Meeting a Russian woman - Shortcut

Meeting a Russian woman can be a very complex task, as you can see if you peruse the rest of this site. But there may be a LOT more information on this site than you really want or need at first. You may not want to read comparisons of several different approaches to meeting a Russian woman, along with the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, or a review of all the different agencies and sites I review.

You are sold on the idea and just want a simple list of steps involved in meeting a Russian woman. If so, then this page is for you. I link to a few other pages with more detailed discussion on various topics, but you don't really need to follow those links now unless you want more information.

Before You Start...

Before even looking at any sites for meeting a Russian woman, there are a few things you will need.

First, since you are reading this you already have a computer and internet access. Since video communication (like Skype) is very common in the quest for a Russian woman you will need reasonably fast internet (if you don't already have it), web cam, microphone, and speakers.

When I first wrote all this material around 2010 this was a much more important thing to say. Now it's hard to find a computer that doesn't have these features. But it is still possible to find people who choose to save money on cable/internet by choosing slower, cheaper services. Don't be one of those!

Second, you will need 4-6 good digital pictures of yourself. They should be RECENT, CLEAR, UP-CLOSE, AND ACCURATE. At least one of them should show your whole body (CLOTHED). Don't include any pictures that do not have you in them, or are very distant, or that have you with any other women.

Third, you need to write a good profile about yourself to post on the sites you will use. You can read more about this at Russian Women Dating Sites: How To Write An Effective Online Profile.

But in a nutshell, write 250-500 words about yourself. Include your age (REAL age, not your wished-for age), height (in centimeters), weight (in kilograms), your profession, hobbies, interests, if you've been divorced or have kids, if you smoke (how much), if you drink (how much), if you want children (or more children), if you are OPEN to children or more children ("wanting" children and "open to" children are not exactly the same). You should try to describe your character in general.

If you live near any major body of water (large lakes, seas, oceans, etc.), MENTION IT! It's a major point-getter with a Russian woman.

Even though this is the shortcut version of meeting a Russian woman, I feel compelled to issue an important warning about your profile and pictures. Some men who don't think a Russian woman will like the way they look, or think that women won't be attracted to a man their age, or height/weight, profession, etc. lie or exaggerate or post inaccurate, misleading pictures. This is ALWAYS guaranteed to fail (just as it does with local online connections, except with Russian women you will spend a week of vacation time and thousands of dollars to travel there to be rejected for posting a misleading profile and pictures).

Remember that for a Russian woman it is more important that a picture be ACCURATE than you looking good in it. If you use pictures showing what you looked like 20 years ago this will be far more disappointing to a Russian woman when she meets you in person than an accurate, but not so youthful picture.

And if you REALLY want to make an impact with your pictures, have at least one or two pics with you WEARING A SUIT. A man in a suit is to a Ukrainian/Russian woman what a young, gorgeous woman is to a man. It's almost impossible to overstate the importance of this. You can be old, out of shape, and not very good looking, but if you're well-groomed and wearing a suit they'll hardly notice the other shortcomings!

Once you've written your profile, have it PROFESSIONALLY translated into Russian. Since even Russian women who know English pretty well know Russian far better, you'll get extra points for making your profile easier to read. And software translations are OK for some things, but they render horrible translations... usually they are only 60-70% readable.

You can look up a good professional translator online, or visit my page of recommended translators.

Sign Up on Russian-Ukrainian-Women.com

Since this is the shortcut version for meeting a Russian woman, I'll just tell you where to sign up, not why those sites are the best for you.

Russian-Ukrainian-Women.com should definitely be your first stop. Other good sites exist, but Russian-Ukrainian-Women.com is in a class of its own.

So go to Russian-Ukrainian-Women.com, sign up, and post your profile and pictures. Note that signing up on this site is free, but you need one of their paid memberships to make any contact. I'd recommend signing up, posting your profile and pictures, then wait till your profile is approved before paying for a membership. This way you aren't paying for time during which women are unable to view your profile.

This approval process simply involves them making sure that nothing in your profile or pictures violate their terms of service and usually takes one or two business days. While you are waiting you can start using the site's search functions to build a list of the women you want to contact first.

Contact Russian Women

Now it's time to contact the women that interest you. I give suggestions on which kinds of women are your best picks and which are best avoided on another page on this site. Read The Best Single Russian Women to Write if you would like to explore that further.

Once you have in mind a few parameters you seek, log into Russian-Ukrainian-Women.com and click "Search" on the top menu bar, and enter your search criteria.

So in addition to whatever preferences you have, I recommend focusing on Russian women who appear in the first few pages of hits, who have been online recently (at least within 30 days), and who specify a preferred age and race that you match (or who don't specify and age or race preference). And I'd give extra points to those who mention having a computer at home and speaking English.

Russian-Ukrainian-Women.com allows you to send a "Wink" to a girl, but since the Gold membership option there allows you unlimited messages to unlimited women, you should probably send a real personally written message instead of a "wink". With cross-cultural dynamic involved a "wink" could be confusing.

Women typically don't want a form letter, but if a really short initial letter says the right things, you can get away with a 90% pre-written copy/paste first message. Just say in your own words something like "Hi ____, I saw your profile on _____. You seem like an interesting, intelligent, and sincere lady. I would like to get to know you better, so please take a moment and view my profile on this site and a few of my recent pictures and let me know if you are willing to communicate further..."

PLEASE do change it a little! But here are a few important tips:

• In case you don't know, DO NOT MENTION HER LOOKS, ESPECIALLY IF SHE IS VERY ATTRACTIVE, AND ESPECIALLY NOT IN ANY OF YOUR EARLY COMMUNICATION. I'll be expanding my site soon where I'll explain that in greater depth, but for now just trust me, it's a loser.
• DO change it to make it your own, BUT KEEP IT SHORT (around the same length as my sample). If you write a long first-letter and it's mostly copy/pasted, THEY KNOW, and they don't like it. If it's 3-4 sentences max saying only things like my sample, you hardly say much that makes them worry that it's not original. It's really more of a "customized wink" or "customized expression of interest".

One last bit of advice on contacting Russian women before moving on... Ultimately your goal is to find several women with whom you can start serious dialog, then narrow that list down to one special Russian woman whom you'll visit in person. Serious dialog takes serious TIME and EMOTIONAL and MENTAL energy, so unless you can devote all your time to this pursuit, you really won't be able to handle more than around five serious correspondents at any given time.

So I recommend sending out no more than 10-20 introductory letters on your first session. Wait three days to see how many respond before sending out any more EOIs. If you get two positive responses from your first 10-20, maybe send out 10 more EOIs three days later. And so on, until you have your five serious correspondents.

Communicating with Russian Women

Once you begin receiving answers to your initial letters you will need to have some things ready to say. I would recommend having a few longer messages mostly pre-written since 90% of the first messages between you and your Russian women are going to be the same... basically a slight enhancement on what you say in your profile.

When sending that first message adjust the content a little for the particular case, interact with things in her profile, maybe ask a question or two. Usually it is best to not ask more than one or two questions in a message, and at least in your first message or two I'd keep the questions "light"... "So how about you... You said you like sport... what kind of sports?... How often do you do them?...", NOT "so why are you divorced? Where is your ex? Does your son live with you? Is he well-behaved? Would you plan to bring him with you if you married a foreigner? Do you have pets? Would you plan to bring them with you if we got married?" That's all a little too heavy and invasive for your first few messages. Actually, most of that is too heavy for any time!

And when you start corresponding and asking your questions, the Russian women are going to ask questions of their own. You should store your answers in some way that is easy to find so that when you are asked again by other women so you don't have to write the whole answer again... Think of it as your "FAQ" (Frequently Asked Questions) file. Trust me, certain questions will come up again and again... no need to re-think and rewrite those answers every time.

I'll give you a little preview of some questions for which you should be prepared. One inevitable question will be "Why are you seeking a wife from Russia/Ukraine?". If you are divorced there is a very good chance she'll ask "What happened in your marriage?". Those are two relatively inevitable questions that will come up, so it would be good to be ready for them.

One thing you do want to bring up fairly quickly... On Russian-Ukrainian-Women.com you communicate through the site's mail system. In your first or second message you should definitely ask if she would give you her direct email address and cell phone number (they ALL have cell phones). AND DEFINITELY ask if she uses Skype, and if so, ask her for her Skype name.

Of course ask these things nicely ("My direct email address is... My cell phone is... And I have Skype with a web cam and my Skype name is... How about you, would you mind sharing your direct contact information?..."), but you really need to escalate the correspondence to a real level ASAP, and there is absolutely NOTHING that does this better than regular web cam video chats.

Read Using Skype to Communicate with Russian Women for more information on using video conferencing, but suffice it to say that in my experience the vast improvement in one's ability to really connect with a Russian woman a half world away using video conferencing makes it almost a requirement. I'm not sure I could ever go back to just writing someone.

Meeting a Russian Woman

Ultimately your goal in all this correspondence is to meet Russian women online, communicate with them from a distance via video conference (ideally), phone, and email until you can NARROW your list down to one special Russian woman that you will travel to meet.

It is far beyond the scope of this "Shortcut" article to explain the reasons for this, but under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you attempt to make a trip to Russia/Ukraine to visit multiple women (unless the others are blood relatives ;-)

It WILL be tempting. You may end up with three women you like and have difficulty selecting just one Russian woman. Maybe two live in Kiev, Ukraine and one in Odessa, Ukraine. You figure "what's the harm in visiting my alternates while I'm all the way over there?".

Well, the "harm" is that all of them WILL KNOW you are visiting others (TRUST ME, they WILL KNOW, even if you don't tell them, and even if you think you have hidden it well with some great cover story), and that will in all likelihood hose any chance that you'll develop a deeper relationship with any of them.

I know all the arguments for meeting multiple women on a trip and all the arguments against going to see only one. Trust me... meeting one Russian woman per trip is the only way that is likely to succeed!

Conclusion

With that I will conclude my shortcut for meeting a Russian woman. If you follow all the advice on this page alone (and the few links to other pages), it should take you at least a few weeks, if not months, and get you up to the point of planning a trip to meet your special Russian woman.

There is a LOT more you could learn, and that's waiting for you on this site when you are ready for it. And when you get to the point where it's time for you to plan a trip to see your special Russian woman, you will then want to come back and review our Russian Travel, and our Dating Russian Women sections.

And if you have any questions about your specific situation, I offer several options for obtaining more specific and personalized guidance at Russian Women Advice.

Good luck!