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General Advice
In every good story there is promise and peril. In this story, the promise of a romantic wedding, the peril of scams waiting to trap the suitor on his path to find his beautiful bride.
Starting off
• Buy addresses of Russian women seeking a partner abroad from a Russian or Western based Internet introduction agency.
• Place a personal ad on the Internet
• Go on an arranged tour where you will be inundated with hundreds of marriage-minded Russian women in person
The perils to be circumnavigated
Alarm bells should ring if you receive exquisitely written letters, very quick replies, and find yourself corresponding with ladies who fall in love exceedingly fast without asking any questions. They are very good at thinking up reasons for you to send money – for visas, for a sick mother, to travel to a distant place to meet you. They have to be. That is their business. With a kit of letters written for them, together with a photo of a model, a ‘beautiful educated young woman, single and without children’ could receive 10 – 15 letters a day.
The gold digger takes the money, and disappears.
Alarm bells should also ring if you are not-so-young, not-so-healthy and not-so-rich and you find very young girls falling ‘madly in love with you’. You may well get married, but equally well you may soon be divorced.
Your ex-wife has the passport she needs.
However, these perils are easily circumnavigated
Never send money to someone you haven’t met in person –if you do want to pay for her to travel to meet you, send tickets (that will give you a refund if they are not used).
Ensure that you obtain a postal or e-mail address and a phone number so that you can correspond directly. Even if her English is faltering, it will be genuine. She might find it difficult to access e-mail facilities, but Russian girls are well educated and able to cope.
(The Soviet free educational system was arguably the best in the world, and although things started to fail after Perestroyka almost everyone still has a university education.)
After a few e-mails, make a phone call to discuss the topics you have written about and to ask her to send a few recent photos.
Send a bunch of flowers using a flower delivery service that takes photos of the recipient with her flowers and then e-mails the pictures to you. (Send an odd number of flowers, even numbers are given only at funerals)
Send a gift via a local delivery agent using an identity service that provides delivery by appointment and verifies the recipient’s ID upon delivery. Russians have 2 passports. An international one and a national one. The internal passport lists marriages, divorces, children and current addresses and is used for ID purposes. The delivery agent will report back to you.
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Western based agencies
Western agencies usually start by placing ads in local Russian newspapers or by buying or renting addresses from local dating agencies. (If a woman does register, she will probably register with as many as 15 different agencies to maximize her luck). The agencies sell addresses, membership, and also offer gift delivery, translation and e-mail forwarding services.
They also organize tours for their clients, inviting local women to participate in socials. These are very popular with men who find themselves suddenly surrounded by hundreds of beautiful women. (Only local women can attend as the cost of traveling the huge distances in Russia are formidable. The women that you have made contact with may not be able to attend).
It is very unlikely that these agencies will have details of older women. ‘Beautiful women who speak good English and don’t have children’ are the ones that feature on the Western Agency lists.
Russian Marriage agencies
There is no Russian word for ‘dating’, so local agencies call themselves ‘marriage’ or ‘introduction’ agencies. These agencies have the great advantage that they know the women personally, as the women often develop strong relationships with the agency. The majority of these are mature women between 30 and 40 years old.
How long should be taken before any choice is made?
It is wise to reflect that the very nature of an Internet acquaintance can create an illusion of intimacy and closeness which seems like a stable relationship because, in a way, the relationship hasn’t progressed beyond the first date when each are on their best behavior:
A typical course of action
• About 2 months sending an e-mail every week
• A month of telephone calls once a week
• A decision as to whether you both move on to find happiness elsewhere or whether
• this seems to be the start of something magical.
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