Happy Life with a Russian Wife

Posted By admin on February 27, 2010

We continue the theme of the International Women’s Day that is widely celebrated on March 8 in Russia. And today we publish the ending of the article by Lyubov Latypova, “Women’s Holiday Every Day.” Let us remind you that in the previous part, we talked about how important it is for spouses to ask each other the  question (preferably before the wedding) about how each of them imagines their future co-existence. We hope that while reading this article up to the end, you will find a lot of useful information on how to improve your relationships.

“…This is the axiom many couples do not even suspect about. Our husbands (regardless of their nationality) marry us in order to free themselves of the burden of their own problems and are not eager to take on ours. The opposite is also true: women get married hoping to breathe freely and to acquire a strong support rather than a tangle of resistances. How can the spouses combine their mind pictures? What can they do so that there would be enough of freedom and wealth in the family for both of them?

When a woman comes to another country leaving a whole life behind, it really creates a fundamentally different situation for her. While “at home,” she could escape to her mother or friend to complain about her life; now there is nowhere to retreat. So you have to keep asking yourself and your partner, what for you are together.

Of course, everyone wants to live a better life than s/he lived before. But what does this “better” imply, what is the picture of this “better?” What can you take from the other person to integrate into your life and feel richer, and will this person agree to share? What do we want and what can we give in return? Does the partner need it from you? This applies to so many things, both material and intangible! And then, our previous life experience starts to dictate its rules.

For example, Americans have become accustomed to the fact that their women are fighting for independence. So an American who decided to start the second (or the third) family after a divorce, in which he had lost at least half of his income, expects that his wife would invest her share in their new marriage. However, the majority of Russian women arrive to the US leaving everything back in Russia: their careers, incomes, their social networks and connections…

Not long ago, I read an angry feedback of one of the “Russian wives” about the fact that her American husband left everything to all his children and grandchildren in his will and did not intend to incorporate her share into the will. It was a total surprise for her, because they had not discussed the terms on which they would build their marriage before the wedding. She had her picture in her head, and he had had his own. Each of them was right in their own way. And if instead of committing to put those two mind pictures together and build something new, the partners were trying to destroy each other’s pictures and impose his or her visions upon each other, the result was not difficult to predict: two victims of failed relationships.

The initial picture my husband had about us, for example, was like this: we sat together and read (each his or her own book), and communicated to the minimum and only on lofty themes, while I had to keep him young and healthy somehow. He had been thoroughly tired of the hustle and shallowness of external contacts for more than twenty years of work in international programs, when we had to adapt to others people’s problems and to spend most of his time abroad and to write reports instead of reading his favorite books. His dreamt of peace and quiet…

My own picture was exactly the opposite: I imagined us being very active socially and professionally, so that I could find myself thanks to his contacts and resources… I have always been a very sociable person and I could not but share my knowledge and skills with others. By the way, my conflicts at previous jobs stemmed from the fact that I had tried to do more than was needed!

Further on, I’m quoting my letter to a friend, who had asked me, “Have you and your husband finally got accustomed to each other?”

“Remembering a course on family therapy, you can imagine the barriers we have come across at first. I have described you a lot of them.

Of course, I wanted to have my own place in the house. It took all my skills and all of my wisdom (which was often not enough) so that my husband would not feel insulted and pressured and I would not become a victim.

We started from revising the concept of our new home, where every room had contained a little of everything without order or sense in it. We had allocated special zones and assigned a meaning for each zone. The furnishings required second thoughts: something had to be thrown away (including a lot of rubbish, which had been neglected), changed, or fixed. While cleaning up the mess, we found surprisingly original and interesting things that Dan had brought home from his overseas projects, but could not find any application to them.

I always asked for his advice even when I could do everything myself. I was never tired of mentioning that the results of our teamwork turned to be much better than if I had worked alone. I noticed the slightest attempts to help me on his part, and sang like a nightingale complimenting him. I think that redesigning the house, which required the participation of both of us, helped us integrate our pictures. In any case, there appeared more understanding and trust in each other. Dan learned to show and release his aggression (before, it had resulted in his suppressed defense and headaches), and I have learnt to be less emotional over it. When I ask him now if he would agree to return to the house as it was before our reconstruction, he just laughs.

You ask whether the process of our getting accustomed to each other is over. I do not know, I think everything is just beginning.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my description of the virtual sadistic beating I had inflicted upon my husband, and sympathized with me caught up in the combat zone with the heavyweight enemy (or why else would I describe it to you?). What? You did not empathize and just laughed? And who will create a resonance with the poor and unfortunate girls? That’s just it. The lesser the resonance, the easier it is for us to get out of the swamp.

Well, you would ask, “Then why did you get sick after that Walpurgis Night in a way you had not been sick for years?” In response, let me remind you of your own situation, when you found out that you could not shift your weight on your partner in tango. It is very symbolic: we are used to being very independent and not having trust in our partners. Sometimes we do not even notice that our desire to do everything for our partner and instead of him creates in him a feeling of helplessness and a desire to build a cushion around himself.

I checked myself and slowed down at realizing my desire to share everything with my husband. I was so eager to tell him what had happened! I was trying to show him once again how I needed his love and how wonderfully I worked with my feelings, instead of giving him the opportunity to take care of me and to express his feelings in his own way. As a result, I found myself being literally weak (I mean, sick), and him being as strong as it should have been. And both of us were pleased with it, because we had got what we wanted.

Of course, this was not a perfect solution. I do not want to get sick in order to get a share of his warm attention, and he would have soon got tired of the role of a nurse. But I will think of this tomorrow. I cannot know what is happening with him in reality, and what kind of care for me The Higher Power transmits via him. Apparently, it also lost patience by slowing me down so roughly.”

A few months had passed since my writing that letter to a friend. I was sitting at the table and crying. And those were happy tears…”

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Categories: Empowering Each Other, Family Matters, Home Sweet Home, Letters As They Are
Tags: a holiday every day, combat zone, Commitment to Change, different views on our future together, Happy Marriage, he does not need what I am willing to give him, higher power, International Couple, Mutual Understanding, Nurturing Each Other, tears of joy, the intervention of Higher Power, the victim of failed relationships, Walpurgis Night, what men expect from the new marriage with a Russian wife, why are we getting married? the picture in my head, why are we together?, why do men marry?