No matter how happy your marriage is and how much in love with each other you and your Russian wife might be, there will be times when she will feel homesick, sad and even depressed.
Helping your Russian wife cope with homesickness and depression in the first year of marriage is crucial. Many husbands make the mistake of ignoring her sadness, hoping that it will go away by itself. Some are getting defensive and angry thinking that their wife doesn’t love them enough and is regretting her decision to marry them.
None of these lines of behaviors are going to do any good, so here are some tips on helping your Russian wife survive her first year in a foreign country.
1. You probably got this already, but it is very important so I will say it again: do not get angry with her if she is homesick. It has nothing to do with her not loving you enough or not appreciating everything you do for her. It is perfectly normal to feel depressed and lost when you move to a different country and most Russian women experience some sort of depression or nostalgia during their first year of marriage. If you start showing your anger and get upset with her it will only make her feel worse. Remember that you are the only person she has in this country, so try to be sensitive and understanding.
2. As a rule Russians have stronger family ties. Your Russian wife may have a need to talk to her mother a few times a week. Instead of getting irritated, encourage that. She needs to feel connected to her family to be happy. If her family doesn’t have a computer or Internet access, get her phone cards. If they do, install Skype and get a webcam.
3. Unless your spouse is a loner and doesn’t like socializing with people, take her out often. It will take some time before the paperwork is ready, so for a few months she will probably stay home alone while you are at work. Many Russian women don’t mind staying home and are happy being housewives, but being a housewife in your home country, where you know how to do grocery shopping and have people to communicate with, is quite a bit different than being a housewife in a foreign land, where you can’t even figure out how to turn on the faucet.
Take your wife out to meet your friends and relatives. You may also want to find Russian churches or communities in the area and drive your wife there. Meeting with people from Russian communities and making Russian friends will help her adapt to life in the United States much easier. Even though you might be the most sensitive husband who knows how to comfort and listen, she still needs someone she can relate to.
4. She will not only miss her family and friends. She will miss her culture also. Your Russian wife will be thrilled if you surprise her with a trip to a Russian food store. If you don’t have any in the area, there is always the Internet with plenty of Russian food items available for sale. I will never forget the trips to Russian food stores with my American husband. Nothing cheered me up more than a jar of pickled tomatoes and a bag of hard bagels called bubliki. I am not homesick anymore and Russian food doesn’t excite me this much anymore, but I will never forget these first trips to Russian stores and I will always be thankful for my husband for being so thoughtful and caring.
5. Other ways of helping your Russian wife to cope with homesickness are:
- bringing her small gifts (they don’t have to be expensive) just to show her that you care;
- installing Russian TV for her or getting a few movies;
- encouraging her to talk more about her country, her family and her culture (and LISTENNING when she talks);
- bringing her flowers just to remind you that you love her;
- tell her that you love her often and make sure she knows that you need her to be happy. It is important for Russian women to feel needed and, of course, loved.
Remember that she will not be homesick forever and even though she will probably always have some sort of nostalgia, the adaptation period doesn’t usually last longer than a year. If you don’t ignore her feelings and help her out, it will be much shorter.
