You can’t buy a spouse on the internet. there is no amazon that will deliver a blushing bride to your door with a drone.
but you can look for a girlfriend online, if you feel like it. Thousands of women on websites around the world will gladly tell you what they want in a man. they will flirt they will mention family, commitment, and perhaps marriage.
and that can start you on your path to marital bliss. or not.
The mail-order bride business (object to the term, but it can’t be evaded) is alive and well in the 21st century. however, for many brave enough to wade into the water, it can be kicked in the teeth.
The mail-order bride industry sometimes brings people together in holy matrimony, though the numbers are sketchy. and it can allow women in some pretty dire situations to control their futures. but there are also stories of abuse or scam, on both sides of the transaction.
so it’s a tricky business, this mail-in marriage.
very similar to love.
a new frontier
When Marcia Zug, a professor of law at the University of South Carolina, began researching her book, “Buying a Bride: An Interesting Story of Mail Order Matches,” she thought it would bring out the seedy side of the industry.
“I expected to discover that modern mail-order marriages are fundamentally harmful and that these problems are long-standing,” Zug writes in the introduction to the book, which will be published in June. “I was surprised that this was not what I found. Despite the significant risks, mail order marriages are often beneficial and even liberating for women.”
In her book, Zug details the history of mail-order brides: English and French women who emigrated to help build the US colony of Virginia. uh, for example. French women known as the filles du roi (king’s daughters) who came to New France (mainly Canada now) in the late 17th century.
Later, when the American West was being settled and the need for women there became acute, both men and women began to advertise for spouses. zug found this in a missouri newspaper, circa 1910:
Attractive women, not a day over thirty, would be delighted to correspond with an eligible man. it is not absolutely necessary that he be young. I would prefer one with property, but one with a good paying position would be satisfactory. the young woman is of medium height, brown hair and gray eyes, not fat, although, very decidedly, she is not skinny. Her friends say that she is a good looking woman. she object marriage. Reason for this announcement, the young woman lives in a crazy little town, where the best catches are the guys behind the counters of drugstores and clothing stores, and each one of them is talked about by the time he is out of his short pants.
In many ways, modern mail-order brides are not far removed from this ad: women in dire straits, taking charge of their lives with the promise of something better.
“the idea that men are buying women and that women have no voice or free will, basically that they are trafficked [not true]… mail order brides are, in most cases, in much control,” says zug. “It doesn’t mean it always works, but they know what they’re doing in the sense that they believe this is going to be something that will give them an opportunity to improve their lives.”
risks on both sides
jonathon narducci examined the mail-order marriage business in his 2014 documentary, love me. The film follows a handful of men to Ukraine looking for women to marry. Ukraine, racked by social unrest and a sinking economy, is home to thousands of would-be brides.
some of the film’s subjects (men, mostly, who often seem unworldly, even foolish) are duped. some are injured. most just keep going, a little better or a little worse for the experience.
That, Narducci says, is the reality of the mail-order marriage business.
“everyone gets what they deserve. and i think that goes with all online dating,” says narducci. “All my friends who are single are dating online. And it doesn’t work very well. Do you want to know why? It’s because people fill in the gaps. And when you don’t speak the same language, you’re filling in even more gaps, and you’re filling in the empty with what you want those people to be. You create the image in your head.”
Add in age and cultural differences (most men are older than the women they know), and you’ll see why these things rarely work. “That’s why it’s hard to feel sympathy,” Narducci adds. “I stopped feeling bad for them a long time ago.”
a particularly revealing and painful story in “love me”: svitlana, a mother of two from ukraine, agrees to marry michael. they are married in bali. he flies home, she and the kids go back to ukraine to start the paperwork, and then she refuses to answer her emails. they have no contact for months. when he returns, she breaks it.
it’s awkward. it’s also something everyone should have seen coming.
There is a shot in the film of the couple on their wedding day. he, in a dark shirt and white tie, is smiling. svitlana, in a white wedding dress and holding a bouquet, is facing away, her lips in a somber line. She later says that she knew, on her wedding day, that she couldn’t marry Michael.
but he got a trip to bali, at least.
“I definitely didn’t use it. maybe I didn’t tell him everything I should have, which could be considered a lie. and I feel guilty about it,” he says later in the film. “but I think people need to be smarter.”
the court
At least 2,700 mail-order marriage agencies operate worldwide, with 500 or more in the US. In the US, according to a 2001 article in the journal of Gender, Race & Justice. most, if not all, have a website.
mark edward davis wrote a book on international dating and then launched his own service, dream connections, which he runs with his ukrainian wife anna. Davis’s site has the necessary images of attractive women, complete with profiles, like the one below.
“I hope to meet a man with whom we have many interests in common. I think respect, understanding. I also think that a man should be kind and generous.” — 40 oksana de – years
Some sites charge a monthly membership fee to search for potential brides. others are free to browse, but charge you to email the women: the translation fee (inbound and outbound) can be $10 or more. Of course, it is not known how real these conversations are.
“The online dating scene, its business model, is designed to keep you on the website, feeding the meter, not finding a wife,” Davis says. “I hate it.”
Davis claims his site is different. dream connections sells tours to ukraine, colombia and thailand, connecting western men with local women. Ukraine tours cost about $5,000, excluding airfare, drinks, most meals, and tips. Davis claims that she pre-screens both men and women to make sure marriage is their intention. no sex, no having a good time, no finding a cook.
On tour, men speed through speed dating with the help of translators, sitting at tables with multiple women at once. training is available. individual appointments are arranged. In a week, maybe more (Davis tours are usually nine days long), a man can meet literally dozens of supposedly interested women.
If you feel like proposing, you can. if you feel like accepting, you can.
Does the mail order marriage strategy work? statistics are hard to find. Anecdotally, Zug and Narducci say that the success rate is very low. The INS said in 1999 that between 4,000 and 6,000 mail-order brides came to the United States. every year. The Tahirih Justice Center, a US-based group dedicated to protecting immigrant women and girls from violence, estimated between 11,000 and 16,500 mail-order brides, based on 2007 immigration statistics.
but what percentage that represents of all the people trying to match is unknown. however, disappointment and disillusionment undoubtedly outnumber marital bliss.
what does love have to do with this?
The nagging question, especially for those who see mail-order marriages as a cruel transaction, is what love has to do with it. Doesn’t love go hand in hand with marriage, as Sinatra once sang?
not necessarily. Stories of abuse in mail-order marriages abound. scams, by companies selling marriage and by women (looking for money or a green card) and men (looking for sex and a submissive partner), are common. The Tahirih Justice Center estimates that rates of abuse in marriages between US citizens and foreign women are three times higher than in the general population. the estimate doesn’t specifically target mail-order brides and their spouses, but the group says it’s a “close analogy.”
The International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 imposes regulations on the industry, such as requiring mail-order bride companies to perform background checks on their clients before providing their contact information to foreign women (and sharing the results of the verification with them).
So does love have anything to do with mail order marriage?
zug pauses a long time before replying. “Depends on what you think about marriage and love. Can these marriages lead to love? Definitely. Is this the way most Americans think about the order of love and marriage? Generally, not “.