Comments on: Russian brides via the internet - do they work?

Question: Russian brides via the internet - do they work?

vizsla — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:32:47 -0800

I have a friend whose friends are Russian brides who got married via an internet site. I'm wondering how long these types of marriages tend to last and what they are like. Are there any blogs or research about experiences of these kinds of relationships?

By: parmanparman

parmanparman — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:55:04 -0800

When I was in high school, our neighbor's family completely fell apart and the wife fled and the husband, who was incidentally a Lutheran minister, decided he would go to China and find himself a wife. A few years before, he had lost his leg in a railroad accident; so he probably looked quite courageous going to China to lobby our government to let him bring his young bride back to Berkeley, California.

Well, she came to Berkeley and everything seemed peaceful until a young(er) man moved into their basement apartment. She spent all the time the minister wasn't there in his apartment, vacuuming the floors or something. He moved out and stayed in town. She got her Green Card and disappeared into the night. I remember this guy walked around the neighborhood on crutches asking everyone if they had seen his wife. This all happened in the space of a year.

By: eralclare

eralclare — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:12:11 -0800

I think parmanparman's account must be fairly common. Of course, all I know about these kinds of things I know from A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.

By: k8t

k8t — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:16:31 -0800

ThirteenKiller can give you forum names, but a lot of the visa forums are full of (terrible) stories about Russian brides who didn't work out.

By: IAmBroom

IAmBroom — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:19:53 -0800

I know someone (who, frankly, was a supreme idiot, and a complete genetic throwback) who got scammed by a beautiful Korean girl he met in a bar. She went absolutely gaga over him, from minute one, and after a few years of fighting Immigration to prove they were a real couple, they got married. She invited her family over, and within 2 days maxed out all his credit cards & disappeared.

If it sounds too good to be true...

By: airplain

airplain — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:46:44 -0800

Another anecdotal experience: a friend found a mail order Russian bride about twelve years ago, and they're still happily married. He already had three kids and was coming out of a fiercely messy divorce. I was totally dubious when they got hitched, but it's worked well for them all -- kids, husband and wife happy together.

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:55:35 -0800

I'm wondering how long these types of marriages tend to last

If you're lucky, until the Green Card.
If you're average, until she finds where you keep the money.
If you're not so lucky, until the next morning when you wake up in a bathtub full of ice.

I know, either personally or through family, a few people who actually went to Russia and found brides the old-fashioned way, without the online scam, and the failure rate for those marriages is also alarmingly high.

By: jayder

jayder — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:15:59 -0800

Well, she came to Berkeley and everything seemed peaceful until a young(er) man moved into their basement apartment.

That's interesting. I had always wondered what keeps these Russian women who marry overweight, middle-aged, balding American schlubs with shitty jobs from abandoning the schlub once they get here and find out their guy is pretty much rock bottom on the social pecking order.

I guess the answer is, "Nothing."

By: Rosie M. Banks

Rosie M. Banks — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:27:39 -0800

The Great Ukranian Bride Hunt. Read it and cringe.

Just anecdotally I've never known this sort of marriage to end well. The woman is physically or emotionally abused and flees, or takes the man to the cleaners financially and flees.

By: tundro

tundro — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:12:03 -0800

I can only speak to one example, but I have a friend who went to Russia (Siberia specifically) to meet a woman he found through an online relationship site. He eventually brought her back to the US and they married in less than a year. 8 years later (now) they have two beautiful kids and a happy marriage. The whole thing surprised the crap out of me - I swore he was going to get killed when he was in Russia. But I was wrong... it worked out well in the end, Green Card and all.

With that said, I'm sure this is the exception more than the rule... but still... it can work.

By: availablelight

availablelight — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:27:31 -0800

It's not just the men who get burned.

By: Rosie M. Banks

Rosie M. Banks — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:24:33 -0800

Anastasia Solovieva, another mail-order bride who met a sad end. Apparently her husband abused his first mail-order bride (who was lucky enough to escape). The combination of young, pretty woman desperate to escape poverty + socially unskilled, controlling man almost always does not wendell.

The "happy" mail-order marriage stories - and I don't doubt they exist, even if they are fewer - seem to be based upon genuine love and goodwill on both sides (like any other solid marriage), not "Western women are Teh Ebil" coupled with "escaping a life of poverty."

By: charmcityblues

charmcityblues — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:51:55 -0800

If you're looking for scholarly research on the subject, I can recommend Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and "Mail Order Marriages," by Nicole Constable. It's available on amazon and (partially) google books.

It was required reading for the Anthropology of the Philippines class I took a few years ago. Focus is a little more on Asia than Europe / Eurasia, but it covers a lot of territory, and reads really well.

And I have a wonderful bridge for sale, in Brooklyn...

By: the christopher hundreds

the christopher hundreds — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:58:22 -0800

When I was doing some immigration work I read a lot of anecdotal stuff about a ring in Russia that was sending young women over to "marry" men, then framing the men up as abusers. If they can convince ICE that they entered the country in good faith and convince ICE that the prospective husband is abusive, they get all the immigration benefits of marriage without having to deal with the loser who paid to get them in to the country.

The law (a section of VAWA) exists to help women who are lured into abusive situations (and the fact that it's necessary says something about a large portion of these kinds of "relationships") but when the laws are manipulated in this fashion, it hurts the, erm, buyer in more places than just the wallet. They end up on violent offender registries, lose their right to own guns, can't have certain jobs, etc.

I'm not arguing that this happens often, just that it (might've) happened few times.

By: the christopher hundreds

the christopher hundreds — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:03:40 -0800

Here's one website from a group assisting people who found themselves in the situation I described. While the law is the "Violence against women act", men can and do apply under it as well. A google for VAWA scams or fraud will get you some tales. Again, I don't want to come across as a VAWA skeptic, I just found this wrinkle interesting.

By: Lesser Shrew

Lesser Shrew — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:24:47 -0800

This is art, not an answer, but you might like it.

By: vsync

vsync — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:28:14 -0800

No mention of Hans Reiser yet? A little variation there in that she wasn't a prospective bride but rather the interpreter for them.

By: MLIS

MLIS — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:42:50 -0800

No mention of Hans Reiser yet?

See availablelight above.

By: Grrlscout

Grrlscout — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:18:32 -0800

Considering the divorce rate is around 50% for people who are both:

- raised in the same country & culture
- have the same first (or close second) language
- have not had the financial and emotional stress of moving to another country
- have friends and family nearby (relatively)

yeah, I think piling on all the other stuff about misogyny, racism, social awkwardness, etc, might drive your chances of having a successful mail order marriage to about zero. I think it takes a lot of patience, mutual attraction, and genuine interest in each other's languages and cultures to make it work.

Is there a Russian expat group near where your friend is? Maybe he could get in touch with them and meet Russian expats in his area? See how they adapt, what they miss, what they like?

By: thirteenkiller

thirteenkiller — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:17:38 -0800

RW Forum is an active forum site populated largely with Western men who are somewhere in the process of obtaining a Russian bride. You probably won't find hard statistics there, and accounts from the beginning of the process are more numerous than those from the bitter end, but you can get an idea of what sorts of people do this and what their relationships are like.