Russian wives are known for their loyalty, dedication to their families and great parenting skills. Without a doubt, these are wonderful and desirable qualities, however they often cause Russian women to be overprotective and motherly when it comes to their man. This usually annoys most Western men who are taught to be independent from their early childhood.
In the Russian culture, women are not fighting to be the same as men. Both women and men have certain roles which are expected of them and which they know they are good at. If a husband is supposed to provide for the family, the wife is expected to take care of the house, the children and… the husband.
Most Russian women I know who are married to Russian men take care of their husbands almost as if they were kids. They fold their laundry, pack for their business trips, watch their diet and choose their shampoo. That’s what makes them good wives in the eyes of the Russian society and Russian husbands. If a Russian husband comes to work in a smelly or wrinkled shirt, people are not going to judge him; they are going to judge his wife (yes, Russians are very judgmental).
Actually the “wisdom” of treating men like children is passed from the older generation of women to the younger as the most sure formula for a happy marriage.
Russian husbands usually make major decisions such as the purchase of a new vehicle (which Russian women would never want to be in charge of) and they have unquestionable power outside the home, but when it comes to their children and their home, it is women who have the power. They even say that while the man is the head of the household, the wife is the neck.
There are reasons for this mentality. In Russia and many Eastern European countries a husband and wife are supposed to depend on one another. A marriage is much more than a partnership. There is a Russian proverb “husband and wife is one Satan”, which means that the man and the wife are one whole. They should be very close to each other, have same life values and be interdependent.
Russian husbands don’t get offended or upset if their wife tells them what to wear, what to eat (not to eat) and constantly reminds them to take their vitamins. Due to their extreme manliness, they don’t like to admit it, but they like to be taken care of.
Even though I got married pretty young, I absorbed this part of Russian culture from my childhood and I still feel like I am not doing my job when my American husband packs for his trip and when he makes breakfast for himself. He on the other hand gets annoyed when I remind him to take his phone when he goes to work and hint that he should not eat cheese after midnight. He takes it as an offense and takes it as a lack of trust on my part (“I am capable of making my own breakfast/or my own decisions” he often says) and I on the other hand often feel that he is not as close to me as I would like, because if he was, he would let me remind him and do certain things for him. I feel that he wants to be self-sufficient, which I don’t understand since we are one family and supposed to be dependent on one another.
You never know, your Russian wife may be modernized and you would not have this “problem”. Or maybe you wouldn’t mind someone to take care of you like Russian wives do of their husbands. But if your Russian wife is of the majority, don’t take her desire to treat you like her child personally and don’t get offended, because this only shows you that she loves you.
