My bf is russian. I am american. We've been dating for about 6 months - we spend the weekends together and sometimes see each other during the week but not for overnight. We've become very close but it bothers me that he does not call daily. Particularly if he is out of town on a business trip, he doesn't call at all! We are in our 50's, so we are not into game-playing in the relationship but it makes me feel that he does not think of me or care to talk to me when he doesn't call. It is a russian thing?. Created by janet b. society-culture-en - cultures-groups-en - other-cultures-groups-en

Russian cultural characteristic?

May 2021 2 39 Report

Russian cultural characteristic?

My bf is russian. I am american. We've been dating for about 6 months - we spend the weekends together and sometimes see each other during the week but not for overnight. We've become very close but it bothers me that he does not call daily. Particularly if he is out of town on a business trip, he doesn't call at all! We are in our 50's, so we are not into game-playing in the relationship but it makes me feel that he does not think of me or care to talk to me when he doesn't call. It is a russian thing?

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Anonymous

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It's ok... phone conversations are tough for foreign speakers because we don't get to see lips' articulation. BTW, another difficult thing to handle is humor in these TV shows with the laughing audience in background, because timing of words is all screwed up, people are already laughing while we are still extracting key signals from the sentence to translate them. The end result is similar - we feel kinda stupid. This feeling may cause a micro-trauma during the early days/months in the country, especially if someone is unlucky to fail an important phone conversation, or the other party was not patient and even got offensive or sarcastic. So, I can understand why your bf may not like talking over the phone (or perhaps tends to switch TV channel when Friends are running). Nevertheless, if he does not call you from a business trip, it means he does not think that you care, and in his eyes you are not his "home" to call. This is rather bad. Calling home from a trip is an easy scenario, and he should not face an outburst of telephonophobia (if there is such thing). As for calling daily, this is not a typical Russian guy thing. Also, we don't like saying "Love ya" at the end, and do not fancy calling our beloved ones "honey", "sweetie", or "baby". As Esenin wrote in one if his poignant poems, loosely translated, "One does not speak of love in words, but sigh about it when nobody's looking, with only eyes that gleam like sapphires."