Many foreigners are puzzling over this question and trying to find a clear-cut answer. Sex plays an important role in the relationships and Western men want to know what it means to Russian women.
They are afraid that Slavic people have a different attitude towards sexual life and have different sexual culture if one can put it that way. When it comes to dating a Russian woman, the main problem that most foreign men face is the confusion about the appropriate way of expressing their sexual desire to a woman they date.
A lot of Europeans and Americans notice that Russian ladies are cold and reserved in terms of showing their feelings. They are usually not keen on hugging and kissing so that men often find themselves at a loss racking their brains whether a woman has some feelings for them or not. That uncertainty often affects intercultural communication. Fortunately, there is an explanation for that Russian prudence. It’s predetermined by the cultural environment that doesn’t approve of talking about sex expressively. It can be said that the questions of sexual life are still tabooed in Russia, especially in small Russian towns where people have more puritan views.
Although Russian women are moving with the times and have become adjusted to the effects of the sexual revolution (incidentally, in Russia it took place much later compared to western countries), there still exist the vestiges of the patriarchal society. Women in Russia are often underestimated and viewed by men as objects.
Fortunately, young ladies of a new generation are more open towards questions of sex and sexuality. The situation is different with some mature women brought up in the Soviet Union society. They were imposed that there was no sex in the USSR. Even today, most traditional families teach their girls that talking about sex is bad and doing that is considered indecent. It’s not a rare case that the problem of sex education of teenagers is ignored by teachers at schools. When it comes to the unit about the human reproduction, teachers often skip those paragraphs and let the students study them on their own. As a result, about 13 percent of girls have their first sexual contact when they are 15 or sometimes even younger and emotionally immature. Western girls are more open-minded about sex as this topic is not tabooed in Western countries and much attention is paid to sex education at schools. Due to this Russian girls are a bit culturally shocked by that emancipation.
Russian women are brought up to be quiet and obedient. Their strict mothers and grandmothers teach them not to kiss a man unless they really love him. Being limited by these stereotypes, they disregard their sexual desires and can’t form their own attitude towards sex for quite a long time. Very often, young women have the wrong idea about sexual relationships which leads to the vague understanding of the married life.
Those Russian women who are dating a man or are already married tend to avoid the topics concerning sex. The society disapproves of the premarital sex and due to this women don’t want anyone to know that they had sex before marriage. Fear of rejection is stronger than their own desires.
It’s a usual thing in Russia that many just married couples live together with the one of the spouses’ parents. It prevents women from expressing their covert sexual desires because they are constantly in a fishbowl, that is, they are being monitored by the family all the time. The lack of privacy often leads to the quiet sexual acts where a woman can’t realize her sexual potential. Surely, she has that potential. Russian women just seem cold and unapproachable. In fact, they are hot and passionate. They just need the right man who will turn them on and make them forget about all those prejudices.
Hopefully, women of a new generation will get rid of the lack of confidence and those obsolete standards and realize that they deserve to be respected and worshiped by men.
