Happy Life with a Russian Wife

Posted By admin on January 11, 2010

Today I’d like to share with you an excerpt from a real correspondence with a woman, who moved abroad having married a foreigner, when she had already been very self-sufficient and successful in Russia. In this letter, she shares her experience and observation on the power of habits and their influence on her international marriage (the names are changed):

“Hi, Vera. First, I am very happy for you! Green card is the first step to independence. At least, when I got it, John was depressed for a while, thinking that I would just run away from him.

Thank God, our process of getting used to each other is not that challenging as yours, though many issues arise on a daily basis, maybe because of our being tired. Patience and perseverance are essential in our overcoming misunderstandings. Of course, problems happen, but we’ve got used to the good part of our being together pretty soon. My husband constantly says that he has never had such wonderful relationship in the family, and specifically with his wife, so that he is worried that someone might steal me from him.

As far as the habits are concerned…. they often seemed ridiculous. For example, having done the dishes, I put them on a shelf, and in the next morning found out they were arranged differently. Then again I arranged the dishes and other small things in my way…. The next day, everything was as it used to be before my “intrusion.” When we decided to discuss it, John asked me not to change his house very quickly, because everything should have stayed as usual for him, and thus the changes were to be done only slowly and gradually…

Moreover, he told me his secret: all those gaudy vases and variegated things were bought specifically for me, his beloved, and my uncompromising decision to get rid of them was equal to abusing his feelings. In a word, we do have some issues.

In addition, my husband told me that my instant desire to remake the world around him raised in him a sense of helplessness, or rather that of losing his own home. He began to feel like a guest in his house. Of course, I also tried to explain that I was in another country, in a house that was strange for me yet, with a foreign language around me, far away from my children and grandchildren, and perhaps my negative feelings were absolutely identical to his.

I am really so tired that it sometimes seems to me that I am 250 years old. First, the process of moving out of Russia and moving into the new house abroad, and of starting my life anew… I never thought that a man could be so zealously concerned with preserving his territory inviolable, which in my female understanding was very strange. I always thought that a garage was the most important place a man could be concerned with. Here, I had to discuss with my husband every nail I wanted to knock into a wall, every shutter or picture I wanted to hang, and all this after my long self-sufficient and independent life….

But I continue to move in the same direction … Step by step, I keep on hanging pictures, cloths and curtains that I like. And most importantly, everything remains in the same places without changes now.”

Thus, the openness to change, flexibility and, as is evident from the example, patience and perseverance are the magic keys to the secret door of understanding in marriage. Having accepted the fact of the outdated habits’ influence on their lives, the spouses started the process of change. First, they recognized those habits, and discussed them, which lead to changing their behavior to a more productive one (with the due will and diligence). And the ability to change is a powerful factor that stimulates personal growth of partners and makes them work on improving their relations in marriage further on.

Categories: Family Matters, Home Sweet Home, Letters As They Are
Tags: a Russian-speaking wife, asking for help, Commitment to Change, Creating New Space, Crisis, Feelings, green card, happy international marriage, Happy Marriage, Improvement, losing the sense of control, Mutual Understanding, outdated habits