Posted on November 28th, 2003 12:21 PM by admin

Western men in search of Russian wives need to be honest with themselves and with the Russian women as well. The unique disparities between our two cultures make these relationships ripe for great expectations and subsequently, disappointment and sometimes failure. You can greatly increase your chances of success by tempering both your expectations and her expectations with healthy doses of honesty and reality. You will find thousands of Russian women to choose from. Don’t pick just one. Start out with a large field of potentials, go slowly, and keep tapping the brakes. Here’s how.

When you think you've found some candidate wives, develop your correspondence with them by being completely honest. Disclose everything about yourself and your life that you can. Do not get caught in the trap of making yourself out to be something you're not. Resist the temptation to embellish how great your life in the West is just to attract a beautiful Russian woman. Because of their isolation, difficult lives, and dim futures, they really want to believe whatever you tell them. Don't be afraid of scaring them away with unflattering truths like you have a bald spot; you’re in the janitorial business, or you drive a 1990 Ford Tempo. In fact, scaring them away is exactly what you should try to do to a certain extent. Like a reverse #$@* magnet, extreme honesty will eventually drive away scammers and insincere women.

Dishonest Russian women would rather go after Western men who are good at fooling themselves (and thus more easily fooled by others). Vice-versa, dishonest Western men would rather go after Russian women who are prone to fooling themselves. In this way, dishonest people attract each other and it’s a disaster. Western men and Russian women who are not honest with themselves and each other - who have unrealistic expectations, cultivate fantasies, or make compromises they can't live with - will ultimately fail at this endeavor. They will either never hook up, or will end up feeling burned, scammed, frustrated, or living in unhappy marriages. Either way there will be no happiness for them.

To avoid this mess, just be brutally honest: with yourself and with the women. In the long run, dishonest people can't stand honest people and have little patience for them. In this way, you can reverse-weed-out scammers. They will weed themselves out because they won't be able stand your honesty.

My wife, Olga and I began our relationship with a bit of a fantasy. A lot of rich Western men had been writing to Olga and led her to believe a life of luxury was the norm in America. Living in Santa Barbara and driving a BMW at the time, I could have easily played into this image. Things would have moved a lot faster. But I knew that, like most of us Americans, I was living n the edge and would not be able to sustain my rakish lifestyle once I took on the expense and responsibility of a dependent K-1 wife.

I was not rich, just single. In America, a single guy, renting, with a decent salary and some meager investments can live large on the surface. However there's not much cushion underneath. I knew that once I blew all my reserves on getting my Russian wife here she may very well be disappointed at how things really are and we would be off to a bad start.

So I went to go to great pains to make Olga understand where I was in the Western food chain (one notch above a baitfish), and that life in America with me would be no bed of roses. I explained to her that like most "real" people, we would have to struggle for our happiness and future. She had trouble believing this at first. It took a long time to dispel the myths that had been planted in her head by countless episodes of "Beverly Hills 90210, Dallas, and Santa Barbara" and the contacts she had made with Western men.

Once, while going through some memorabilia in her room back in Ukraine, I was horrified to see an introductory letter from an American man with a photo of himself posing in front of a huge, luxurious house and a big Mercedes Benz. In the very first paragraph of the letter he promised her a life of luxury in return for marriage. (Before he even told her how tall he was, how much he weighed, his eye color, or what his hobbies are.)

Another guy that had been sending Olga letters arrived unannounced in Ukraine one day. He summoned her to join him in his luxurious, 4-star hotel in Kiev. He sent a car and driver 400 kilometers to Krivoy Rog to get her. The carriage and coachman picked Snow White up at the door of her dilapidated apartment block and spirited her across the rolling Ukrainian countryside.

Olga had never been to Kiev before, never stayed in a hotel. She had never done a lot of things.

First Prince Charming, his private secretary, and his interpreter took Olga to the most expensive department store in town and offered to buy her any dress she wanted. Then they took her to the most expensive restaurant in town, and then to a casino where the guy stuffed a big bucket full of coins in her hand and told her to entertain herself at the slot machines while he did some serious gambling. Olga still talks about how foolish she felt throwing more money than she had ever seen in her life down a hole in a machine and getting nothing in return – “nothing to eat, nothing to wear in the winter – nothing, just throwing it away!”

Imagine the effect of all of this on a young Ukrainian girl who had never been exposed to anything beyond reruns if Western soap operas and a decaying Soviet era industrial town. Fortunately for me Olga either did not like these guys, or they did not follow through. The Prince actually rejected her for not being "wild" enough.

I worked on Olga relentlessly for many, months, using thousands of translated words and more than a hundred photographs of my daily life, to finally get her to realize that my life wasn’t really what she dreamed of. I insisted on full disclosure. It was rough on her. She reacted negatively at first. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

Interestingly, I was also corresponding with several other Russian women at the same time, trying to narrow down my search. I began giving them all the same dose of reality I was giving Olga. I told them that I was not rich, and that if they came to America we would both have to work hard as a team to have The American Dream. Like Olga, they also reacted negatively to the reality I was forced on them, but even more so. Some were even outraged. One became furious and literally demanded that I “be rich and elegant.” I insisted that I was neither. (Although I don’t live on the street and I do consider myself to be fairly stylish.) As I dismantled their fantasies it became obvious that many of these girls were indeed seeking a life of luxury. And one by one, they dumped me until only Olga remained.

For some reason Olga decided to go with the pauper-realist me, who offered a less-materialistic attraction than her other suitors. Using extreme honesty as a tool, I had forced her to think very hard about what she really wanted in a husband, and out of life. And surprisingly, Olga is not a 35-year old divorcee with a kid and an attitude. She is a very attractive young lady (was 21 at the time) who had never been married and had no children. In fact, she's a knock-out.

They are out there. You've just got to comb the countryside to find them.

The approach I described above is a lot of hard work. If you decide to use it, it will take a lot of time, honesty, and effort on your part. After hearing my method, a lot of guys head for the nearest "romance tour.”

It is probably much easier to lure these girls in with riches, but also probably a lot harder to extricate yourself from the wreckage that is sure to ensue.

I would say that this is one game in which wealth and braggadocio will actually undermine your chances for happiness. It's true that you need to have enough money to pay for the addresses, courtship, translations, 3-way phone calls, plane tickets, apartment rentals, K1 visa, wedding, INS fees, and initial transition period.

But if you can somehow find a way to get over that, you don't need to be wealthy to be happy with a RW - you just need to be very honest with both yourself and with her.

By Doug Salem of http://www.goeastnow.com

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