This question often comes up when I talk to foreign men about Russian/Ukrainian traditions and family life. Interestingly, the westerners and the Slavic people’s traditional approaches to dating are strikingly different, especially if we look at relationships between the western men and Slavic women.
To majority of Slavic women, love (or deep affection) comes first. It is the first necessary condition for a serious relationship with a man. If a woman does not feel that discomforting, burning excitement deep inside her chest, she will never open up to the man, and very soon he will find himself in her “friend zone”. Forever.
Trust is another condition, which usually precedes a woman’s decisions about moving on toward a more physical stage in the relationship. To a Slavic woman, even in the 21-st century, a sexual relationship is the highest stage of intimacy, which is only possible when her love and trust to a man is complete and unconditional. This is why it often takes months before a man and a woman move on to a “physical” relationship.
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Oleksandr
/ January 24, 2017Respectively disagree:) It depends on the person.
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Dipa
/ January 24, 2017Interesting post. I had no idea…!
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Rina Tim
/ January 25, 2017This is true. Due to the cultural and historical roots women in Russia and Ukraine have different attitude to the whole concept of relationships. Love and trust come in the first place, and anything physical is only possible when a woman has full trust in a man and loves him. Sex is regarded as the most intimate and special side of a relationship. Until very recently (and in some small towns it is still a kind of a tradition), women preserved their virginity till the moment of marriage, no matter how old they were by the time they got married. It is an old Slavic tradition.
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Dipa
/ January 25, 2017And what are the expectations of men in Slavic culture?
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Rina Tim
/ January 25, 2017Overwhelming majority of men here believe that they are a dominating sex (and of course, they have to carry the responsibilities of the status). Statistically, in most of the cities, there are more women than men, so men often have a good variety of choices when it comes to creating a family (this makes women so attentive to how they look and behave). At the same time, as Leo Tolstoy said nearly 150 years ago, “majority of men expect from their wives to have the merits, which they do not deserve” (Большая часть мужчин требует от своих жен достоинств, которых сами они не стоят) and I believe this statement is still right. Putting it short, this is the culture where men and women (deep in their minds) still identify themselves pretty much the same way as they did in the late 19-th century.
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