Can You Really Mail Order a Bride

Thus, the relationship industry continues to exist and arrange marriages between men from countries with a high standard of living and women from poor regions of Asia, Latin America, and the former USSR. Some men are ready to pay tens of thousands of dollars to marry a woman they barely know, and some women continue to focus on rapid emigration and relocation at any cost. We understand why the dream of a prince from abroad is often dangerous. We are going to talk about mail order brides websites and figure out how and why you should consider looking for Russian brides.

Back in the early 19th century, American farmers and ranchers living in isolation posted ads looking for wives willing to move from more populated areas. And a few decades ago, the first international dating agencies appeared. At first, they existed offline: men chose brides in printed catalogs. Now the industry operates predominantly online and somewhat resembles dating sites - the difference is that such services do not imply equality between women and men from the very beginning.

The names of popular dating sites speak for themselves: Latin-Wife.com is tailored for finding brides from Latin America, AnastasiaDate.com is for dating women from Eastern Europe, Cherry Blossom (translated as “Sakura”) is for those who want to find a girl from Asian countries. Among the candidates there are women of different ages, and many of them are very young.

The dream of a post-Soviet woman to go abroad, although slightly faded since the 90s, has not gone anywhere. As a rule, the main motivation for women posting their profiles on such sites is to improve their standard of living. “The future husband did not seem particularly attractive to me. But I wanted my son to have a father, live in America, secure higher education for myself and my son, so I seriously considered his candidacy. I was a single mother, worked at the post office and lived in a tiny apartment without hot water and heating, sometimes there was no access to electricity," a Ukrainian immigrant by the name Oksana Zakharova explained in an interview to Marie Claire. Another native of Ukraine, Lera Loeb, says that she decided to find a husband in the United States after she went to study in New York on an exchange program, was refused an extension of her student visa, but still dreamed of building a career in America.

But it's not just about money. In addition to the desire for comfort, some look for men from Western Europe or the United States, as they consider them more loyal, less jealous, aggressive, and prone to chauvinism. The Conks College study shows that many women saw marrying a foreigner as a chance to escape traditional society.