More and more here in the US we have a lot of options in terms of the different cultures that coexist in much of our society. I married a Colombian woman, for example, and had several girl friends who hailed from different parts of the world, or whose parents did.
Every culture has its own ideas about the proper way to look for a mate, and while most people sort of adapt to the dominant essentially English cultural norms of the mainstream United States,a lot of people are unwilling to do so in the very intimate realms of love and sex. I have found that some seemingly very 'modern' women turn out to have VERY 'old country' ideas when it comes do dating and sex, and often their families try with varying success to IMPOSE them even on people born and raised here.
For example, our 'pair' dating is often unaccepted at a young age by many Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, who only allow group dating if any at all before marriage.
It took me a long time to adjust to my wife's family which has only recently come from Colombia. They are very strict about their young daughters and will not allow them to date anyone they haven't met and interrogated! Interrogated at length. And there are always strict curfews involved, with real punishment for not meeting them and sometimes physical aggression against their daughters' boy friends if they get out of line. At least one of their daughter's boy friends was too frightened to see her any more because of the threats he received from her father when he brought her home late and a little disheveled...
At first I was pretty shocked at this but after I heard what happens to Colombian girls who assume guys will treat them respectfully...I can sympathize with this father.
Often their friendliness and willingness to start conversations with anyone at almost any time is misinterpreted in the US culture...or taken as a sign of weakness. Unfortuantely being cold and stand-offish is often the 'proper' behavior for women in our modern culture until people have become friends or they have been introduced. Any real warmth or friendliness from women is taken to mean they are 'easy.' One guy actually tried to drag her into his car by force and when the police talked to him he said with a straight face that she had led him to believe she would go with him because she had talked with him for over 20 minutes!!
Can you imagine? 20 minutes!
Other guys got really mad at her for turning down dates. Again, her friendliness to them meant that agreeing on a date was automatic and they were actually shocked when she said she couldn't go out with them until they had met her family.
And the Colombians are more relaxed on the whole than a lot of my Asian or Middle Eastern friends' families. Some of them won't let their daughters date at all or not in pairs until they are formally engaged.
We shouldn't assume people who won't date are necessarily unfriendly or shy. They may just have to obey norms we don't understand and they are unwilling to explain them to outsiders.
On the other hand, there are often almost no restrictions put on male children in some of these cultures and in fact some of the Middle Eastern guys see women outside their culture as
'fair game' and don't have any compunction about lying to them about where they are taking them and what their plans are. These guys assume that because the US women are free to date that there are NO limits on what they can do to them.
And they aren't shy about trying almost anything, I can tell you.
So while there is great fascination in dating people from other cultures, there are also a LOT of potential pitfalls!! I still regret how some of my dates were punished for my bringing them home to late or just for where I had taken them...not that anything really 'bad' had happened.
Every culture has its own ideas about the proper way to look for a mate, and while most people sort of adapt to the dominant essentially English cultural norms of the mainstream United States,a lot of people are unwilling to do so in the very intimate realms of love and sex. I have found that some seemingly very 'modern' women turn out to have VERY 'old country' ideas when it comes do dating and sex, and often their families try with varying success to IMPOSE them even on people born and raised here.
For example, our 'pair' dating is often unaccepted at a young age by many Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, who only allow group dating if any at all before marriage.
It took me a long time to adjust to my wife's family which has only recently come from Colombia. They are very strict about their young daughters and will not allow them to date anyone they haven't met and interrogated! Interrogated at length. And there are always strict curfews involved, with real punishment for not meeting them and sometimes physical aggression against their daughters' boy friends if they get out of line. At least one of their daughter's boy friends was too frightened to see her any more because of the threats he received from her father when he brought her home late and a little disheveled...
At first I was pretty shocked at this but after I heard what happens to Colombian girls who assume guys will treat them respectfully...I can sympathize with this father.
Often their friendliness and willingness to start conversations with anyone at almost any time is misinterpreted in the US culture...or taken as a sign of weakness. Unfortuantely being cold and stand-offish is often the 'proper' behavior for women in our modern culture until people have become friends or they have been introduced. Any real warmth or friendliness from women is taken to mean they are 'easy.' One guy actually tried to drag her into his car by force and when the police talked to him he said with a straight face that she had led him to believe she would go with him because she had talked with him for over 20 minutes!!
Can you imagine? 20 minutes!
Other guys got really mad at her for turning down dates. Again, her friendliness to them meant that agreeing on a date was automatic and they were actually shocked when she said she couldn't go out with them until they had met her family.
And the Colombians are more relaxed on the whole than a lot of my Asian or Middle Eastern friends' families. Some of them won't let their daughters date at all or not in pairs until they are formally engaged.
We shouldn't assume people who won't date are necessarily unfriendly or shy. They may just have to obey norms we don't understand and they are unwilling to explain them to outsiders.
On the other hand, there are often almost no restrictions put on male children in some of these cultures and in fact some of the Middle Eastern guys see women outside their culture as
'fair game' and don't have any compunction about lying to them about where they are taking them and what their plans are. These guys assume that because the US women are free to date that there are NO limits on what they can do to them.
And they aren't shy about trying almost anything, I can tell you.
So while there is great fascination in dating people from other cultures, there are also a LOT of potential pitfalls!! I still regret how some of my dates were punished for my bringing them home to late or just for where I had taken them...not that anything really 'bad' had happened.
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