New here (researcher)

[maria_CA]

Hi everyone!  My name is Maria and I'm a college student in California.  I'm in an introductory class that is teaching us how to do field research and oral histories.  I am a student of Russian and have been dating a Russian for around 6 months.  I have decided to write an oral history on international dating and the couples who pursue partners abroad. I am familiar with the stigma that can be associated with dating long distance or online (I've certainly been subjected to judgment by some of my friends) and am seeking to go beyond these stereotypes and try to get some real stories.   I have a number of friends in Russia who are dating men from abroad too, so I want to represent Russian women fairly as well as foreign gentlemen.  I basically just want to hear peoples' stories about what it's like to find companionship abroad. My final project will just be a 20-25 page paper, nothing huge, and will only be seen by my professor and fellow students. I was wondering if any of your members or their spouses/girlfriends/partners would be willing to participate in interviews?  I see you all have a "researcher" sub-forum, which is great.  I'll set up a thread there if I get some people who want to participate.  I also want to assure you that confidentiality will be protected and that if you choose to participate, I have the proper paperwork/consent forms to ensure anonymity.  Please let me know if you are interested in participating.  I would love to hear your stories.  Admins, also, is the board comfortable if I were to poke around/participate on other threads?  I won't do this unless I get the "go ahead", as I want to make sure that you guys are comfortable with my presence here.

Thanks a lot!!

Maria

[Nat]

Hi Maria! I guess we've never had an American woman here who's dating a Russian man It's so interesting! Can you tell more about yourself? Does you bf actually live in Russia or is he an immigrant living in the USA? How come you got involved in the international dating? We've got a lot of stories of American men here so the reasons why they look for gf's in the FSU are fairly clear, but why would an American woman look for a bf in the FSU? It's something new to the forum
Please share your story with us and of course welcome to the forum!

[Gator]

Admins, also, is the board comfortable if I were to poke around/participate on other threads?  I won't do this unless I get the "go ahead", as I want to make sure that you guys are comfortable with my presence here.

Maria,

 

You are very polite.  We have only one Admin (Dan), and he is temporarily sidetracked.   I am certain he would welcome your participation, particularly given your pleasant, balanced and intelligent manner.

You may wish to send him a PM describing your study plan.  He will probably have some valuable suggestions because he is highly competent in such studies and he has many years of involvement with international marriage message boards.

Over the years a couple of social scientists have joined our board and collected information.  However, none were dating a Russian.  It should benefit you if you examined some of the past surveys.  This is the most documented survey:

http://www.goodwife.com/survey/xcultural_p01.html

[SANDRO43]

Welcome to RWD, Maria. For your project, you might consider having a look at our E-book: Men of the West, Women from the East.

We released it a year ago, and it summarises some 5 years of forum posts. You can download a free, partial copy from: http://www.goodwife.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=29&osCsid=1f4d39f5a0edb42f28cae04124c0e21a.

[siberia]

You are not alone, there are a couple of American women on the board who are married to FSU men. I will speak only for myself but I mostly just read the boards.  I can say that most of the American women who married FSU men, have met them in natural ways, not that we ever went looking for a FSU man, just happened to meet one and fall in love.

[tfcrew]

From time to time we have researchers here.
I researched the researchers using the search screen...

http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/index.php?topic=5289.0
http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/index.php?topic=5289.0
http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/index.php?topic=3326.msg93238#msg93238

One researcher [book writer] determined that guys [like guys here] must be 'losers' as they are looking for foreign brides.....
http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/index.php?topic=5612.msg99772#msg99772
Though this thread is over 5 yrs old the statistics seem to remain..

Recent statistical research has shown that about 50 percent of Russian women are single and a large number of them have never been married.

http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/index.php?topic=334.msg5139#msg5139

[civi68]

I would be willing

[maria_CA]

Thank you all for your warm welcome and to those of you who have volunteered to be interviewed!  I appreciate it quite a bit.  Apologies for the long silence.  It's midterms week right now and I have been bogged down with essays.  Hoping to finally get back into the swing of things with this project. I promise I will be in touch soon about possible interviews.

Thanks!

Maria