Why I went on my first trip to Russia

[Winston]

From the intro of my book on my first trip to Russia, here is why I first started going abroad:

The Problems That Drove Me To Search For Love in Russia/Ukraine

After my ex-girlfriend Robin left me after 2.5 years of living together with plans to marry, my dating and love life has been almost non-existent. She left suddenly with no warning and no attempt to work things out or listen to me. It was like having one of your body limbs torn off instantly with no warning or negotiation or consideration for your feelings. (Imagine that!) It was the most sudden and devastating experience in my life, and worst of all, it came from the person whom I trusted most in my life. After suffering in depression and agony, and being incapacitated for a few months, I left for Nevada to do a show with my friend there and stayed about eight months. I had a great time there, met many new people, got involved in show biz, did some paranormal ghost hunting investigations, got into some commercials and other acting jobs, and even got a new girlfriend. The experiences there recuperated me back to normal. The girlfriend I had in Nevada, though, only lasted 6 weeks. It was the most bizarre breakup I've ever had. Everything was going great until the last day, when after losing her car keys in the snow on December 2, 2001, she suddenly changed her complete attitude and behavior toward me. It was shocking coming from someone who was supposedly mature and well polished. I had been super nice to her, didn't make any of the mistakes I did with Robin, but eventually she saw red flags in every little thing I did, and twisted or used almost everything I said against me. After that, with the winter season and the declining economy, my work situation went downhill too. With nothing left in Nevada, I went back home to Washington to figure out what to do next. Luckily for me, I immediately got a job offer for a position I applied for a year earlier with the State Employment Security Office. Ever since then my dating life has gotten nowhere. I would meet many women all around town and on the internet and almost all of them would say that they had a boyfriend, thought they were too good for me, or had some other excuse. To them, I was either not their type or we had nothing in common. Since I had a wide variety of knowledge and interests, this perplexed me. I didn't know what would interest these girls and how I would appeal to them. Since I was single and without a committed lover, I felt that during this period, I should be dating many girls and having fun, but noooooo my single life has never been like that, either here or in California where I grew up. Instead, it's always been one let down after another, getting nowhere and being ignored by almost every decent looking woman around me. It seemed that girls wouldn't even talk to me unless it was for business reasons or pragmatic reasons (such as if they're a waitress, retail store worker offering assistance, etc.), and if I tried to change that by socializing with them or getting to know them, they would make me feel awkward like I was doing something wrong. Gee whiz! How are people around here supposed to procreate and further the species if this is how it is?!?!?!?!?!? I know I know, maybe I'm just not good enough for them, but why? I am not fat or ugly, and most people consider me to be from decent looking to cute or handsome, so I couldn't figure out what the problem was, and neither could any of my female friends I asked.

I had this same problem in California too, before I moved up here in 1998 to be with Robin. Still, I persisted in my efforts because I'm not a loser or a quitter and I felt I deserved better than this. However, the reality was that most of the time when I met a girl here, we would have little to talk about, she would be unwilling and impatient to give me any of her time, there would be no chemistry, and nothing I said would sound interesting to them even though I had a wide variety of topical knowledge. Even when a girl gave me her number, she would never follow up on it. If I called her, she would either never answer her phone (screening her calls out), always say she was about to leave, or make excuses for not meeting me. It was a lose-lose situation all around. I never had them figured out, but someone must have, because most of these girls are seen around town with punk ass looking guys, who somehow managed to get these young hot American girls, which I can't. I also tried meeting them off the internet too, through instant messaging and internet personals. Most of the time though, when I sent them my nice looking cute quality photo, about 60 or 70 percent of the girls would stop talking to me altogether. And as for the rest, when we met, if they were decent looking and above, then they would have no interest in me and give me bad apathetic vibes, and it would turn out to be a one time meeting, regardless of what they told me at the end of the date. The only ones that liked me were the most unattractive types that weren't even slightly proportional in weight. Before I met Robin, this also happened for years in California as well. And these things would happen even when I followed those overused cliches like "Be confident and like yourself, and others will like you and be attracted to your confidence too." In fact, I have never found even the slightest correlation between your confidence and how attracted women are to you. When a woman has genuinely liked me before, she still would like me even when I showed low confidence, and when a woman was not interested in me, it didn't matter if I seemed confident or felt confident or not. She still didn't like me. And that other overused cliche that says that chicks like guys who don't need them, is often false as well. I have found that these cliches were true only if the girl was ALREADY interested in you prior. They don't matter if she wasn't interested in you in the first place. But people still spout these cliches like they are gospel truth or something. Very bizarre indeed.

Anyway, it seems that most white girls like punk guys, tall white guys, airhead jocks, or black or hispanic guys, rarely an Asian guy. The deck was constantly stacked against me no matter how hard I tried. And with all the hundreds of women I've pursued and tried to get to know, I only had three real girlfriends to show for it. Therefore, my hit rate with American girls was less than 1 percent. That's just totally unacceptable to me. When I lose a girlfriend, I should be able to replace her if I want. But this was ridiculous. When I was about to lose a relationship, being in this type of futile situation was what I always dreaded. This totally was against the freedom and choices that I felt that America should be about. But unfortunately, America to me equals loneliness and disappointment and frustration. Americans, particular American girls, have always treated me like a misfit and outcast, not because I wanted to be, but because that's how I was seen, and how the chemistry between us was. Obviously, despite the media hype, America is not for everyone. I didn't have these problems with sociality and dating when I lived for a year in Taiwan, for example. There, girls fought over me, and I was treated like an interesting and likable person. I did not feel that I deserved this. American girls treated me like I was a different species than them, a species that they didn't want to have anything to do with. I've always had trouble even getting into the same social groups as good looking white American girls. They don't even want me as a friend. And we don't usually have anything in common either for some reason, either because they wanted it that way, they have so few interests, or simply have no interest or desire in having me in their lives. Again, all of this was unacceptable to me, and rather than everyday stomping my foot and getting frustrated and turning to God and saying "Come on!" in frustration, I looked for other alternatives to this problem. Before I met Robin, I had started looking into the Russian Mail Order Bride (which is a very derogatory term to these elegant princesses, but I use that term here only for identification purposes since that is what they are called in this country) business, but after I moved to be with her, I felt it was no longer necessary. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with her. I never thought that it would ever become necessary again. So Russia and its women were put out of my mind for years. Now, I was mysteriously drawn to it, like it was a last hope for me. The reason I did not pursue Asian women of my ethnicity instead was because I am generally attracted to Caucasian women, and find very few Asian women to be attractive. In addition, Asian women tend to have values and interests that are very different than me. I know because I grew up in California and have even lived a year in Taiwan (where I was told by some people that my mentality was too different from the Taiwanese women to be truly compatible with them) and knew many of them.

So the logical choice seemed to be Russian women. I started using the most popular websites to get addresses or emails to those Russian women I found attractive, to start correspondence with them. Contrary to common perception, you can't just order a bride to be sent to you. You have to write her first, narrow down your choices, and then visit her in her country. It is almost impossible for a girl there to get a visa to the USA, not even a tourist visa. The only way is to visit her, and pick the right one, and apply for a fiance visa with the US Embassy there, and the whole process could take between several months to 6 or 9 months. And furthermore, I did not feel that the term "Mail Order Bride" was appropriate. In fact, it was both demeaning and false. First of all, you can't order them to come or write you. All you can do is order their contact information. The rest is just like the internet personals process here in the USA. You write each other and see how much you have in common. Second, the term is demeaning to them. Most of these are intelligent attitude free women who are more intelligent and nice and attitude free than most American girls, for sure. (that I can guarantee you after my trip) At first, I felt awkward about this whole process because it is against the norm in our society. Nothing in our culture or media encourages this kind of thing. In fact, people often look down on it and those who do it are seen as losers and misfits that couldn't make it with American women. (even if that was true about me, hey it wasn't my choice to be unsuccessful with American women!) So I felt ambivalent about it at first, but the process had an exotic feel to it as well since we were dealing with women from the other side of the planet. Eventually though, I found many logical reasons why I had to do this. I made a list of them in fact. Here they are.

1. First of all, in the USA, I do not have my choice of young attractive women because I am not considered attractive by this culture's standards and women do not consider me "dating material". I can't even get decent looking women. It seems the only women that really like me here are unattractive, heavyset, desperate women, which is totally not my type. On the other hand, in Russia I have my choice of young attractive women to choose from. For some reason, I am considered attractive and relationship material there, not just because of my US citizenship either. Therefore, it is much more logical to look for a serious mate from Russia because I have my choice from available attractive women with good values, whereas here I have no choices and many factors (described below) are against me. Wouldn't you rather have choices than no choices? Therefore, where there were no choices, I had to take action to create choices.

2. The second reason is that even when I can get relationships with attractive women in America, they will not stay long because our culture and media teaches them that whenever there is a problem in the relationship, to just get out and forget about the guy. Our culture has always encouraged selfishness, and that is no mystery. They are not faithful or stable in relationships. They do not try to solve the problems in their relationship. They will only stay during the good times, but bail out during the bad times. You can give them your love, time, heart, and money and in the end they will show their true colors because it was all about them and their needs all along, not yours. This is usually shocking the first time for those who have never experienced it. I do not believe this is how true love should be. My relationships with American women have also been this way. I do not want to give my heart and love to someone again if they are just going to throw it in the garbage when they are done. I am getting old and do not want to waste time with the games that American women play. I don't have energy for that anymore. Russian women on the other hand, are generally known to be giving, supportive, and faithful to their husbands. They aren't perfect of course, but at least they are much CLOSER to being this way than most American girls are. Both Americans who know Russian women and Russians have concurred with this image of Russian women.

3. The third reason is that attractive women here do not want nice men. They may say they want a nice man, but their actions will not lead them to be with one. Most of the attractive women here only want to be with jerks who treat them bad because it is more challenging to them. Men who treat them good are boring and not interesting enough for them. They need the drama of trying to change someone. I cannot treat someone badly because it is not in my nature and character to do so. I know all this sounds crazy and sad, but it is the truth. Even American women will not deny this. Russian women, fortunately, do not have this tendency to prefer jerks over nice men. They tend to be more evolved than that.

4. The fourth reason is that most attractive American women appreciate different qualities than my qualities. They prefer tall athletic white men, rather than short cute intellectual deep Asian men. They do not find me ugly, but I do not have the qualities and features that they value. This has been my experience from pursuing hundreds of American girls before, observed couples, talking to them, and observing their preferences described in their personal ads, etc. Although I have many fine qualities over most American men such as intelligence, intellectualism, high understanding, artistic abilities, sensitivity, inner qualities, romantic traits, diverse interests, and deep soulful qualities, etc. these qualities are not appreciated or sought after by most young attractive American women. Instead, they are seen as weaknesses. On the other hand, Russian women who see my photo tend to tell me that they can see qualities they like in me such as those above. The evidence for this is obvious. Besides pursuing many girls here, I have also put many photo personal ads in places such as Match.com and have gotten no responses. The girls that I respond to on those personals hardly ever write back to me when I send them my photo. On the other hand, many beautiful young Russian women have written back to me to express their interest when I sent them the same photo, and told me the qualities they see in me from my photo, and given me many compliments. They've also written me first when I placed a photo in their online services and expressed their interest in me. This has gotten me even more excited about them.

5. The fifth reason is that I have much better personal chemistry with Russian women. With American girls, almost everyone I meet in person soon concludes that we have nothing in common and/or that I'm not their type, offering vague explanations that I can't use to pinpoint the problem with. On the other hand, my online and phone conversations with Russian girls were much more lively, enjoyable, natural, deep, intellectual, and less awkward. They were usually left with both of us still interested in each other. They made me feel warm and likable. And even with the Russian women who don't speak much English, I still have more to talk about with them than with most young American girls who can only say "Yeah", "Yeah", "Really?", "Cool", and "Nice meeting you", which leads nowhere except more boredom and loneliness. Therefore, I have much better chemistry with them intellectually, emotionally, and naturally. After knowing some Russian women, you realize that they act the way God intended women to be, and you also realize that the way American women are is far off from the real norm.

So you see, my objective is to have a long term relationship with an attractive woman with good values. There are so many undesirable factors here working against me in that endeavor. It is much more LOGICAL and PROBABLE that I can obtain that objective with Russian women than with American women. Does this all make sense now? Eventually, I realized that no matter how scared I was to go to a foreign country and not know the language, anything was better than the alternative, which was to stay here in this crappy town for the upcoming summer and continually be ignored by the women here, and have nothing but boredom and loneliness to look forward to everyday. Would you want that? Therefore, in a situation where I didn't have choices, I had to take action and CREATE choices. I was brave, resourceful, and determined. Anything was better than more weeks and months of regret for not living the life I wanted. What's the worse that could happen? After all, as the saying goes, "You regret more the things you didn't do than the things you did do." What it comes down to is that the fear of regret was much greater in me than the fear of doing something unorthodox.

The Big Picture

Despite all the above explanations, here's the big picture. Each day, week, month, and year that goes by is gone forever and never comes back. Therefore each moment that goes by is precious and priceless. Looking back on the last ten years, I don't see that many happy special memories, except a few moments, which is not as much as I would like, especially if you compare them to the whole. Here in the USA, I don't really have any fun, don't get invited to parties, don't get female companionship, don't get dates, never get to do anything hip, never get to be popular, don't get any attention or get taken seriously by the opposite sex, don't have good times with cool people, etc. Almost 100 percent of American girls that I ask out give me nothing but stupid excuses of one sort or another. And even when I do have occassional slices of these things, it's always rare, short and fleeting. Most people on the other hand, have had their fair share of all of these things. You hear young people talk all the time about the wild, crazy, fun things they did all the time, and the people that were with them. There is little I can do about all this because it all feels like it's the natural way it should be due to my chemistry, vibes, and place in this society. It's not about what I do or don't do, but about intangible things that are difficult to define. All of this is totally unacceptable to me, and I don't think it should be this way. I believe that I should have choices. I believe that I should have a choice in whether I want to be alone tonight or not. I believe that I should have choices in whether I want to be dating or in a relationship or not. I believe that I should be able to find people to have good times with when I want to. Instead, life here gives me none of these choices and just forces me into having nothing. A big part of the reason for this is that people here are generally snobbier than the rest of the world, and have such high standards for things. People just don't seem interested in having me be part of their lives.

Therefore, life in America for me has been mostly filled with loneliness, disappointment, emptiness, rejection, frustration, isolation, and alienation. In fact, when I even hear the word "America" the next word that comes to my mind is "loneliness". That's how bad it is. Most people, on the other hand, have choices in these matters. How often to you hear the news claim that these kind of things are national problems? (Many victim-blaming Americans will try to blame me for these type of things of course, because they like to blame those who complain and whine, but they can't logically do so because I am the one actively trying to change these things.) As I already mentioned, I feel a lot of regret toward the past ten years. I have learned many things, but I didn't get my fair share of good times, happy memories, and special moments. I feel like I've wasted most of my youth already. I don't have many years of youth left, and you're only young once. Therefore, I don't want to waste anymore years in regret. I find it pointless to follow the ideal of corporate America and become a slave to money and work, when there's no good times, female companionship, love, special moments, special memories, etc. to go with it. As the wise will tell you, the most memorable moments of your life don't involve money. Looking back on the last ten years and on my childhood before that, I see a huge deficit that needs to be made up. Therefore, rather than continuing with all this, having each moment pass by in regret, disappointment, and loneliness, and being deprived of female companionship, affection, and love, I believe in taking action. Since I have all these things I want in Russia, it's obviously much better for me to go there and help close some of these deficits.

Regardless of any condemnation or ridicule I may receive, the simple truth is that I was GIVEN a loser status in my society, and thus treated as such. I NEVER EVER asked for it or earned it! And that is the honest truth, so help me God.

Simply put, I have needs. But my position and status in the dating/mating game here does not allow me any way to fulfill those needs. Girls do not want a relationship with me, nor do they want casual sex with me. They either only want friendship, to be an acquaintance, to use me, or nothing at all to do with me. That puts me in a position where I am forced to resort to extreme methods and tactics (since "extreme situations require extreme measures, but I won't even go into what extreme things I've done), one of which is going abroad and doing the Russian bride-seeking route.

[gmm567]

God.....what a remarkably curious and adventuresome person.

[jamesbond]

This is a great post Winston! You have described lots of reasons why you went abroad to search for love! American women are the WORST women on the planet! They either want you for your money, power or prestige but little else! They are as phoney as a three dollar bill! Of course the media never talks about this. How come you don't hear news articles on tv or in magazines or newspapers telling how things really are socially in America? A lot of dating experts say American women are good for casual sex but not much else! They even have reality tv shows like "the pickup artist" on vh1 which airs Mondays 9 pm eastern showing guys how to "pickup" women. You have to memorize a bunch of pickup lines and techniques just to maybe get a womans phone number! And of course the only place to meet women in America is at bars and clubs! In America we don't talk to strangers, we don't even talk to our neigbors! That leaves the only avenue to meet people to bars and clubs, which is very limiting! If you can also meet women through your friends IF you have friends who have single female friends they can introduce you to. No wonder there are so many lonely guys in America!