Russian Women Want To Meet YOU

If anything happened to my significant other I’d never date again, because I’m not giving up baby-back ribs for anybody. Check out this quote from an article about a bunch of guys discussing the women they’d just gone out with:

“Well, I took out a money girl,” he confessed. They had gone to T.G.I. Friday’s, a popular date venue . . . for her main course she had made what everyone in the group agreed was the distinctly unfeminine choice of ribs.

These guys are a hell of a lot pickier than any man I’ve ever dated. And did I forget to mention they’re Americans searching for mail-order brides in the Ukraine?

“These are not American women,” our guide was telling us. “They do not care about your age, looks, or money. And you are not going to have to talk to them for half an hour and then have your testicles handed back to you! Let me tell you: over here, you’re the commodity; you’re the piece of meat. I’ve lived in St. Petersburg for two years, and I wouldn’t date an American woman right now if you paid me!”

Guys like being called “a piece of meat?” Interesting. Must be one of those "Mars-Venus" difference things I keep hearing about. However, these guys plan to be very domineering, take-charge, in-control slabs of manly Martian meat. Here’s what the various foreign-bride services all have in common:

Wherever the women come from, such websites as A Special Lady, Chance for Love, and Latin Love Search tout their traditional values, their submissiveness, their willingness to put husband and family ahead of themselves.

This attracts its share of creepy sociopaths, of course, though not all the guys fell into that category. But according to the author, there were certain traits they all shared:

Every one of the men I spoke with said they planned to restrict their future wife’s involvement in their finances, and radically so. “You don’t ever let them touch your money, bottom line,” said one, to vigorous agreement from the rest of the table. “Set them up with their checking account that they use to pay all of the household supplies. You cover the core of the mortgages and the car and everything else. Never give them joint access.” When I remarked that the arrangement sounded more like an employer/employee relationship than a marriage, the group went a little quiet, and I suddenly found myself being accused of cultural intolerance—this at a table where “bluegums” appeared to be a perfectly unobjectionable way of referring to African Americans.

I actually don’t blame the guys for not wanting joint accounts in this situation. When a marriage is basically a business transaction it’s best to treat your finances that way, too. But a lot of these guys sound like they’d have the same attitude even with American women (which may have something to do with their wife-hunting in Asia):

[One man] told me he wanted a genuine partner, but with the caveat that on the big issues—house buying, for example—he must be in charge, for the good of them both. “A ship cannot have two captains,” he insisted. When I suggested that he and his hypothetical spouse might eliminate the need for a “captain” by simply shopping for a house they both liked, he went silent for a moment before he managed both to concede my point and to reframe it entirely: “Actually, that’s an important thing you just said, because for a woman, she would take a lot of pride in her house. The kitchen area, the living-room area, the entertainment area, she’s got to be compatible with that. So that’s something I would gladly defer to a woman on.”

Another thing the guys all share in common is a belief that we American women have it a lot better than we do. As their guide-pep coach told them at the beginning of their tour:

“Now, take everything you know about dating and throw it away. After a few days, you guys are going to become like American women! A woman you would have killed to have lunch with back in the U.S., she’ll be wanting to go out with you, but you’ll start noticing little faults—her ankles are too big, you don’t like the shape of her earlobes. And you will throw her back, because you have so many choices.”