Experiencing the Cinderella Complex: I married a FSU woman

[BC]

Hitech,

This was not a high maintenance woman.

gousa,

Let me put it in your terms.. what's the most important aspect of chopping down a tree? - obviously where it will fall.. 

If you treated women with the same respect you would not be where you are today.

[MaxxumUSA]

Well...  I've been spending about 1/2 of the day trying to read up on this thread and get caught up.  I skipped a couple pages but for the most part think I got this all pretty clear.

Here are my thoughts:

GoUSA:
1.  I would certainly like to hear your RW's side of the story.  I think we would hear a much different version of this story.

2.  This financial thing you keep on bringing up.  You MARRIED this woman - what's yours is hers.  If you felt that strongly about not wanting to share part of what you have - then the prenup should have been done.  Any excuse as to why it did not get done is pure crap.

2a.  Inheritance?  If it was that large an amount then why are you worried about a couple hundred thousand over 3 years?  I assume that is about normal for most of us here that have married a RW.  Quite simply it seems that you overestimated the value of your money either on purpose or accidentally.  Most of us here on RWD are close to or above 6 figure income earners.  This means over three years we will probably spend as much or more just as normal course of living.

3.  You should have come to the forums LONG ago if you truly had that many things going on.

After reading most of your posts here I'm on the band wagon that thinks this is mostly your own fault.  You're 47 years old and it seems you have a child's mentality on taking responsibility for your own actions.  My opinion is that you need to grow up, act your age, and probably owe your ex an apology.

I will put a disclaimer and say that maybe I got it all wrong and you did everything correct like you claim and she did everything wrong like you claim.  But I think I have a good perception of things and don't feel that way.

My MAIN reason to even post in this thread is to tell any newcomers that might be reading this the plain truth.  There are many great women - like my wife - in Russia looking for a good man.  One reason I have a fantastic wife because I was open with her and did not give her false expectations.  When she does have fantasies about things I bring her back to earth in a kind manner as it is my job as husband to do so.

NEVER NEVER have we been violent or even called each other some name in anger.  We argue but we are a team in life and keep respect when we disagree.  Again - it is my job as her husband to set this standard.

I tell you these things about how I treat my wife so that you might recognize where you might have made a couple mistakes.

I could type another 40 minutes to an hour writing more things I think I noticed - but these are the biggies and enough for now.

- Maxxum

[Ronnie]

Gousa, is the bartender/translater a woman?  Then you'll need to learn from your past experience and the advice offered in this thread (and a lot of other thread before this).   

Marriage is one of those dances where you may lead, but YOU have to know the proper steps lest you both end up in a heap on the floor.  To the other dancing couples, you'll look like a klutz.

[Mir]

when I got my vasectomy the orders were to sit and rest for a few days

There is a higher incident of a progressive speech disorder among men who have had a vasectomy

[ScottinCrimea]

Amazing, BF and I can agree on something. I could have written the same.

A RW who comes here thinking she does not have to work is incredibly naive, or looking for an easy way out of her life in  FSU, either should be avoided. BF got to work ASAP of her arrival, that is not unusual; that should have been clearly explained and understood. I think the problem may have been the lack of communication from the get go or unrealistic expectations.

I see in many retail places, there are many immigrants working who can barely get by with broken English, but they work.

I have plenty of income, nonetheless I want my RW to work from the get go, not sit around and twiddle her thumbs, within a month of her arrival; the lesson I learned that I would make sure she understands what is expected of her very explicitly before coming here.

This seems to totally contradict what you have been saying before, specifically avoiding doctors because you thought they could transfer this skill to the US and not be dependent on you because they could support themselves.

You actually believe that this school teacher with limited English skills can find a job within a month of her arrival?  This shows extreme naivety and inconsideration.  For one thing, she can not even apply for a job until her documents are in order because they require a social security number at a minimum.  The first few months are a time of adaptation and adjustment to a completely different system and if your choice is that she spend this time job seeking rather than focusing on her adjustment.  Quite chivalrous of you.  How will she get to this job?  Drive?  take a bus around a strange city?

Although you have yet to answer any of my direct questions, I'll throw out another.  What specific jobs do you think she is capable of one month after arrival?

[KenC]

BC & HiTech,
"High maintenance" is a relative term.  I do not see where a $30K per year expenditure for a family of three leaves much room for extravagance.  Hell I give Lena more than that for groceries and her personal expenses through the year without any bill payments coming out of it.  But I have no doubt that to goUSA, his wife looked like the second coming of Paris Hilton.  Only a hermit, living in a log cabin, that treasures other people's trash would conclude this of this woman.  Any normal man would not see this woman as a golddigger in the slightest way.  

In truth, the only "up side" here is that goUSA will never be able to procreate.  Thank God for that!
KenC

[Ronnie]

In truth, the only "up side" here is that goUSA will never be able to procreate.  Thank God for that!
KenC

KenC... Let me see if I'm getting this straight.  GoUsa...you disapprove of him....right?

 

[BC]

BC & HiTech,
"High maintenance" is a relative term.  I do not see where a $30K per year expenditure for a family of three leaves much room for extravagance.  

Yeah, that's what I said..

In truth, the only "up side" here is that goUSA will never be able to procreate.  Thank God for that!

With the vasectomy he effectively secured the inheritance for his sole use.. He can now blow it all as he wishes without thinking about a next generation.  Should have had a penectomy instead.. less trouble in the long run..

[ScottinCrimea]

I started reading this thread a couple of days ago so have had a lot of catching up to do, and I wrote a rather expensive post with my views only to accidently delete it, which is probably a good theing for everyone involved.  Instead, I think I'll post a shorter summary as I see it from what has been posted here.  I may have some of the specifics wrong, but I think the overall picture is accurate.

We have a guy whose father dies when he is 14, leaving his mother to take care of him which she does, sending him to school to get several degrees.  He tries working at his profession for awhile but prefers to stay home living off the inheritance and being taken care of by mom. When she dies, he gets lonely and starts looking for some companionship, finding the photos and agency hype on the internet much to his liking.  He could never find such a woman in the area where he lives with the choices limited, and to find one who knew his lifestyle and still wanted to be with him would be even more difficult. He spends 2 1/2 weeks with her and arranges for her to come over.  I can imagine that he lured her with promises of a Cinderella lifestyle.  So then he brings her to some backwoods area and expects her to live with Goodwill furniture and clothing.  As she continues pursuing the lifestyle that he had led her to believe she would have, he becomes nervous because it is eating into his interitance and (God forbid) he may actually have to go get a job.  He demands that she instead get a job, thinking that if she was a physician she could easily get a job as a nurse and can't understand why she would take a lesser paying job, accusing her of doing this out of laziness.  What he fails to understand is that a medical education doesn't translate into a nursing education and even if I, as a physician, chose to go back and get my nursing degree, it would still require a minumum of three years, and I speak the language fairly well.  He justifies not getting a job himself because he has his inheritance (which he didn't work to earn) as his financial contribution to the marriage.

He claims to have spent extravagantly on her, buying her a used car now valued at less than $3,000 and buying a home in Florida for $150,000. (I don't know the real estate market in florida, but really, what kind of a dump can you buy there for this?) and wow, a new couch to replace the old Goodwill one!

He complains about her ordering things online, which she probably had to do because there wasn't any decent shopping nearby, but still he dutifully sits down every night and orders the things she sees.  (Probably figured that if he didn't, he wouldn't get any tyhat night) Perhaps she had addictive shopping tendencies, but he certainly fed them, and I can imagine how awful the withdrawal was when he finally found the balls to say no.

I laughed about his claims of taking her out to lunch and dinner every day and spending $5,000 a year on this.  Given there were three of them, this comes out to about $2.25 each per meal.  He's right when he says he found the cheaper restaurants (Is McDonalds considered a restaurant?)

With every post he shows that he understands little or nothing about women, let alone a RW.  It was an obvious trainwreck scenario from the beginning.  He was a bachelor used to his own ways and a life where he could live easily off his inheritance as long as things were done in his usual frugal way.  She was a woman who expected to have a husband who would take care of her and believed (or was led to believe) that this meant at a higher financial level than he was capable of.  And really, if she had remained in Russia her lifestyle would have probably been better in many ways.  Unfortunately, she lost all of that when she came to the US.

I, too, would love to hear her side, because I think expectations weren't managed well by either party and weren't decided on before the marriage, so both ended up disappointed in what they got.  I can easily see how things escalated to the point of arguments and physical aggression and doing a little 20/20 hindsight, in each case where gousa sites a problem, it could have been easily handled in more appropriate ways, avoiding the escalations.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see her as the villain in all of this.  Of course she got defensive and tried to protect her future and that of her child in the end and, as in all divorces, this may have been over the top, but I see his reactions as even worse.

I guess the lesson that can be drawn from this, if any, is that expectations should be understood clearly and managed BEFORE the marriage, not adjusted to ln the fly as you go or suddenly changed in midstream.  Gousa has no right to complain, because he didn't do this and he is reaping the consequences of this failure.

[Maxx2]

Not everyone is suitable for this process that is for sure. Men past their late thirties have to ask themselves if they are too set in their ways to adapt to a Russian woman with her needs and desires. Men should also ask themselves if their living environment is suitable for a big city woman.

There was this Russian woman that jb told me about. She came to the US and found out her fiance was busted broke and living in a single wide trailer. She then put her head down and rolled up her sleeves. She got a good paying job and got her husband to get his as$ in gear and meet his full potential with a good job as well. After several years they both had a middle class life complete with the nice house, cars, vacations etc. She was clearly the better half in that marriage. I think she is the best example of a RW I have heard about. But you know what? If her husband didn't shape up and snap to he would have been left in his squalor I am sure. It takes two to tango.   


Maxx 

[viking]

In truth, the only "up side" here is that goUSA will never be able to procreate.  Thank God for that!
KenC

I wonder what Darwin would have to say about this guy? Should we nominate gousa for one of those annual Darwin awards which promotes the disapperance of certain gene pools?

[steviej]

... Wives are always asking for things.  At least mine does ...

Ken, an instant classic !!!  ....     

We evolved as hunter-gatherers. Can you guess who is who ?? ??   

[Ronnie]

There was this Russian woman that jb told me about. She came to the US and found out her fiance was busted broke and living in a single wide trailer. She then put her head down and rolled up her sleeves. She got a good paying job and got her husband to get his as$ in gear and meet his full potential with a good job as well. After several years they both had a middle class life complete with the nice house, cars, vacations etc. She was clearly the better half in that marriage. I think she is the best example of a RW I have heard about. But you know what? If her husband didn't shape up and snap to he would have been left in his squalor I am sure. It takes two to tango.   
Maxx 

Maxx,
This situation is interesting.  I have wondered sometimes what I would do if I didn't have a family to motivate me.  I could easily move into a single-wide trailer, write songs, go fishin', grow a garden and, play poker, golf and baseball and take just enough clients to pay overhead.  Zero tax bracket all the way!

But some men who would find themselves in that situation might soon tire of it I think.  They miss that female voice reminding them of what needs to be done and when!  So JB's guy knew just how to do it.  He picked a woman who wasn't afraid of work, loved her man and knew how to motivate him and they both prospered.  Smart guy... he picked one of the best.

[MaxxumUSA]

Maxx,
This situation is interesting.  I have wondered sometimes what I would do if I didn't have a family to motivate me.  I could easily move into a single-wide trailer, write songs, go fishin', grow a garden and, play poker, golf and baseball and take just enough clients to pay overhead.  Zero tax bracket all the way!

But some men who would find themselves in that situation might soon tire of it I think.  They miss that female voice reminding them of what needs to be done and when!  So JB's guy knew just how to do it.  He picked a woman who wasn't afraid of work, loved her man and knew how to motivate him and they both prospered.  Smart guy... he picked one of the best.

There is nothing wrong with the "simple life."

[Ronnie]

Ah yes, the simple life indeed....

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SecovdsYFw&feature=related[/youtube]

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MohJmg9ku0A&feature=related[/youtube]

[Maxx2]

Starting at the last minute of the second youtube must have been GoUSA's wife's reaction to his place.

Those youtubes bring back memories. Thanks Ronnie.

I've seen houses that depression era old people lived in passed down to their sons. Usually they are beyond remodeling. 


Maxx

[Maxx2]

When I started in this endeavor I had a lot of misconceptions on what the typical Russian woman is. The one perception I had of RW was that they are strong. I believe that this is accurate assessment for most of them. This attracted me to RW as I wanted a strong woman beside me just like the woman jb described. Not to pull me up out of poverty as I was making a better than average living. But someone who would stand shoulder to shoulder with me to fight life's curves. I had read about the Septembrists wives and was impressed.


Maxx

[Mir]

I had read about the Septembrists wives and was impressed.

I believe you meant Decembrists? (Septembrists may be applicable in relation to 9/11)
Still Decembrist revolt and its aftermath took place in the 1820 and 30s. I am sure the American women of that time were as strong as their Russian sisters.

[Maxx2]

I believe you meant Decembrists? (Septembrists may be applicable in relation to 9/11)
Still Decembrist revolt and its aftermath took place in the 1820 and 30s. I am sure the American women of that time were as strong as their Russian sisters.

Thanks Mir for the correction. About American women. Yes they were I am sure. Those were rugged times. We Americans have been getting soft.


Maxx

[Ronnie]

I'm not so sure Americans are getting soft.  We have a whole lot of men and women in Iraq, and Afghanistan right now, patrolling the streets looking for bad guys in 120 degree weather carrying 30 Kg or so of gear.

Tell the crab boat crews in the Bering Sea Americans are soft and only immigrants are willing to do those jobs.  Tell the roughnecks drilling oil wells in west Texas in similar heat, doing strenuous and dangerous labor in 12-hour shifts.  Most all are native-born "spoiled" American citizens. 

Next to many jobs, picking fruit and vegetables is child's play.  I worked summers in the orchards and the migrant pickers even then knocked off before the mid-day heat!  President Bush said last year that illegal immigrants were only taking jobs that American's won't do.  As a oil man from west Texas, he knew better. If farmers would pay a market wage, there would be no reason to import labor.   

Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now.

[gousa]

We have a guy whose father dies when he is 14, leaving his mother to take care of him which she does, sending him to school to get several degrees.  He tries working at his profession for awhile but prefers to stay home living off the inheritance and being taken care of by mom. When she dies, he gets lonely and starts looking for some companionship, finding the photos and agency hype on the internet much to his liking.  He could never find such a woman in the area where he lives with the choices limited, and to find one who knew his lifestyle and still wanted to be with him would be even more difficult. He spends 2 1/2 weeks with her and arranges for her to come over.  I can imagine that he lured her with promises of a Cinderella lifestyle.  So then he brings her to some backwoods area and expects her to live with Goodwill furniture and clothing.  As she continues pursuing the lifestyle that he had led her to believe she would have, he becomes nervous because it is eating into his interitance and (God forbid) he may actually have to go get a job.  He demands that she instead get a job, thinking that if she was a physician she could easily get a job as a nurse and can't understand why she would take a lesser paying job, accusing her of doing this out of laziness.  What he fails to understand is that a medical education doesn't translate into a nursing education and even if I, as a physician, chose to go back and get my nursing degree, it would still require a minumum of three years, and I speak the language fairly well.  He justifies not getting a job himself because he has his inheritance (which he didn't work to earn) as his financial contribution to the marriage.

He claims to have spent extravagantly on her, buying her a used car now valued at less than $3,000 and buying a home in Florida for $150,000. (I don't know the real estate market in florida, but really, what kind of a dump can you buy there for this?) and wow, a new couch to replace the old Goodwill one!

He complains about her ordering things online, which she probably had to do because there wasn't any decent shopping nearby, but still he dutifully sits down every night and orders the things she sees.  (Probably figured that if he didn't, he wouldn't get any tyhat night) Perhaps she had addictive shopping tendencies, but he certainly fed them, and I can imagine how awful the withdrawal was when he finally found the balls to say no.

I laughed about his claims of taking her out to lunch and dinner every day and spending $5,000 a year on this.  Given there were three of them, this comes out to about $2.25 each per meal.  He's right when he says he found the cheaper restaurants (Is McDonalds considered a restaurant?)

With every post he shows that he understands little or nothing about women, let alone a RW.  It was an obvious trainwreck scenario from the beginning.  He was a bachelor used to his own ways and a life where he could live easily off his inheritance as long as things were done in his usual frugal way.  She was a woman who expected to have a husband who would take care of her and believed (or was led to believe) that this meant at a higher financial level than he was capable of.  And really, if she had remained in Russia her lifestyle would have probably been better in many ways.  Unfortunately, she lost all of that when she came to the US.

I, too, would love to hear her side, because I think expectations weren't managed well by either party and weren't decided on before the marriage, so both ended up disappointed in what they got.  I can easily see how things escalated to the point of arguments and physical aggression and doing a little 20/20 hindsight, in each case where gousa sites a problem, it could have been easily handled in more appropriate ways, avoiding the escalations.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see her as the villain in all of this.  Of course she got defensive and tried to protect her future and that of her child in the end and, as in all divorces, this may have been over the top, but I see his reactions as even worse.

I guess the lesson that can be drawn from this, if any, is that expectations should be understood clearly and managed BEFORE the marriage, not adjusted to ln the fly as you go or suddenly changed in midstream.  Gousa has no right to complain, because he didn't do this and he is reaping the consequences of this failure.

hardly anyone is getting the message

Nope.  Other Russian women and their wealthy husbands here commented to me that I was spoiling her too much.   Some of them joked about it too.  My dad got hurt when I was 16, he lived 13 more years as a paraplegic.  My mom and myself took care of him.   THe house if Florida was purchased in 2004 for 150 grand.   It was a Carlson home, built in the year 2000.  It was a four bedroom, two bath, 1700 sq feet with a two car garage and a huge family room  and a large fenced in yard in a deed restricted subdivision.   The value hasn't gone up much since then because of the housing crash, but it went up to 190,000 for awhile.

She and her mother and her son were living in a house like mine up north, but with only one bedroom.   Mine had three.   THey had no running water and they carried water from an ouside well.    There was a run down shed with some chickens and a large back yard where her mother grew vegetables.

That was not the only violent confrontaion.  The first happened one year into the marriage when her son developed a plan to do nothing in school and swipe the notices about it from the mailbox.   But one of the notices got through, and it was about him doing absolutely nothing in that school during the last five months.   IT came from the school up north shortly after we had moved south.    She would not discuss any consquesnces so I decided that losing the Playstation for thirty days would be sufficient.  I locked the Playstation in my truck.   The next day she was nagging at me give the Playstation back.  I decided that I was not going to listen to this for 30 days so I took off and visited my cousin for a few days.    When I came back as soon as she saw me she dropped everything and attacked me, ripping my clothes off and scratching my arms as I moved about trying to get away from her.     My arms were dripping with blood and at least one fingernail puncture mark  is still visible.    I grabbed some  clothes and headed for a motel for a few more days.   As I was leaving she was apologizing all over the place.   When I came back a few days later she was walking around crying to herself in a terrible emotional state.    I said we would have to work on it.   She wisely disposed of my ripped clothes.   I returned the Playstation thirty days later.    Everyone should be glad that she doesn't procreate further.  I went through teacher training.  I know how to manage children.    The Russian method of child rearing is really something.

[gousa]

And I was not living with my mother off her inheritance.  She was alive and I was taking care of her.  There are two homes inthe north.   I was managing the trailer park with forty units.   The income was rather modest at that time.

[gousa]

The kid never ate out.  He wanted to stay home. One or two meals a day were ate out, breakfast not usually being one of them.     That's about 15 bucks a day at buffets and the like.          She cooked for the boy, who would not eat what we were eating.  He had to have every meal especially prepared or he would not eat.    That subsided when he got older because I think she got tired of it.  Sometimes one of us would cook but not so often.

[gousa]

In Florida any forgeign medical doctor can recieve an LPN  certificate by merely passing the LPN exam.     All classes are waived for the LPN cert.    It's not that way for RN, however.    The RN would take a few semester.   Since she had no hobbies, nothing to do at all but recieve my attention,  all her English classes were complete and I had sent her to Med Assistant and Plebotomy school and she had the new certificated I decided it was time to enter the market at least a part time basis.

[gousa]

There was a rumor once  in my home town once that I was the guy that
someone developed the Lil' Abner cartoon from.     

But my family never had much money, but always tons of land.  We were land rich and money poor.   

In my early twenties I took a year and traveled about with a steel erection crew
and we put up steel frame structures of varying heights in Florida.    My crew and  I once worked on the Okeelanta Sugar factory in Okeechobee.  That was a scary one.   It was 130 feet high and had an 80 foot eve height.    I was among the largest and strongest on the crew, undisputed in lifting ability and arm wrestling.  But my boss was super tough.   He was like Spider Man.    His nickname for me was "Horse".  We are still freinds although several attempts to find him have fallen short.