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The most surprising things about Russian women

AS BEING TOLD BY FOREIGN MEN.

 Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Many famous painters fell in love with Russian women, who were easily distinguished from other foreign ladies. Nowadays, Russian women are getting a lot of attention from foreign men who are drawn to their natural appearance, spiritual values, and a variety of unusual behaviors.

No to punctuality

Russian women astound foreign men with their lack of punctuality, preferring to be late for a date. A 15-minute delay from the scheduled time causes the gentlemen to be unsure whether or not the lady will attend the meeting. For Russian women, however, this is the natural order of things, because the longer he waits, the happier he will be with this encounter.

Wife status

Unlike Western women, Russian women aspire to marry by the age of 25 and change their status from bride to wife. Nobody wants to spend their golden years single, without a husband and children. A woman’s 30th birthday marks the beginning of her old age in a Russian mentality. It is also for this reason that spontaneous marriages occur, with the birth of a child and an impending divorce as integral parts. Girls in other countries start thinking about marriage when they are 30 to 35 years old, and the arrival of their first child is expected by the age of 40, when they believe the best period of life begins — a career is established, financial well-being is achieved, and nothing distracts from commitment to the family.

Under a man’s protection

Russian women astound foreign men with their complete disregard for the prevalent feminism in many countries around the world, claiming that the patriarchal relationship structure is much more acceptable for a harmonious existence. They are educated, strong, and independent, and they are always looking for a partner who will surround them with care, open the door for them, pay in a restaurant, give way, and shower them with compliments. A man is a breadwinner in the eyes of Russian women, and a woman is a keeper of the hearth, so it is nearly impossible to establish a relationship with her based on a separate family budget and joint household management. The husband is obligated to provide financially for the family, and the wife’s main responsibility is to keep the house in order and cook tasty meals.

Manipulation

This coin, however, has a flip side known as manipulation. Russian women are frequently chastised for trying to exert control over their husbands; in order to project the image of an obedient wife, they attempt to seize control of the family. Such an undercover struggle irritates both Eastern and Western men since the former expect loyalty from the ladies and the latter are accustomed to building open relationships based on the partnership principle.

Good housewives

Foreigners are drawn to Russian women because of their thriftiness and, as a result, their ability to handle all of the responsibilities of a housewife on their own. Russian ladies, recalling the adage “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” enjoy cooking a variety of tasty dishes for their loved ones. House cleaning, washing, ironing, and, of course, canning for the winter are considered natural female occupations. Ladies from Western countries tend to use cleaning services to keep their homes in order, and semi-finished items or fast food to complete their diet.

Spontaneity

Another distinguishing feature of Russian ladies is their spontaneity and inability to live according to a long-planned schedule. Capable of breaking away from their familiar surroundings at any time and setting off in search of adventure in uncharted lands, they excite foreigners with their eagerness for daring and quirky adventures that add zest to everyday life.

Motherhood

A child is the only one who can make changes to a Russian woman’s easy life, for which she is willing to give up all of her preferences. With the birth of children, the entire family life starts to follow a regular routine, and motherhood becomes the primary course. Furthermore, Russian women are unaccustomed to the fact that a man will share the care of a baby with them, thinking that it is better than a mother because no one knows what is good and bad for the infant.

Then, of course, they love to chastise their husbands for not engaging in the child’s development and for ruining their youth with household chores, but they are partially to blame for the occurrence of these problems because they did not trust the father’s instinct of a man.

Tolerance

Foreigners regard boundless tolerance as a distinguishing feature of Russian women. Going to endless compromises in family life, she is condescending to her husband’s acts that violate her integrity and rights. They tend to humbly consider all of life’s difficulties, referring to a poor destiny, since they are afraid of awkward conversations and public opinion.

Femininity

Foreign men are taken aback by Russian women’s desire to appear feminine, attractive, and glamorous at all times and in all places. They are endowed by birth with a special Slavic charm, but they nevertheless pay close attention to their appearance, standing out against the backdrop of Western ladies with their well-groomed, catchy makeup, and somewhat defiant attire.

Since all of the above is a regular part of women’s daily beauty routine, Russian ladies don’t need an excuse to put on lipstick, do their hair, dress up, and wear high-heeled shoes.

Other little things

Thrifty foreigners get annoyed when Russian women bathe in an open shower for half an hour and do not save water at all. They still don’t understand how, after marriage, they continue to maintain tight relations with their parents and relatives, who may come to visit, intervene in family affairs, and spend many days at their son-in-house law’s without an invitation.

Who is the typical online dater?

The way we conduct our romantic relationships is changing, and it’s clear that digital technologies have a key part to play in this change. Online dating popularity has been constantly growing during the past years.

In August 2017 Kaspersky Lab has undertaken a study into people’s online dating habits and identified a portrait of a typical online dater. The research assessed the attitudes of 21,081 Internet users aged over 16 years old from 32 countries and found that as many as 32% of them are dating online.

According to the results of the study, people that date online are most likely to be:

  • 33.8 years old on average
  • Working full-time (63%)
  • Slightly more likely to be male than female (39% of men date online vs 25% of women)
  • Device-savvy – they have around 5 mobile devices compared to the usual 3 per household
  • They are most likely to work as medium-level managers (20%) or be highly qualified specialists such as scientific workers, teachers and engineers (19%)

Many people that are on the online dating scene are young, as the 33.8 average age suggests, with 43% of 25-34 year olds using online dating services. Meanwhile, people that class themselves as the head of a company or business owners make up a surprisingly large one-in-ten (11%) of the online dating population. Interestingly, we also found that 31% of people that are married or living with a partner are using online dating.

So why are these people going online to start up relationships with others? Certainly, online dating provides all the convenience of making it quick and easy to meet people. Plus, it’s an activity that’s available across multiple devices, at all times of day and night.

Kaspersky Lab asked people why they turn to online dating and while half (48%) said they mostly use online dating for fun, other reasons were also evident, with some saying they are looking for more meaningful relationships, and around one-in-ten simply looking for sex (13%).170920-online-dating-report-1-e1505916102492
Source: Kaspersky

11 shocking facts about online dating

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Millions of people join dating sites each year, looking for their long-lost love or at least new friends to spend the days with. The vast majority do so without knowing much about online dating, except for all those urban legends, a few word-of-mouth reports and, of course, whatever the convincing advertisements say. For them, this list of 11 shocking facts about online dating in the United States, according to Statistics Brain, will be very enlightening.

71% of users believe in love at first sight

This fact can say a lot about the people who go online to find love. Perhaps they are die-hard romantics who wear their hearts on their sleeves, and believe there is one person out there that’s right for them. A big part of online dating is finding someone who will go on dates which are “no strings attached”. But the statistics don’t lie: finding true love is the ultimate goal for most. There is still some romance left in the dating world, even when it’s online.

20% of committed relationships began online

Some people swear by the convenience and success of online dating websites, while others disregard them as equally or more ineffective than regular dating. However, according to the statistics, internet dating does work for at least 20 percent of the people who make a commitment to keep at it. Starting a committed relationship with someone you met online is possible, just as it is with real-life dating.

17% of marriages are from online dating

Whether dating online or in person, the goal for many single people is marriage. They want to settle down, tie the knot, and start a family with the person they deeply love.  However, online dating may not be the best option for these people. Only an average of 17% of marriages are from relationships that began from online dating, and, with divorce rates in the U.S. skyrocketing, there’s no telling if those marriages will actually last.

18 months average courtship before marriage

Relationships take months and even years to develop before a couple finally decides to take the proverbial plunge. This is also true for online dating. After moving from trading messages, to meeting, to dating in real life, it can take an average of 18 months before online daters get married. Couples take time to decide if they are as compatible as the website made them seem.

38% of women prefer “nice guys”

Nice guys finish last? Not always. Squeaky-clean men don’t have to hide their natural personalities to attract girls online. It’s most likely a tired cliché that all girls like the “bad boy”. In actuality, women are usually more attracted to confidence, a sense of humor, and men who know how to treat women with the respect they most certainly deserve.

The men who are planning to alter their personalities online just to get a date should look at this statistic and think again. As people often say, just be yourself.

42% of men prefer “modern career girl”

This statistic tells us that a healthy percentage of men would rather date or commit to a modern career girl over someone who, perhaps, doesn’t have their life quite figured out. Just like women, men seem to want their potential significant others to be confident, assertive, and extremely independent. Maturity seems to be the most desired trait for both genders.

Women’s online desirability peaks at age 21

It’s common for women to get more private messages than men, especially if these women are 21 years old and younger. The number of women being contacted peaks for those who list their age at 21, declining steadily after this point. It’s a cliché, but it’s commonly believed that men are biologically programmed to chase younger and consequently more fertile women, which may be the reason for this statistic.

Younger women have most online pursuers

This is where the numbers get tricky. Although women’s online desirability peaks at 21, they have the most active pursuers around the age of 26. Close to half of men prefer a modern career girl, and a woman in her late 20s is more likely to have a stable career (or at least working to develop one) than a younger girl. However, 26 year old still fulfill the ‘youth’ preference of many men.

Older men have double the online pursuers of young men

In a trend which opposes that of men seeking women, the older that a man is in the online dating world, the more women will seek him out. This may be because older men are perceived to be more financially and emotionally stable, having lived a longer life with more character-building experiences than men in their 30s and 20s.

Men at this age have likely had more relationships too. As a result, they may be perceived to have developed more maturity. Maturity in men is a good sign that they’re more willing to commit to a long-term relationship or even marriage, which many single women will be seeking online.

Men lie about age, height, income

Men often lie about their personality or daily life in order to seem more attractive, just like with normal dating. It’s quite natural to tell a few white lies here and there. However, with online dating, men lie about their major physical attributes and financial stability -including lies about age, height, and income.

Men might be sabotaging themselves when doing so. Within just one date, women will quickly work out the lies regarding height and age, at least.

Women lie about weight, physical build, age

Women also lie in their online dating profiles. However, their lies differ from men’s with exaggerations or misinformation focused on their weight, build, as well as their age. This may be a side effect of a dating culture that focuses on women’s looks over their personalities and accomplishments.

As a result, they lie to seem more attractive to potential pursuers. It’s easy to list false information in a general profile, but it’s unclear how these lies impact the success of face-to-face meetings.

Source: TheRichest

Russian wedding traditions

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Russian traditional wedding is different from what people are used to in the United States, Canada, Mexico or Europe. There are no rehearsals, bridesmaids, and flower girls. The best man and the maid of honor are called “witnesses” or in Russian “svideteli”. The wedding celebration usually lasts for two days (or more) and requires preparation of about 1 to 6 months. The registration of marriage takes place at the department of public services or in Russian – “ZAGS”. Nowadays many couples also choose the church ceremony (source: Barynya).

1. Ransom for the bride

The groom is coming to the bride’s home with his closest friends and relatives. To get the bride he has to pay some ransom to the folks on the bride’s side. Everything is played out as a joke and both sides are mostly competing in the sense of humor. After getting the bride, the couple gets out of the house into the car (usually limousine) to go for the marriage registration. On the way from the house to the car groom and his crew also have to deal with the neighbors and kids, who all want coins, candies and free drinks. In return neighbors solute the couple and sprinkle them with coins and rice.

2. Orthodox marriage ceremony

If the couple decides to get married in the Russian Orthodox Church, the ceremony is usually 30 to 120 minutes long with all the Russian orthodox traditions taking place. Orthodox marriage ceremony is well described in Tolstoy’s books and other classical literature. I just have to mention that the ceremony is very beautiful and is almost breathtaking both for the couple and the guests.

3. Civil ceremony

The civil ceremony takes place at the department of public services (“ZAGS”). At the entry to the registration hall the couple is greeted by the guests with bread and salt. Afterwards they are led by the receptionist inside the hall, where the actual ceremony is held. The ceremony is about 15 minutes long and at the end of it the couple exchanges rings, says “I do” and signs the book of registry. Then they are pronounced the man and wife and walk out of the hall to the music of Mendelssohn played by the Russian Wedding Orchestra. The civil ceremony is an official part of the wedding but the real celebration starts afterwards.

4. Limousine and places

After the official part, it is customary for the bride and groom, and some of their close friends and relatives to go on a tour of the historic sites of the city, taking pictures and drinking champagne. In Moscow, popular stops include the Red Square, Grave of the Unknown Soldier and Sparrow Hills near Moscow State University. Usually by the end of the tour many guests are already singing and dancing.

5. Russian wedding reception

But all of the above is just a prelude to the main celebration – the gala feast! Unlike wedding receptions in the West, Russian wedding receptions are very loud and they last for two days or sometimes even longer. They include a lot of Russian music, singing, dancing, long toasts, and the abundance of food and drinks to go with it. The guests love to sing Russian traditional songs to the sounds of accordion, bayan or garmoshka.

Bread and salt

It is offered to the newlyweds by both parents as a symbol of health, prosperity and long life. Both bride and groom must take a bite of the bread and the one that takes the largest bite will be the head of the family!

Wedding toasts and broken glasses

At the beginning of the reception a relative or close friend makes a wedding toast to the bride and groom. By Russian tradition everyone throws their champagne glasses on the floor and it is considered a good luck if the glasses break when they hit the ground.

Stealing the bride

The groom should constantly keep his eyes on the bride. If the bride gets out of the groom’s sight, she could be stolen by his friends and the groom will have to pay the ransom.

5. Day number two

Celebration goes on with no less fun than the day before. After some rest more drinking, singing, dancing, and fighting takes place. Never miss the second day of the traditional Russian wedding.  There is a rule that the second day of the Russian wedding celebration is even more fun than the first day.

 

Online dating profiles: women choose nice guys over “bad boys”

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Online dating profiles: women choose nice guys over “bad boys”, but only after seeing they’re emotionally unavailable (source: Medical Daily).

The “nice guy” paradox asserts that although women say they want to date a nice, kind, sensitive  guy, when actually given a choice, women end up rejecting him for a “bad boy” with an alpha male personality. However, according to a Journal of Experimental Social Psychology study, this stereotype doesn’t apply to online dating: nice guys actually finish first compared to emotionally unavailable men with other salient characteristics, such as physical attractiveness.

Social psychologists conducted two experiments in which men and women viewed a series of online dating profiles that included different combinations of desirable and undesirable information about their physical appearance and their emotional availability.  The participants rated profile photos and, in addition, answers to questions that described how emotionally available the individuals are.

In the first experiment showed that women were more romantically interested in the emotionally responsive men when they had first looked at profiles of nonresponsive potential mates, compared to when they rated the profiles of emotionally responsive men first. These men were also rated as more physically attractive when their profile was viewed second, after nonresponsive men.

In the second experiment researchers focused specifically on how the order in which these profiles were seen affected interest in a potential date who was unattractive, but responsive. Participants only viewed two profiles and had to choose which they would prefer to date. Similar to what the first experiment found, the unattractive but responsive dates were much more likely to be chosen when their profiles were viewed after those of the nonresponsive potential dates. This dating choice did not depend on whether the person was attractive or unattractive.

“These results highlight the importance of the context in which dating decisions are made,” wrote the study authors. The order in which online dating profiles are viewed could boost someone’s odds of getting a date.

Another study found the best way to turn an online exchange into a real-life first date is to have the perfect handle, photos, and headline. Men preferred women with the most obvious screennames like “Blondie” or “Cutie” while women had a preference for screennames that indicated intelligence, like “Cultured.” When it came to the main photo, women liked a “genuine smile,” while men were intrigued by women who wear red and slightly tilted their head.

Also, you should be honest in your headline. The perfect description falls in a 70:30 ratio of what you are like to what you want. The typical yet effective, “Honest, good-looking, easy-going, educated female, good sense of humor, sporty, sociable, likes music and travel, seeks like-minded, good-natured guy to share quality times,” is viewed more often. Online daters are usually gender stereotypical, as men like fit women who do yoga but not bodybuilding, and women like bravery, courage, and risk-taking men more than kindness and altruism.

Our console for fighting scam

As scam is a hot topic in Russian dating, we explain a lot how much we’re interested in fighting scam. But one thing is to say, and another is to show how it works on our side. Here we go. As a blog author, I’d prefer our scam fighting tool looks like this: Fightscamtool

In reality, it’s nothing like that. Way less spectacular. This is the screenshot of the admin’s console in CuteOnly. The first thing to do for a day is check scammers (all removed for the day I took it).

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How scammers get to this list? We’ve got sophisticated algorithms working here, wrote by an invited mathematician genius (sorry, that’s a secret how they are functioning, we don’t want scammers know that).

This is how it looks on our side, the list of removed scammers for the previous day.
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I blurred out the personal data: spammers or not, we have a privacy policy and don’t disclose any personal identifiable information.
 
Weapon illustration courtesy of Bob Molesworth

Where do we get the girls?

Not a trade secret: mostly from search engines. Right now (May 1, 2013) we are #1 in the top Russian search engine, Yandex (60% of the market share) for the best search expression “знакомства с иностранцами” (could be translated as “date foreigners” or “meet foreigners”). Try it or see the screenshot:

How girls find CuteOnly?

How to recognize a scammer on a Russian dating site

Scammers, catched on CuteOnly, the Russian dating site

Here is a message we received from one of CuteOnly members, Robbie. Being a member for years, he met many girls and also got a proficiency in recognizing the true signs of scammers. Here’s his smart advice (text edited for publishing):

Most of the scammers are pretty easy to recognize. It came to my mind that there are 2 types of scammers: the “Sovjets” and the “Africans”. Continue reading

Payment gateways

When you deal with payment systems, it’s complicated. Payment systems are guys who process your credit card payments. But once you tell them you’re a dating site, many doors get shut. Continue reading

The new message center

The concept behind the current message center at CuteOnly is email.

  • Messages had subjects
  • There was a list of separate messages.

It leads to:

  1. Stupid subjects that all look alike. “Hi Jon”, “Hola love!” etc. People complain about fake emails.
  2. Chaos in the inbox. We don’t even have threads.

Now we switch to chat.

  1. No subjects needed anymore.
  2. Organized inbox. One person, one entry.
  3. Less clicking to respond messages.