They come to Moscow -- men following the dreams of their wives and girlfriends.


Sometimes jobless, often Russian-less and usually with a sense of sacrifice, these liberated men are making a go of it in a town with few outlets for unemployed expatriate men and house husbands.


"Some guys might think it is degrading for a man's wife to work, but, hey, my wife deserves everything she can get," said a 38-year-old American who moved from St. Louis this summer and asked that his name not be used. "I'm not going to be the guy to say, 'No, you can't go to Russia, your dream.' Do you think she would respect me down the line? I'm not going to be that chauvinistic."


Although their numbers are nothing like those of the expatriate women who arrive with husbands and boyfriends, one Moscow psychologist said their plight is sometimes more severe because of sexist stereotypes and because they do not have the support system available to women.


"For the women, there is something set in place with the International Women's Club, but the men don't have something like that," said Marianne Anderson, a mental health counselor who has a private practice serving the expatriate community. "With the women's group you can be busy literally every day of the week without a job."


Anderson has not counseled any men who fall into the dependent spouse category but said many of the problems are the same as those faced by their female counterparts.


"The person who comes over without a job has to totally rebuild their world, rebuild their support structure," Anderson said. "The person who has the job at least has a similar work environment to where they came from, but for the other person it is not an easy thing to do."


One recent arrival from New York City, Steven Zausner, said he followed his girlfriend, Christina Campbell, to Moscow without hesitation, but had expected something different.


"I've been surprised at Moscow a lot, just at the paucity of stuff there was to do," said Zausner, 28, a freelance journalist studying the Russian language. "The fact that there aren't many outlets does make it tougher. Being here does put a lot of stress on your relationship. You have to sacrifice a lot and put some of your dreams on hold for a bit."


Children add another factor to the equation. Dr. Michael O'Byrne, an American child psychiatrist, came to Moscow in July when his wife of 25 years got a job as the senior health adviser with the United States Agency for International Development.


"It was toughest for our 11-year-old daughter, it was next toughest for me and least toughest for my wife," O'Byrne, 58, said of the move. "Our daughter had to leave the school that she has gone to since kindergarten, just before her final year ... She may never forgive her parents for yanking her out."


Ken Kalfus, 40, and his younger wife, Inga Saffron, a correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer, lived in Ireland, France and the former Yugoslavia before moving to Moscow. They have a 21-month-old daughter named Sky.


"One of the great things about traveling in the past is that we have spent a lot of time depending on each other -- those experiences gave us a confidence to have a baby," said Kalfus, a freelance writer.


But coming with a child to Moscow, where Saffron was assigned this summer, was a different matter.


"Moscow has its own challenges and having a baby makes it especially challenging," said Kalfus. "I'm pretty paranoid about the environmental situation here. In some ways I've felt like we've moved to Love Canal East."


Some psychologists said the presence of a child can reduce stresses on the expatriate couple by giving the non-working spouse greater fulfillment and reducing the sense of isolation. For dependent spouses and children alike, feelings of isolation and depression are common reactions to a Moscow move, said Dr. Jorge Bustos, a consulting psychiatrist at the American Medical Center. Such unhappiness, in turn, can make people feel disloyal.


"This is difficult to acknowledge quite consciously because if you allow yourself such an idea, it would make you disloyal to the spouse and not as committed to them," said Bustos.


Some men who come to Moscow are accustomed to being supported and that can help lessen the adjustment. Joe McGill is an artist from Dublin who arrived two years ago with his wife, Maureen, who works in the finance department of the Irish House supermarket on Novy Arbat.


"We have always had this relationship where Maureen worked in the real sense. I worked as an artist but she was the breadwinner," said McGill, 39, who paints, writes poetry and creates boxes from items he finds. "There is actually a better understanding of that now, where before I would feel guilty about it."


Although the McGills have been married for 11 years and had always encountered some surprise at Maureen McGill taking home the bacon -- "My mother is still waiting on me to get a job," said Joe McGill -- in Russia there is less understanding.


The reaction of Valera, a 15-year-old boy the couple are in the process of adopting, was telling, Joe McGill said. "Valera has been brought up to think that men have certain jobs and women have certain jobs ... Now he realizes that men in the West do things that men in the East don't do. Housework, for example."


Another couple had the same observation.


Jennifer Collins-Foley, director of the National Democratic Institute, said people in the United States were more understanding of her husband's status than Muscovites.


"I'll go to a meeting here and people will ask what does your husband do and when I say he's looking for a job they look in a funny way. I used to get upset," said Collins-Foley, 30, who arrived in June. "I think our Russian friends and colleagues find it more surprising than our Western friends do."