false impressions

[Son of Clyde]

I was told by more than one person that my wife would arrive in the US and become Americanized in a short time. This could not be further from the truth. I hear from her very often how much harder life is in the US than in her country. Maybe not assimilating to our culture can make life more difficult. Anyone else find their fiance or spouse will not let go? Being proud of ones heritage is an admirable trait but to survive in a different environment one needs to adapt. I see changes from day to day so I think the process for some is a slow one. I am thinking it is not the first year that will be rough but the first 2 or 3 years.

[KenC]

Clyde,
You are correct in thinking that it takes more than a year. What I found is that my wife "fought it" for a period of time. The US sucked to her and everything was better back home. This went on for quite a while and was very frustrating for me. Then a light bulb went on in her head and she began to quit fighting becoming an American. From that point in time, things got better and better. Now I tease her that she isn't Russian or American any more, but Californian. Truth is, is that she is a combo of all. There is way too much to learn than can be accomplished in a year. Good luck.
KenC

[PeeWee]

Clyde,
You are correct in thinking that it takes more than a year. What I found is that my wife "fought it" for a period of time. The US sucked to her and everything was better back home. This went on for quite a while and was very frustrating for me. Then a light bulb went on in her head and she began to quit fighting becoming an American. From that point in time, things got better and better. Now I tease her that she isn't Russian or American any more, but Californian. Truth is, is that she is a combo of all. There is way too much to learn than can be accomplished in a year. Good luck.
KenC

Ken, has she yet realized who your governor is? The Terminator. How cool is that?

Peewee

[Jumper]

clyde- i can only mirror kenC's experience..

ken said

You are correct in thinking that it takes more than a year. What I found is that my wife "fought it" for a period of time. The US sucked to her and everything was better back home. This went on for quite a while and was very frustrating for me

almost all couples we know went thru this,,

and generally the first trip home helped greatly in reducing the rose colored glasses,and the thoughts of were they used to live, being utopia.

if you read up on culture shock you will find this is a common symtom..
(to view anything in the new enviroment ,unfamaliar as terrible, and view the past as absolutely perfect)

my wife seemed to get over this phase fairly quickly..about one year,,
and is certainly westernized by now, although she will always be a RW at heart and soul of course!!

 She is certainly a RW.. but now has a much more realistic view of both the positives and negatives of both places.

if your wife hasnt traveled home yet,,
i would suggest she do so.. it will change her perceptions.
maybe not radically and it takes time..
but by my wifes third trip home, all of a sudden that utopia was horrible,
 and she coiuldnt understand wantin gto live there,
the west had become much more famaliar and *cozy*
from a woman who hated EVERYTHING initially,
 thats a fairly radical change in a 2 years time.

it should be noted she NEVER wanted to relocate to the USA,
and was not favorable or looking forward to it long before moving..
so her nintial reactions her i thought were due in big part to that,, but the moere couples i know the wmore i realize her reactionbs werre similar to most people who even WANT to move here,,
at first everything sucks, every small or large thing..

its one reason i feel couples going thru a  K1 period , using iot as a trial to see how they realy feel abouty each other,
have it so difficult.
trying to sort out personal feelings,
 along with this other cultural displacement  that generally goes on,
 has to be near impossible

Our first three months stateside was horrible,,lol
i tell you plainly, and she would agree, that had we not already been married, there would have been no future "us"

[Shadow]

My fiancee is still very Russian, and I hope she will always be proud to be this.
But on our first trip back she told me that she felt our home as her home now. Last week when we were in Paris she told me the same thing on the way back. Going back to Holland and our place is now going home for her.

Life being different, and not as easy as she mght have expected is not strange. But I know for sure my fiancee does not want to go back without me, not even for an extended visit to her friends and family. Yeah, she misses them but she would miss me more. 

[jb]

Clyde,

You should know by now that I will not deliver my message with a dose of Novocaine or a Valium pill.  You say you hear from her that life is so much harder here in America than it was in Ukraine.  That's simply not true, life here is infinitely easier here than there.  It's just harder for her.  I'll make a bet that the problem with your wife's lack of progress with assimilation is her lack of competency in English, simple as that.  Your step-son will acclimate much faster than his mother simply because he has been thrust into school, into a group of peers where he must assimilate or forever be an outcast.  By the same token your wife is under no such pressure.  She is probably relying on you, her son, and maybe a computer program to communicate.  I gather from your post regarding the AOS interview that she is still stumbling along badly with her English skills.  Her English will not improve as long as she sits at home, and she will not begin to adjust or become Americanized as long as she doesn't learn English.  She cannot make friends, or even competently conduct rudimentary business transactions without better English skills. 

I think you might hasten along the process by encouraging her to learn and speak, by insisting on solely speaking English at home.  Enlist the aid of her son in this, just don't answer her questions if she asks in Russian.  I'm not saying you have to be mean to her about this, you could even make some sort of a game out of it where she has to participate in family discussions only in English.  She needs to have a working vocabulary of a minimum of 500 common words, and you shouldn't worry about grammar or syntax at this stage, just the families conversational needs at the dinner table.

She will never make it here without English, you need to address this problem ASAP.

[Michelangelo]

Thanks gang, it's good to know the future and what it holds in terms of adjustments. 
My fiancee is very troubled about coming to the US and has insisted on knowing she can go home when she wants to...
It's a credit to her that she loves her country and city and neighborhood and is happy there
so i think she will make the adjustment just fine
and since i am an independent consultant
I'll be able to give her as much time and space as she needs.
Thanks for the warnings; I'd like to think she will be different
but your answers tell me not to expect such and to get used
to comparisons and complaining 

[David1963]

My wife and I talked about this issue awhile back.  She said that while things are different and she might not like some things that it is important to her to keep a positive attitude.  She does not complain about much at all and seems to be adapting well.  She talks about missing her family and friends which is normal but doesn't complain about much.

Her daughter complains about a lot, missing family and friends and says she wants to move back to Ukraine and says she will when she turns 18.  I think she likes it here more than she lets on, I think she feels like she is betraying her country and family if she says she likes it here. 

Both of them are getting along well with their English.  When school starts Margo will not be in ESL classes and be with the regular 7th graders.  Lida can talk with people at the stores or on the telephone and communicate with not much problem.  On July 27th they will have been here 1 year.  This is comming here will very little English abilities.

[Jet]

Her daughter complains about a lot, missing family and friends and says she wants to move back to Ukraine and says she will when she turns 18.

Ask her again next year LOL!
Niko, having been here 2 years, and at 7 yrs. old, tends to tell it like it is  :
"Don't you want to move back to Russia with momma?"
HECK NO! Florida is WAY better than Russia ever was!
Don't you miss us?
I can ALWAYS come back for a visit...don't worry!

If I had a nickel for evertime I heard "Jim skazal?" in his first six months, I'd be comfortabbly retired by now  But he has adapted amazingly well, and is, for all intents and puposes, bi-lingual and fluent.

I also have to completely agree with what JB posted in response to Clyde. Get her out of the house often and force her to work on her language skills - it is overwhelmingly important.

[Daknack]

I think some of you have a false impression of Clyde's wifes English.  It has gotten quite good and when I talk with her I sometimes have to explain things (I use alot of slang and metaphor in my day to day speech) but she understand quite well.  Even when I discuss some more complex concepts, if you explain it in a few different ways she undertands.  I am impressed with how much English she knows from being here less than a year.  My personal opinion is that she is fighting assimilation as opposed to having communication difficulties.

Having talked with her about her life back home, and some with Clyde, I have the impression that she had some help with things in the Ukraine, where as here people more fly solo.  From her standpoint of reality, it may well be true some aspects of her life were indeed more favorable, and others only appearing to be more favorable.

[Son of Clyde]

The problem with the immigration officer yesterday is that he was very remote. I heard a female officer in another room joking around with the family. This guy barely gave my wife time to comprehend what he was asking. Mike and I had to reword the questions several times until she got them. This guy probably did approve us but he made me a nervous wreck in the process. Sometimes she has to hear things worded several ways.

[Photo Guy]

Son of Clyde,
I can relate to what you are saying. Long before Larisa arrived, she told me she wanted to 'think like an American' and I saw that as kind of comical and an interesting fantasy. I was surprised that during her adjustment, she was highly critical of American culture. I wasn't ready to defend our culture. I didn't expect that particular challenge. Our eating habits bothered her. A big meal before bedtime? How absurd? The large meal was supposed to happen at 2 PM. She wasn't that willing to trade her old culture for the new culture. With 'culture shock', I really have to tell you that she was in a kind of 'shock' to her system. Here, we speak to strangers rather easily and she was extremely cautious about making friends with 'strangers'. This reminds me of how 'quiet' strangers are in public in Kiev. I grew up in NY where it is 'normal' to interact with strangers. As time went on in Phoenix, I could see that Larisa was much more cautious than me, about  choosing friends. Must be a RW thing. In some ways I see her as being jaded, compared wth myself. I also got the impression her past environment was more 'dangerous' than here in the US. In general, she was judging and analyzing our culture, not quite sure if she liked it or wanted to accept it. I thnk she is still trying to reach her own conclusions, now that she is back in Ukraine. 

[Jumper]

Doug-
FWIW - that seems normal enough, certainly initially.
Certain things my wife was so highly critical of initially, she now enjoys herself,,
and no,  i seldom miss an opportunity to jokingly tease her about them either
 
 As far as defending my culture, i dint. I listened ,let her vent, and move on with her day...(yes often it was very difficult to not interject with something closer to reality lol)
Defending would have often been a comparison , and no matter how you would word it would seem a put down of her culture.
There is positive and negative in both.. 
Afterall it was just "different" , i would feel the same thrust into another culture and knew the feeling firsthand.
  If things got way out of whack, i would generally just remind her that maybe she was indeed correct on all counts,its entirely possible.
 but since this is where i lived,was my country,
that its possible even a patient man might tire of hearing just how awful it is..
and if she could remember a single time i complained about anything in her culture, which she had to admit i had plenty of things to critise if i wanted too..
anyway, if for each instance she could recall, of my critisising her culture..,
 she would be allowed ten free shots at mine..
She had to agree this was fair enough... and that she had long ago used up any and all freebies. LOL

At one rather low point, i simply told her,
" look, this is were WE live.It is your choice to face each day looking for something to annoy you, or bother you , and bitterly complian,
 or you can look at what each day brings thats positive and get on with your life- it is not the locations fault. The location doesnt hear you when you complian , the location doesnt care if it makes you sad or happy!
your family is who cares,,  you are taking your frustration out on the wrong people.. and this is not the person that you are.
You made this choice, you can learn to face it positively, or you have options to change it. it is within yourself, noone can do it for you.
 but decide,  because you know very well that i wont live this way"

rough times , maybe many couples avoid them..I dont know.

we did not, she was certainly depressed and in a funk very unlike herself,
for about 6 months. I felt horrible for her and tried many different things..
and tacts.. nothing worked.
Its also hard not to feel huge responcibilty for someones happiness or misery when it is something you certainly played a huge role in.
making it worse i had been thru it myself, knew the root cause , and still very little you can do to help ,but be understanding and patient
(patience is not one of my best traits, though my wife thinks it is)

I wish i could give something useful for those that will go thru it..
but  really she just worked thru it,in time,  and everything changed .
actually rather abruptly in her case.. and she again became the person i knew. 


Hey perhaps many couples avoid this time period, or dont have any real troubles adjusting,,
i hope so.

[Wild Orchid*]

Son of Clyde,...

Is someone blind here?

[KenC]

The problem with the immigration officer yesterday is that he was very remote. I heard a female officer in another room joking around with the family. This guy barely gave my wife time to comprehend what he was asking. Mike and I had to reword the questions several times until she got them. This guy probably did approve us but he made me a nervous wreck in the process. Sometimes she has to hear things worded several ways.

Unfortunately, it isn't just how your wife communicates with you that matters, but how she communicates with the rest of America that does. You cannot always be by her side and act as a semi-translator for her. As long as she is dependent upon you to be her bridge in communicating with the rest of America, her assimilation will be stunted. This is yet another reason as to why English abilities are so important. As much as we want to protect our wives from any hardships they may have in communication, we do them a huge dis-service by shielding them from finding their own way.

When my wife arrived here, her spoken English was maybe a 6 on a scale of 10 and her written English was about a 3. A part time job in a retail store helped her a lot with her spoken English. It also forced her to be independent in her communication growth. This is very important because she has to be able to function independent of me. Two college English composition classes and more than a few term papers have dramatically improved her writing skills.

AJ made an important point when he spoke of how trips back home help to put things in perspective too. Before Lena went back to visit, she had an almost child like memory of Russia. With each subsequent visit home, Russia's image fell  and America's image rose (in her mind). On her last visit, during the holidays in 2004, she was the center of a family debate on the good and bad of Russia vs America. Guess who's side she was on? This was so ironic because I can remember the exact same debates she had with my son soon after she arrived here, only then she was singing the virtues of her Motherland.

These transitions happen over a very long period of time. They can be very frustrating for you and her. The better her English skills, the easier the transition. To me, this is the most difficult part of the whole process. Good luck and remain patient.
KenC

[bgreed]

Wow! David, Hard to believe that Lida has been here almost a year now.

[Turboguy]

I think there is always a little bit of guesswork in trying to figure out what is really happening in some of the stories here.

I have been in Clyde's home, met Iryna and Michael.  I chatted with Iryna on the phone a few weeks ago.   I don't see a girl who is hiding out and trying to stay Ukrainian.   I see someone who is working to learn English, trying hard to be an American and doing her best to make a good marriage.  (I will add with a very nice guy who doesn't have a lot of experience at being a husband so I see them both trying hard and learning a lot)

Iryna's English is at least a 6 and maybe getting close to a 7.  Not bad for a gal who knew nothing not long ago.  My guess is that in 6 more months she will be able to talk to most anyone about most anything without much hesitation.  At this point, language is a small problem for Iryna and will soon disappear.  She will be communicating fine with America.   She is a woman.  That is what women do, talk.  Someday those who have a Russian wife will probably finding themselves wishing their wife could forget some English so they didn't talk so much.

[jb]

I agree, Ken.  My wife now gets very tired of Russia and Moscow very quickly, she is amazed at how much Russia has changed since she was last there, and it's all change for the bad.  I don't mention that she is now viewing Russia through hugely American eyes.

She still loves the food, (you just can't get decent salty fish in America), the music, arts, her friends and family, but she sorely misses her home in Texas when she is away.

[David1963]

Wow! David, Hard to believe that Lida has been here almost a year now.

It doesn't seem that long either.  I'm looking forward to her and Margo's progress this next year. 

It sounds like Clydes wife is also progressing.  Both of the women came here with about the same English level and the first year is just about learning the basics; language, how to get around and the customs/culture.  This next year is also a make or break year.  It is the year they can put most of this into play with a job, driving, more extensive network of friends and associates.  If they are able to do this, which I think both are, they will be very successful and thrive here.

I look forward to Clydes two year update.

[KenC]

I think there is always a little bit of guesswork in trying to figure out what is really happening in some of the stories here.

I have been in Clyde's home, met Iryna and Michael.  I chatted with Iryna on the phone a few weeks ago.   I don't see a girl who is hiding out and trying to stay Ukrainian.   I see someone who is working to learn English, trying hard to be an American and doing her best to make a good marriage.  (I will add with a very nice guy who doesn't have a lot of experience at being a husband so I see them both trying hard and learning a lot)

Iryna's English is at least a 6 and maybe getting close to a 7.  Not bad for a gal who knew nothing not long ago.  My guess is that in 6 more months she will be able to talk to most anyone about most anything without much hesitation.  At this point, language is a small problem for Iryna and will soon disappear.  She will be communicating fine with America.   She is a woman.  That is what women do, talk.  Someday those who have a Russian wife will probably finding themselves wishing their wife could forget some English so they didn't talk so much.

Turbo,
Well I guess you know Clyde's wife better than Clyde, because your post is in direct conflict with his when he wrote:
"I was told by more than one person that my wife would arrive in the US and become Americanized in a short time. This could not be further from the truth. I hear from her very often how much harder life is in the US than in her country. Maybe not assimilating to our culture can make life more difficult. Anyone else find their fiance or spouse will not let go? Being proud of ones heritage is an admirable trait but to survive in a different environment one needs to adapt. I see changes from day to day so I think the process for some is a slow one. I am thinking it is not the first year that will be rough but the first 2 or 3 years".
KenC

[catzenmouse]

AJ's and KenC's posts very closely resemble a lot of what we have gone (and are going) through. Time, exposure, education, and practice have made a huge difference in the level of comfort and confidence in Elena. I think for some it will be over in a year and for others it may take a couple of years to get past these things. In real estate it is location, location, location. In this it is patience, patience, patience. It does get better and with the proper mind set on the mans part it will make a great difference in how she gets through this.

Ken

[jb]

It also occurs to me that the face my wife puts on for a guest or visitor in our house often does not resemble the face I see everyday living with the woman.  Clyde's visitors may be experiencing some of the famose traditional privacy that RW hold so dear.  My wife would die before she would let it be known that she has a problem of any kind.  Could it be that in her heart and mind, Clyde's Irina is struggling, yet still has the presence of mind to put on a "happy face" for guests?  That sounds very RW'ish to me.

Clyde is the one who lives there every day, he should know how well she is adapting to life in the USA better than anyone.

[Jumper]

My wife now gets very tired of Russia and Moscow very quickly, she is amazed at how much Russia has changed since she was last there, and it's all change for the bad.  I don't mention that she is now viewing Russia through hugely American eyes.

exactly my experience jb.
even the salty fish part , although she did find a decent market in the Ukranian village part of chicago to buy this needed ingredient with piva.

[KenC]

It also occurs to me that the face my wife puts on for a guest or visitor in our house often does not resemble the face I see everyday living with the woman.  Clyde's visitors may be experiencing some of the famose traditional privacy that RW hold so dear.  My wife would die before she would let it be known that she has a problem of any kind.  Could it be that in her heart and mind, Clyde's Irina is struggling, yet still has the presence of mind to put on a "happy face" for guests?  That sounds very RW'ish to me.

Clyde is the one who lives there every day, he should know how well she is adapting to life in the USA better than anyone.

jb,
Good point. Lena would die before she let anyone else know she was struggling with anything.
KenC

[catzenmouse]

It also occurs to me that the face my wife puts on for a guest or visitor in our house often does not resemble the face I see everyday living with the woman.  Clyde's visitors may be experiencing some of the famose traditional privacy that RW hold so dear.  My wife would die before she would let it be known that she has a problem of any kind.  Could it be that in her heart and mind, Clyde's Irina is struggling, yet still has the presence of mind to put on a "happy face" for guests?  That sounds very RW'ish to me.

Clyde is the one who lives there every day, he should know how well she is adapting to life in the USA better than anyone.

Da, Tozsha Zdis.

Ken