The idea that that right now sexy vixens in the Philippines, Ukraine, Russia, Colombia, and another dozen countries are hunched over key boards trying to dupe clueless American men into marriages, so that they can get a Green Card and a quick divorce, is one of the most damaging and unfounded myths related to the mail order bride industry.
Yes, it does not require long a deep search of the internet to find stories about the sexy mail order vixens, most of them are usually Russian with an occasional Latin woman tossed in occasionally. Often these are blog entries or forum postings say things like, “Here in the UK everybody know that Ukrainian women are only after immigration papers” or “My brother had a friend over in Ohio who married a Russian woman and she left him for a policeman six months later.” The facts are simple. No one really knows the facts.
However, from the best that can be determined marriages arranged through international dating sites are certainly no less happy than other marriages, and, in fact, these marriages may be more happy than other marriages. First, there are pages and pages of testimonials at the international marriage sites, which include not just announcements of engagements and marriage photos, but the birth of children and updates on life events like graduations and jobs, make it clear that many happy marriages do start out on mail order bride sites. So, there is literally no serious Ukraine updates research to suggest that the marriages of couples that meet through international dating sites or mail order bride services are any less successful than any other marriages and some possibility that the opposite is true: Perhaps meeting your wife online is the BEST way to meet her.
In fact, the only serious academic study of the mail order bride industry, by Lisa Simons at the University of Denver, found that the relationships were often happy. Simons started out as a feminist opponent of the mail order bride industry, but to her dismay and surprise she actually had a difficult time finding unhappy couples to interview. The women seemed very happy and as she began to look at more research she began to believe that these marriages might actually have a lower divorce rate than other marriages. This wasn’t what a feminist scholar was supposed to conclude and Simon’s dissertation was not well received among women’s studies departments. However, this should not have come as a shock, because Robert J. Scholes, a retired University of Florida Professor who authored a 1999 report for Congress on mail order brides, believed that the overwhelming majority of the women were sincere. He said that, “In general, I found the women were honest and sincere…”
So, the idea that mail order brides are gold digging vixens is probably just about just as true as the idea, “That all the women you meet in coffeehouses are snobs”. Sometimes either of those ideas might actually be true, but it depends on the girl and it also depends on you, because the truth is that how you act in the relationship has an enormous amount of influence on whether or not the marriage is successful. The truth is a lot of the guys that complain about the bad marriages were probably bad husbands; that’s actually what Scholes concluded in his study. So, the truth is that a bad marriage is almost never one persons fault and for that matter neither is a good marriage.
Ed Orton has taught college, worked as a professional writer, and studied many cultures from around the world. He has experience as a crisis counselor and wants to help you find the happiness you deserve.
