(1986 respondents, aged above 18, all over Ukraine,
polled in February 2007 by Kiev International Institute of Sociology
and the ages-famous National University “Kyiv Mohyla Academy”.

No more than 3 variants of answers allowed.)

To have raised and cultivated children – 55%
To love and be loved – 36%
To have built a marriage – 33%
To be a happy person – 29%
To be the master of her fate – 16%
To have an interesting occupation, that takes creativity – 15%
To have good, loyal friends – 11%
To be respected, of authority to her surrounding – 7%
To have reached peace of mind and harmony of soul – 7%
To lead an interesting life, full of events / experiences / learning – 6%
Undetermined or failing to answer – 10%

WOW!!!!
This is like sweet, sweet music to a Western man’s ears.

Being happily married is an optional extra for Western women. If the wife becomes bored with it then they simply get divorced. Their friends will most likley encourage them to get divorced. For Wertern men it is often the opposite. Men want to feel needed and divorce is disasterous for men.

Dinner accountability… In Russian culture, you would screen your personal life from public, to protect it and not to confuse others. It’s about privacy, same as the care you normally take of body and soul. Exceptions – when you are interviewed by the media; but even then many public figures keep stone silence about their relationships and significant others if any, or declare All Right (because a sound family is still a mark of sound personality).

Yet, in talking with friends, the #1 topic is Partners and Family. I mean, when girls talk.

Russian women account to their friends and pals for their work as well. And the first question exchanged by people is, “What’s your occupation?” Dinner party introductions ask each other. Trainers and doctors ask their clients. Craftspeople ask demanding, jovial or peculiar customers…

But it’s a common (and sometimes sore) question asked when people haven’t heard of each other long (or, tactlessly enough, even when they are just acquainted): “So, are you married yet” or “Do you have kids?”

A Russian woman can consider herself successful, and be envied, when she’s happily married. She regards her husband’s success as her own success. And often, some talented women prefer to hide from the risks of outer life behind the “strong shoulder”, and fulfil their potentials and ambitions in the capacity of promotion consultants, tacticians and generators of ideas to their men (Raisa the wife of Gorbachev was not the finest but the most visible of them, thus incurring public disapproval).

To be developed into the post “Why an intelligent Russian wife is a vital asset for the family”…

Now imagine that men’s praise of women’s love and loyalty is a rare spring of fresh water to our women, too!

In the modern culture, taking deep interest in the other is deemed indecent, dreams of lifetime love – unrealistic, a desire for marriage and children – an assault on the Man’s Freedom.

Those Russian men who can’t provide may consider women “parasites”, themselves being such. Men who have potential to struggle through the current business environment are trained to be “lone wolves”. And men who by any measure strive up are lured there by the image of “harvesting predators” at the top.

Even as early as in XIX c. the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy said something like, “Man strode easily over the fields, then attached a woman to his leg…” like a cannonball at a convict’s ankle. Impressive, eh?

So, the current East-West matchmaking situation is truly unique…

I can only smile when I read these words. As a Western man who has had to endure being considered a social pariah for even suggesting that a girl’s most essential happiness is to have her beloved man at her side, to see these very words are like water to a man who has walked for decades through the desert.

In the West it “goes without saying” because it is considered an outmoded concept and nearly trivial by a Feminazi—rather than the timeless and successful union of the lives of a man and his girl.

Yes, people still marry. But it is fundamentally a minor circumstance, relative to career success, and lived according to an entirely different perception of the role of the husband and wife than it is in Russia.

Only career and material success are considered important enough to be shared publicly with others.

Tell people how happy you are to have your beloved husband in your life, when at a city dinner party and you may get some blank looks from those who heard you.

Of course you will be congratulated for marrying. But there is little genuine respect for your happiness found in a man.

“So, when do you go back to work?” is the usual way of exiting such an awkward moment.

Aw, but tell them that you just found a place to drop off your six month old child to StrangeCare/ChildCare so that you could then have the time to accept your new promotion at work and people will shower smiles and congratulations with enthusiam. Oh, how excellent!

Understand?

Happiness by having a beloved husband? Please now tell me something truly worthy of happiness. Understand?

Q. What does it mean to be a woman?
- To be a multitasking “Caesar” who manages five things simultaneously.
- To be doomed to feel insufficient.
- To be able to cry when tears are needed.
- To make others think that being a woman is something special.
- To be able to perform in 30 years what a man is given 60 for.
- To be always responsible for everything.