Any FSW of any note would seek to take sex in a serious and safe manner if they have any sense in my opinion.

Is there any parallel for men or women in the FSU regarding the intense pace at work that some of us experience in the United States?  If so, even though I have been traveling to the FSU and interacting with Russian folks since 2000, I have not yet seen any corollaries in their country.  I think that I must have just missed something.

I work in a professional environment (executives, lawyers, CPAs, bankers, etc.), and run a corporate division with an annual volume of $100 million and growing.  The people with whom I interact, including outside professionals and direct reports, all work 55+ hours per week on average.  Sometimes more, rarely less.  All are working in 4th gear constantly, and many go into overdrive for hours or days at a time.  Rarely, rarely, can anybody coast, even for a day.  One lawyer (outside counsel) with whom I work closely works nearly ALL his waking hours, and is never disconnected fully from his practice, and ends up working regularly on his "vacations" (for which I have had to apologize to him from time to time -- for keeping him so busy).  I'm sure this is a familiar theme to some of you who are reading this.

I am finding that my Russian wife just doesn't seem to understand that when I am at the office or on the road, I am really working hard.  I am not playing golf, not sitting at a restaurant tipping a few with other businessmen, and not just hanging out with the boss.  It just seems that she doesn't have any frame of reference for understanding this kind of work.  Granted, she knows a few Russian WOMEN back in Ukraine who are sometimes working 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet.  However, it doesn't seem that she thinks it possible that a successful MAN actually "works" hard for a living.  Sometimes very hard.  I get the impression that she thinks that a man who wears a suit to the office has somehow "made it" and can thereafter simply "coast" once he arrives at his place of work.  She will think nothing of launching into a lenthy, difficult conversation on the telephone in the middle of my work day, as though I have nothing better to do.   If  I tell her I am really busy, but want to continue the conversation later when I get home, she sometimes responds ......"how can you be so busy, you aren't a mother with a child."  BTW, we don't have children (not yet).  She is in her early thirties and has never had what we would call a career, or had steady employment for years at a time.  Of course, simply that is a rather difficult thing to come by for many Ukrainians.  In her prior marriage, she was essentially a "kept woman."  She admits that she is a little spoiled, but I would not regard her wants or attitudes toward material things as excessive.  Still, I keep thinking that she has to understand that a man doesn't make good money by simply "showing up" for work. 

Naturally, I keep finding that her frame of reference for many things is limited, of course, to those things in her prior experiences in Ukraine.  However, even with respect to successful men in Ukriane, she seems to think that they just "enjoy" their status, cheat on their wives with younger girls, and drink expensive vodka and cognac, etc., but not really work.  Maybe that is true?  A continually vigorous pace of work just seems to be "foreign" to her -- except when she worked in her vegetable garden at her parents dacha, working all day long tending to the plants and vegetables.  However, I have also heard of similar stories of Russian women who have come to this country, getting an opportunity to work at either an entry level (say, a bank teller), or perhaps even a significant level (say, a physician), and then are shocked to find how intense the work situation is here -- fast-paced and unrelenting pressure.  True, nobody puts a gun to the heads of people in my position -- to work in this environment.  But many people would like to enjoy some of the benefits that come from this kind of work.  Including my wife. 

So, again, the question:  Is there a parallel for men in the FSU with respect to this kind of work pace?  How can I help her understand what I experience when working?  To what in Russian life can I refer to in order to help her develop an understanding of this aspect of life -- other than her vegetable garden?

Journeyman