When speaking about cross culture marriages, there is an interesting trend: a relationship between a man from the USA and a woman from Russia is an international relationship, yet a relationship between the same man and a woman from Russia is a mail order brides thing.
Site Russian Brides is at the top of many search engines for the term Russian brides, and as a result I often receive requests for interviews from newspapers and magazines all over the world; USA, Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Finland, Hungary, Australia, South Africa, Russia – and the list goes on. And I see a worrying trend – often a reporter alreadyknows what kind of story he or she is going to write, before they even start their interviews.
Marrying a Russian woman is routinely portrayed by the media as the mail order brides process. Those words tend to leave a nasty taste in your mouth, don’t they?
The first time I heard those words were soon after my marriage when "Cosmo" happened to interview me soon after my marriage, quite by chance. I was sitting at home, bored and decided to send a letter to a competition that the magazine was launching. "Cosmo" was looking for somebody to feature in their article about Russian brides. My letter was like a God sent, and they phoned me asking for an interview. This was my first interview with the Media, and I was pretty naive at the time. I thought that "Cosmo", like all our friends and family, would find the way we met very romantic. Imagine my surprise when I read the announcement of the future article: Russian Mail Order Brides!
Honestly, I was shocked and humiliated. I had no idea that, that was the official name of the process! The actual article had the heading Russian Mail Order Romances which sounded a bit better, and the article itself finished with the words Welcome! and Good luck! addressed to all us Russian women. All in all, the article was quite all right.
Now, getting back on track. The history behind the term mail order brides goes as far back as the time of the first American settlers. The settlers, most of whom were men, could not find suitable women to marry and had to write letters to Europe asking women to become their wives. In those days, arranged marriages were common, and marrying somebody you barely knew was nothing out of the ordinary. Back then; the women truly were mail order brides.
These days the term mail order brides is currently used to label the relationship between a man from a first world country and a woman from the third world country or the countries of the former USSR.
The common misconception is that the women only want a way out of their misery and terrible economic situation. Being incompetent in Filipino, Thailand, Colombian, Mexican and other mail order brides, I can tell you with confidence that this is NOT the case with Russian women seeking husbands abroad.
Russian women have a much better education than the brides from Asia and Latin America. About 90% of the women that apply to our agency have college or university degrees, or are current college or university students. With their fair complexion, their intelligence and their astounding beauty, men have often asked me if our selection is real! Our women appear too beautiful to be seeking husbands on the Internet.
Being intelligent and educated, Russian women are still feminine, warm and gentle. Competing with men is the last thing they seek in their family lives. The Russian ideal of a man is the man with whom she feels like she is "behind the stone wall", the leader, the provider and the protector. Believe it or not, the reason for all these beautiful Russian women seeking their destiny over the Internet is that they cannot find their ideal man in Russia. It is that simple – even if it sounds unbelievable.
Most Russian women seeking husbands abroad are NOT focused on finding a foreign husband but more importantly on finding The Husband. We often receive requests from Russian women featured in our catalogs to remove their profiles, because they have married Russian men living in Russia – this is a clear evidence that most Russian women seeking contacts with foreign men are not fixed on moving abroad but on finding a serious relationship and getting married. For many of them, finding a husband in her home country would be preferable to moving abroad, and sometimes we even receive requests from women if she can find a man who will move in with her in Russia.
Russian women that decide to look for a husband abroad, don’t choose between Russian men and foreign men – they choose between staying single and having a family and a husband.
In Russia, women outnumber men (there are 10 million more women than men, according to the latest census, or 88 males for 100 females – statistics according to The Economist, World in Figures, 2008 Edition, and in most situations it is a question of luck if a woman manages to find herself a man or not. Russians marry early, and at the age of 25 most people are already married. If a man is not married, it can only mean he is not willing to commit – even bad men can find themselves a wife! Women must act fast if they want to get married and to ensure that they have a husband, one can only hope he will be a good man. There were even talks about changing the family legislation so that it would allow men to have multiply wives so that there would be competition among men too. This is not a joke; this question was discussed in Russian government.
