others and she doesn’t have to push other people out of the way in a grocery store as she might have had to do back at home.
Getting everything without doing anything. This is a horrible stereotype Russians have about Americans; they think Americans don’t need to do anything to get the good things in life, and that everything is served to them on a gold platter. Russian women are used to buying things by paying cash, even when it comes to big purchases. When you speak of “your” house, she will most likely think that you would have paid for it and are the owner of the property. To avoid an awkward situation (like your bride thinking that you lied to her when you spoke about “your” home), discuss such issues well in advance, so she knows exactly what she is getting herself into.
Sales. Sales have only started to become common and popular in Russia and former Soviet countries in recent years. Most Russians still think that buying discounted items is shameful, as if they are getting lower grade products, or that only poor people buy items on sale. Because living in America will mean a higher quality of life than that in her home country, your bride might think that she now has to buy things only at full price to reflect the change in social status. She might also think that if you buy things on sale, you must be stingy or greedy. You need to explain to her what is good and bad about sales and discuss some ground rules for using the family budget.
Cell phones, Internet services, landlines. You need to explain to your bride how your cell phone, landline, and Internet services work – what you pay for them, how much minutes/gigabytes you are allowed, which services are most suitable for particular needs. In Ukraine, for example, many monthly Internet packages offer unlimited use. As a contrasting example, many of my male clients ended up with bills for thousands of dollars at the end of the month simply because they didn’t explain to their bride the costs of calling her country via telephone.
Phone calls. Your Russian bride will most likely be afraid to… answer the phone because of her lack of confidence in her English skills. Don’t pressure her, don’t rush; after a few months she will be able to understand the fluent speech of native speakers and will enjoy talking on the phone (feel sorry for the unsuspecting telemarketers who will become her practice targets!).
Abuse. You need to explain to your woman that it is not okay for her to… abuse you. Yes, I am serious. You will find that many couples in Russia solve their disagreements in a rough manner, including women slapping their man, screaming at him, breaking dishes (sometimes against his head). Sadly, it happens because that’s what they’ve learned from their grandmothers and mothers. Some of the girls from my agency who married American men ended up in police custody and were clueless as to why it happened. When it happened, they also considered their husbands to be cowards, because in Russia it is dishonorable for a man to admit that he was hit by his wife (he is not a real man if he can’t handle his woman). Naturally, it is not okay for a husband to abuse his wife, but that goes without saying.
Law. You need to make sure that your Russian wife knows that people actually abide by the law in your country. Remember, she comes from a country where bribes are common; almost any problem can be solved with the help of money. When I first started driving in America, I tried bribing a cop. He explained to me that it was illegal, but I thought he was simply driving a hard bargain and offered him a larger sum. It never occurred to me that it really was illegal and frowned upon, and that a police officer actually had the integrity not to take the bribe. Luckily for me, this particular officer has dealt with foreigners before and realized that it was a cultural misunderstanding, instead of throwing me into jail.
Taxes. Filing taxes will be weird for your bride because such issues are solved under the table by paying cash in her country. She might even give you “suggestions” on how you can avoid it.
World War II. If you know what’s good for you, you will avoid this topic altogether. Russians are very emotional about World War II – it is considered the greatest victory in the history of Russian people. Almost every Russian woman has a grandfather or a grandmo
ther who was affected by the war. People of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus suffered greatly from the fascist regime, memories of the events are very painful even for younger people, and Russian history books don’t necessarily portrait Americans as heroes. What you learned at school about the event will probably be radically different to what your Russian bride would have learned. I’ve known couples who came on the verge of break-up after discussing the issue, and I don’t know a single couple that hasn’t ended up arguing when discussing WWII. So, if you want to enjoy a happy future with your Russian wife, be the wise one and don’t discuss this subject.
Russian food, Russian stores. She will probably make dishes you will find strange. For example, a salad called “herring under a fur coat” (salty herring covered with layers of cooked vegetables). I haven’t met an American who could try it without disgust. Your wife might very well get offended if you don’t like what she cooks. It is a good idea to discuss food preferences and to agree to disagree when it comes to some dishes. Make sure to tell her not to take it personally if you don’t enjoy some of her Russian inspired creations. Your Russian wife will really enjoy shopping at Russian stores, if she finds any; she will think that food from such shops is more organic and is better for you. Whether she is right or not, respect her roots and wishes of having strange dishes she enjoys, even if you don’t.
Russian Allure Page 18