But will she make you happy?

So is it possible to find happiness with a Russian woman? A British friend of mine, Sam, who has been calling Moscow home for over 10 years, believes the answer is an affirmative ‘no.’

Photo by Julia Borodina, www.eliara.com

“Never happy, never complimentary, always calculating and scheming,” Sam responded via email, “a Russian woman’s concept of what a man should be is com- pletely at odds with reality. To her mind a man should be a sort of composite of Vladi- mir Vysotsky (creative and impulsive), Bill Gates (rich), Joe Average (a good family man) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (huge and strong).”

According to this foreigner, all of this is simply too much for the average male to handle.

“Men can’t hope to live up to this contradictory and punishing expectation… It makes them feel like failures. Hence they drink (worst), womanize (bearable), or spend inordinate amount of time fixing things around the flat (best-case scenario) to make themselves feel like a man.”

This is not the first time I have heard this argument against Russian women: they are extremely demanding perfectionists, goes the argument, not just with themselves, but with their men as well.

On a recent trip to Riga, Latvia, I decided to catch a movie, which is a special treat there because the films play in their original language, with subtitles for the home crowd. The film was called “The Dark Knight.” Since it was a story about the superhero Batman, it was not the intellectual movie of the year. But that is irrelevant. In the film there is a scene where Bruce Wayne shows up for dinner with ‘Natascha,’ a “prima ballerina” for the Moscow Ballet.

Although Natascha’s speaking part in the film amounts to about four lines, what she said was enough to cause a roar of laughter in the audience.

Talking about the dismal condition of Gotham, Natascha abruptly upbraids the guests at the table for living in such a city.

"No, come on,” she says. “How could you want to raise children in a city like this… I’m talking about the kind of city that idolizes a masked vigilante.”

The audience, made up of mostly Russians and Latvians, instantly recognized that part of the Russian female, the ‘impossible perfectionist,’ which men either love or leave.

But if perfectionism is the worse thing that could be said about Russian women, I suppose that is doing pretty well.

I will now leave the floor to my Russian colleague, Katia Shubnaya, who, as a Russian female, will certainly set the record straight.