Posted on 07/09/2013 10:23:41 PM PDT by cunning_fish
On a blazing summer afternoon in Moscow, Stefania, an Italian professional in her early 30s, manages to look picture-perfect. In a belted tangerine dress, with an impeccable manicure and glossy hair, she fits right in to a local culture that celebrates ultra-feminine style. “You have to dress bright, like a traffic light – high heels, short skirts, hair, nails – to attract men’s attention,” she explained. “Dating in Moscow is a war, and your looks are your only weapons.”
Yet even as she turns heads in the street, Stefania admits that her love life is a struggle.
“Dating Russian men never works out,” she sighed, shaking her head. “I think I will be single until I leave Russia.”
Stefania is just one of many beautiful and successful foreign women who’ve resigned themselves to spinsterhood for as long as they live in Moscow. There were 1,781 foreign men who married Russian women in the capital last year, compared to only 228 foreign women who married Russian men, according to statistics from the Moscow ZAGS (marriage registration offices). That’s a ratio of nearly 8 to 1.
If expat men are successful in finding Russian spouses, why do expat women have problems?
It’s not that marriage-age Russian men aren’t around. Though 10.7 million more women than men were counted in the 2010 census, this staggering gender gap exists mainly with the over-50 demographic.
When the count is confined to 25- to 49-year-olds, it turns out that there are just 1 million more women than men in Russia. In 2010, the number of unmarried men and women aged 25 to 49 in Moscow were about equal, according to numbers provided to The Moscow News by the State Statistics Service.
(Excerpt) Read more at themoscownews.com ...
One source of aversion toward Russians, women say, is lifestyle. “Russian men don’t take care of themselves,” Stefania said, wrinkling her nose.
They smoke: research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2013 shows that 55 percent of Russian men smoke every day. They drink: the World Health Organization found in 2011 that Russia has one of the highest rates of alcoholism in the world, and one-fifth of male deaths are attributable directly to alcohol.
Tobacco and alcohol abuse, combined with generally poor diet and lack of exercise, limit the average life expectancy of Russian men to just 64 years. That’s one of the lowest life expectancies in the world outside of the African continent.
When not smoking and drinking (or perhaps while doing so), Russian men can also be violent. Forty percent of women in Russia suffer verbal abuse and one in five is violently abused by her husband, according to 2013 estimates by the State Statistics Service. New legislation on domestic abuse is set to be adopted, but it remains to be seen whether society will change as a result.
Russian relationships are also notoriously adulterous, some experts say. Pamela Druckerman, an American author and journalist, traveled around the world to research rates of infidelity for her 2007 book “Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee.” She found startling results in Russia.
“A family psychologist whom I had intended to interview as an ‘expert’ boasted about her own extramarital relationships,” Druckerman wrote. “[She] insisted that, given Russia’s endemic alcoholism, violent crime, and tiny apartments, affairs are ‘obligatory.’ With the exception of a pastor (who was sitting with his wife at the time), I didn’t meet a single married man in Russia who admitted to being monogamous.”
Druckerman concluded that Russia may be the most adulterous country in the industrialized world.
Who wears the pants?
To Western women, who tend to value healthy living and fidelity, the Russian lifestyle can be distinctly unattractive. However, even more fundamental conflicts lie at the crux of expat-Russian romance.
One common refrain concerns gender roles: Russian men expect to be dominant in relationships. The woman’s career and personal independence come secondary, while the male is the provider.
For Western women, that can be a problem. “I have a female friend, an older Russian lady, who tells me that I work too much,” said Anna, an American businesswoman in her 30s working in Moscow. “She says I need to find a man and get married so that he can take care of me.”
For Anna, though, being a kept woman is not an option. “What she doesn’t understand is that I enjoy working and being very independent and career-driven. I don’t need to be taken care of,” she said. “I think that’s part of why I’ve never dated a Russian man.”
Russian men tend to financially and psychologically dominate their relationships, but at the same time, expect a high degree of attention in return.
Many Russian men were raised without fathers because of World War II, noted Lynn Visson, an American academic and author. They grew up as the focus of their mothers’ attention, and have passed on the same principles of privileging males to their own children.
“Foreign women have a lot of trouble living with a man who expects to be the total center of attention, be served two meals a day, and be waited on,” Visson told The Moscow News.
A two-way street
If foreign women find a submissive role unattractive, the lack of interest goes both ways. Visson documented a number of the complaints Russian men have about Western women in her book “Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages.”
“One Russian husband yelled at his wife, ‘All you American females yapping about liberation, always in a rush – you look as if you came off the garbage heap!’” she wrote.
Many Russians, Visson said, find American ladies bossy, brash, unkempt, and overly concerned with female equality. “They think Russian women are much more attractive and feminine,” she told The Moscow News.
Unfortunately for foreign women, so do expat men. With many Russian men incompatible or unavailable and with expat men interested mainly in dating Russian women, expat ladies are often relegated to an awkward gray zone.
“Dating is a matter of taste, but Russian men are not my type,” said Chiara, another professional Italian woman living in Moscow. “I’ve been here for six years already, and I’ve dated a couple guys, but I think I can expect to be single till I leave.”
Putting a ring on it
All hope is not lost, though, for single expat women who are looking for relationships.
Rhea Skryabina, one of the 228 foreign women to marry a Russian man in Moscow last year, said that remaining open-minded about romance and culture is essential.
“It’s good to steer away from generalizations and get to know people as individuals,” she told The Moscow News. “The [foreign] women I know in committed relationships with Russian men all met them in very different ways.”
She met her own husband, a dance instructor and former street performer on the Arbat, while he was dancing on the street.
“Dating in Russia is very much the same as dating in any place,” Skryabina concluded. “Meeting people in bars and clubs is probably going to be as successful in Russia as it is in California: not very!”
TTIUWOP.
Send me one. I’m single.
and their women use abortion as birth control
Acting like a man doesn’t land you a man? Heresy!
Hey ladies, there’s a really smart, computer-literate expat American hanging out at the Moscow Airport...
Women do not respect Russian men because they are demanding on their women yet don't try to better themselves with good jobs because it has been ingrained in them that the government provides all their necessities so why work hard?
If a man is violent, drunk, disrespectful and won't try to get ahead, why should a woman want to become attached to one?
I think the Russian reproductive rate is 1.6 or 1.7 per couple — the rest are probably aborted.
Recipe for a dying nation.
I think I see a commonality with a certain segment of our Great Society...
I will bet a dollar to a donut that at least half the people who saw that commercial thought the Giraffe was real.
Nobody here had better Post back “you mean it isn’t real”? LOL
>>>I think I see a commonality with a certain segment of our Great Society...<<<
In fact a really huge part of Russian society has numerous other commonality with that certain segment. Similarities are often striking in many different areas.
President: Vladimir Putin |President: Goodluck Jonathan
Population
142,500,482 | 174,507,539
Life Expectancy
69.850 years | 52.460 years
Largest city
Moscow (population: 10,381,200)| Lagos (population: 9,000,000)
Human Development Index
NA | 0.499
Average annual income:
$21,900 US | $2,700 US
Literacy Rate
99.4% | 68%
Corruption Perception Index
2.1 | 2.7
Percentage of Women in Parliament
NA | 7.3%
Wealthiest Citizens
Mikhail Prokhorov ($9.5bn US) | Aliko Dangote ($2.5bn US)
Unemployment Rate
5.700% | 23.900%
Birth rate (per 1000 population):
12,3 | 39,23
Death Penalty
Abolished in practice | Legal
“Dating in Moscow is a war...”
Dare on suggest that this hateful, modern b*tch with an attitide is the creator of her own difficulties....?
She must be a treat on a date.
~88% of the males in Russia born in 1922 were killed in the war, and a huge percentage of the cohorts on either side of that for a few years out.
Nowhere near those casualties came out of WWII for us.
No, ours were self inflicted.
I wouldn’t be all that surprised to find that 88% of the “baby daddies” in some subgroups have no input into the raising of their spawn.
The only male tourists that seem to have little interest in the local (Thai) ladies are the Russians.
>>>The only male tourists that seem to have little interest in the local (Thai) ladies are the Russians.<<<
Tourist agents tell them that most Thai prostitutes are crossdressers. Russians are homophobic and try to stick with their own.
Gee. Between 88% of their men killed in the war, and the millions of their own people they killed...who would be left for fighting the enemy, killing more of their own people, or even procreating with women?
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