# Dating in Europe/UK vs USA **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 16, 2008, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431 "2008-12-16T18:30:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2008, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/21 "2008-12-17T08:47:45Z")
European who’s dated mostly in America, although not all of them were from the USA. In Spain I’ve had, how to translate it… one-night gropes. Nothing in other countries. I think of “exclusive” as starting on date #2. If we’re introducing each other as bf/gf, _definitely_ exclusive unless one of the two has specifically asked for “open” or for being able to date other folk (notice that “movie and dinner with friends” is not the same as “movie and dinner with a friend” is not the same as “movie and dinner date”). If he’s asking me to marry him, that’s about as exclusive as it gets. Recently, these friends of my brothers’ were visiting them and the guy referred to the girl as “my girl.” She turned upon him like a flock of Furies, “what do you mean, ‘the girl’? Either ‘my partner,’ or ‘my woman/wife(1)’, but if you call me your girl again I’m moving out!” (1) in Spanish it’s the same word. The words for gf and bride and for bf and groom are also respectively the same, so calling someone your bf/gf is equivalent to saying your “intended.” The guys who only lasted one date were all American. The guy who lasted several months and who wanted to go from not touching me to bed was American. The guy who was asking me to marry him but who thought that bedding other people without rubbers was something I had to accept because “a man has his needs” got his US citizenship during the time we dated. Originally he was a Jamaica-born British citizen. The guy who I would have married if he’d been better at listening to me or I’d been better at interrupting him was an American citizen, child of Costa Rican teenagers, his father had ended up a Southern Baptist and his mother a hippy with “octopus Mom syndrome” (his stepdad liked me). He butchered what little Spanish he could speak, but AFAIK he’s sequentially monogamous (he later dated another friend, it was cute how nervous he got about us two talking about him). Middlebro was called “SiL’s bf” by SiL’s friends for about three months before SiL finally accepted a date with him. They reckoned that “you’re always talking about him, you’re on the phone with him a lot, you look forward to seeing him, when him and his chaperoning friend join us you only have eyes and ears for him, it’s like there’s a pink cloud around you two… girl, there’s no way he’s ‘just some guy’!” ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2008, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/22 "2008-12-17T09:21:06Z")
I’ve been out with 20+ women and have been on a grand total of three dates. One of my dates was in the US when I was 17, and I was mystified as to what the etiquette was, one of them was about four months ago when I found myself single and was set up by a friend (and was a disaster!), and one of them was last week. The modus operandi with to I am used is to get drunk with people and fall on them in a mutually agreeable stylee. Since my recent singlehood I have discovered that dating is more socially comprehensible in the UK, but still, my new girlfriend, with whom I had a date last week, was initially garnered by the previous method - the date arose only after we had already spent a night chewing the face off each other. ---
**Author:** ![Marienee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@Marienee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marienee)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2008, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/23 "2008-12-17T10:16:42Z")
Dearly Beloved (who is Dutch, and was then in the US to get his degree) named our future children on our third date. Being a good catholic boy (bwah), on our second date, he said that he intended to marry, settle down in Europe, and have some kids. He went on at some length about the kind of life he was planning to have and wound up with an indication that if all of this was not what I had in mind we should perhaps not proceed with this relationship. I thought he was either mad or given to opening high. So I asked him if I could possibly finish my dinner before we got started on all that. He thought I was either mad or blowing him off, and so proceeded a relationship filled with incidents in which we peer at one another over a yawning cultural abys-, er, gap. I cannot speak for all of Europe, but Dutch guys on the whole lack and entirely fail to understand the point of the predatory aspect of man/woman relations. This includes the practice of dating in the way Americans think of it. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2008, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/24 "2008-12-17T10:32:51Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Well. So, nowadays, how low or high is a kiss on the “American scale”? Because from my point of view, the next step after a kiss still is sex. At this point, I would assume the deal to be done and agreed upon, and sex is obviously going to follow, assuming I’m older than 17. > (I mean a “french kiss”, a kiss on the cheek being completely meaningless). Let’s get something straight here. It’s Amercan women that make this whole dating thing so damned confussing. A girl I’ve just recently started dating would kiss, cuddle and even do some light petting with me. First two dates she did not sleep over. Third date she slept over but NO SEX!! This after much making out. Oh, I guess I should also tell ya’ the ONLY thing she wore to bed that night was one of my T-shirts. The fourth date the deal was finally done. But really, that third date was torture. WTF is up with you American women? Anyway, we’re still not exclusive because we still haven’t had that “talk”. So try to make sense out of that European folks. ---
**Author:** ![Angua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8baadc/32.png) [@Angua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angua)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2008, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/25 "2008-12-17T10:33:38Z")
> [@Marienee](#): > > Dearly Beloved (who is Dutch, and was then in the US to get his degree) named our future children on our third date. Being a good catholic boy (bwah), on our second date, he said that he intended to marry, settle down in Europe, and have some kids. _penny drops_ Ah-ha!! So its the classic good Catholic boy opening! By the second evening of us being together as a couple there was talk of marriage, children and where to settle down! ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2008, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/26 "2008-12-17T18:09:13Z")
Walk me through this. If a man in, say, London, meets a woman at work who catches his eye (but they don’t know each other outside of work), how would he go about expressing his interest in spending more time with her? How would he go about spending more time with her? Once the guy has had dinner with the woman, is he expected to only go to dinner with her pending an explicit dissolution of the relationship? ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2008, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/27 "2008-12-17T18:17:16Z")
> [@SHAKES](#): > > Let’s get something straight here. It’s Amercan women that make this whole dating thing so damned confussing. > > A girl I’ve just recently started dating would kiss, cuddle and even do some light petting with me. > > First two dates she did not sleep over. Third date she slept over but NO SEX!! This after much making out. Oh, I guess I should also tell ya’ the ONLY thing she wore to bed that night was one of my T-shirts. > > The fourth date the deal was finally done. But really, that third date was torture. WTF is up with you American women? Sometimes we need to be around you guys in a variety of situations before we are sure that we feel comfortable enough for the whole sex thing. 🙂 Or maybe she wanted to see whether she liked how the whole making out thing went before going forward with more intimate stuff. Personally, I find that if I like a guy’s kissing technique, I’m going to like the rest of his bag of tricks, so kissing, making out, etc. are kind of like a test run. P.S. My ex-BF must have been losing his mind; we used to stay over at each other’s apartments, sleep curled up in the same bed, etc. for many months before we ever actually even kissed each other, let alone did anything more intimate. His freaking _roommate_ thought we were an item long before we actually were. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2008, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/28 "2008-12-17T19:08:39Z")
> [@Vox\_Imperatoris](#): > > For the hanging out situation, I meant interested in a “that girl is sort of attractive” way, not actively pursuing a relationship, i.e. in the “hanging out” situation Robert and James would just “have their eye” on Sally as one of many possible girls that they might consider dating. I mean, before you were involved with your boyfriend (assuming it was not “love at first sight”), you found some of the other men in that group at least a little attractive, right (as in there was a number more than one but less than all that you would consider dating if you turned out to have compatible personalities)? But you didn’t make advances towards them or anything because that would be very forward and weird without getting to know them first, right? > > Well, the “hanging out” situation (like what you and most young Americans are in), you would get to know them by interacting together in large groups until it just felt right to be a little closer to one of them. The old-fashioned formal dating style with multiple people would not replace the stage where you two were already pretty much grouped as a couple (where a girl trying to intrude would be seen as “sad”), but the “getting to know each other” stage. Remember that single men and women casually interacting together in an informal context would be acceptable. (I’m getting thoughts here (which we laughed at) of my Latin teacher saying that boys shouldn’t lie on the couch in the room with girls sitting on it or vice versa because it was too “familiar”.) > > Remember too that people (I’m going way back in time here) used to get married a lot more earlier on, so the original concept from which modern dating is descended was of men picking out an attractive woman, the woman evaluating them to see which one she liked best, and then of them getting married right away. > > Valete, > Vox Imperatoris Vox, it sounds to me like you’re dating, but just with a lot of other people along. 😉 Seriously, though, what you’re describing sounds _more_ formal and cumbersome to me, if only because one has to arrange the participation of so many more people. And again, how does one pursue someone who’s not part of the group? P.S. I don’t mean to sound like I’m busting your chops; different styles work perfectly well for different people. I guess I’m just suggesting that people on \*both \*sides of this divide are probably looking across and wondering “why would people go about it that way?” ---
**Author:** ![Vox\_Imperatoris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Vox\_Imperatoris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vox_Imperatoris)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2008, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/29 "2008-12-17T19:29:40Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Vox, it sounds to me like you’re dating, but just with a lot of other people along. 😉 > > Seriously, though, what you’re describing sounds _more_ formal and cumbersome to me, if only because one has to arrange the participation of so many more people. And again, how does one pursue someone who’s not part of the group? > P.S. I don’t mean to sound like I’m busting your chops; different styles work perfectly well for different people. I guess I’m just suggesting that people on \*both \*sides of this divide are probably looking across and wondering “why would people go about it that way?” I was actually trying to clarify how I was describing the Euro/developing American situation, not the way I’d prefer. I actually prefer a more one-on-one (or at least smaller groups) kind of situation, obviously not quite as formal as I was describing the 1950s-style situation, but still more upfront than just hanging out with people until couples just sort of drift together. And the problem of dating someone not in the group \*is \*one of the main reasons I don’t like that kind of thing. Actually, though, I think one of the biggest differences between Europe and America, at least among teenagers, is the expectation of sex. I get the impression that in Europe it’s pretty much guaranteed that if two people are dating, they are having sex. In America (depending on where you are, I guess), well, I won’t say that there isn’t that expectation from a lot of people, but a lot fewer eyebrows would be raised if you _weren’t_ having sex with your girlfriend/boyfriend. Valete, Vox Imperatoris ---
**Author:** ![Illuminatiprimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/illuminatiprimus/32/11520_2.png) [@Illuminatiprimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Illuminatiprimus)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2008, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/30 "2008-12-17T19:43:30Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#): > > Walk me through this. > > If a man in, say, London, meets a woman at work who catches his eye (but they don’t know each other outside of work), how would he go about expressing his interest in spending more time with her? How would he go about spending more time with her? Once the guy has had dinner with the woman, is he expected to only go to dinner with her pending an explicit dissolution of the relationship? He’d probably ask her out for a drink or dinner, as you would expect. Or he might arrange to do something with her in a group so it takes the pressure off a bit and see what she’s like socially, and then maybe do a bit of email/coffee point flirting. It’s not that we don’t do anything akin to what you know of as dating (dinner/drinks/coffee/movies/whatever) it’s just that our approach is a bit different and we don’t often call it dating. I’ve had plenty of “first dates” with people but that’s often been in the context of internet dating and unfortunately there is often no way to meet someone from a website without it being a job interview type date. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2008, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/31 "2008-12-17T22:20:35Z")
> [@Vox\_Imperatoris](#): > > I was actually trying to clarify how I was describing the Euro/developing American situation, not the way I’d prefer. > … > Actually, though, I think one of the biggest differences between Europe and America, at least among teenagers, is the expectation of sex. Tres bien (or as the French would say, “vaih-rey gh-uud”). I understand better. We are addressing each other over a gap of 20+ years, so it’s a wonder we can communicate at all. Some things are universal: it always seems like other people are having a lot more sex , but I’ve come to wonder whether that’s just a mistaken perception. > [@Illuminatiprimus](#): > > He’d probably ask her out for a drink or dinner, as you would expect. Would he say, “Fancy a little toad in the hole?” ---
**Author:** ![Illuminatiprimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/illuminatiprimus/32/11520_2.png) [@Illuminatiprimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Illuminatiprimus)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2008, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/32 "2008-12-17T22:25:15Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Would he say, “Fancy a little toad in the hole?” Yes, that’s exactly what he’d say. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2008, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/33 "2008-12-18T03:29:23Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > they found that each relationship could be divided into about 30 steps - from first contact to full relationship including sex - for both Americans and English BUT there was a different order! I’ve already mentioned that IME (add polls between friends, a very-scandalized U of Miami Cooking Club, etc), Bill Clinton isn’t the only American who thinks of fellatio as “less” than penile-vaginal intercourse, while in Spain we think of it as “more.” A couple of my partners (both American) asked me to fellate them; both freaked out when I said I’d never done it before and asked to give me pointers if I did it wrong, both then said they didn’t want it. Sorry, were you born knowing how to perform every action known to man or woman? You weren’t born knowing how to eat with tools or how to walk, were you? Ongoing commentary was a part of my Spanish gropes, but apparently things like “ooooh that’s good” aren’t acceptable to these strange people who expect screaming orgasms (not expected in Spain, where walls are paper thin and I just got woken up in a hotel by someone snoring in the room below). With the exception of the last one I mentioned in my previous post, my US dates, bf’s and FWBs would go from no-touch-at-all to rubbers-on. They’d cuddle after the fact, not before… the general strategy involved getting my pants down before my shirt went up. For me the “natural order” (the speed is a function of, among other things, the experience of both partners) would be more along the lines of: meet, hold hands/pass arm over shoulder(NOT dangle hand to tit)/dance(rare), cuddle, shirts up, look for a private location, rubber on, pants down. **Vox Imperatoris** , IME the expectation of sex is about the same % in Europe and the USA, what’s different is the path to it. Like I said, I dated guys who went without touching me for 3 months (he’d freak out if I tried to hold hands) but wanted to bed me. Many of my Hispanic friends had the same problem dating gringos, we wanted to hold hands, they wanted to jump in bed. ---
**Author:** ![Angua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8baadc/32.png) [@Angua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angua)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2008, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/34 "2008-12-18T04:32:21Z")
> [@Vox\_Imperatoris](#): > > Actually, though, I think one of the biggest differences between Europe and America, at least among teenagers, is the expectation of sex. I get the impression that in Europe it’s pretty much guaranteed that if two people are dating, they are having sex. I think its more that if two people are together as a couple then the _implication_ from others is that they’re having sex, whether they are or not! ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2008, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/35 "2008-12-18T05:32:45Z")
That, too, although at leat in Spain it depends on the region and how they behave in public. His hand on her tit and she doesn’t give him a backslap that returns him to the uterus from which he was born? Sex. Nervous looks, lots of blushing and the mere act of holding hands produces blissful smiles? No sex. Asturias? Sex. Euskadi? As so many jokes go, “dem Basque wymen, no ringee, no sexee.” ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2008, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/36 "2008-12-18T05:35:54Z")
> [@Vox\_Imperatoris](#): > > I get the impression that in Europe it’s pretty much guaranteed that if two people are dating, they are having sex. What does “dating” mean, again? If a woman is your girlfriend, I’m going to assume you have sex. If she isn’t your girlfriend, I’m going to assume you don’t. I just don’t have any “dating” category. I don’t know if people who are “dating” over here have sex, because I don’t know anybody who is “dating” anybody else. Or maybe I actually do know plenty of people who are “dating” but I can’t tell, because I don’t have a dating clue about what “dating” is. ---
**Author:** ![Angua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8baadc/32.png) [@Angua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angua)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2008, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431/37 "2008-12-18T05:39:31Z")
@ **Nava** Yeah, I think there’s definitely a country/region specific thing going on too, which means that you can’t treat Europe as a whole really… And going from Western to Eastern Europe is a big jump too, IME… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dating-in-europe-uk-vs-usa/477431.md?page=1)