My experience of UK men vs European men early stages of a relationship

[lottieandmia]

I'm probably going to annoy some people with this post but it's just my experience and I wonder if anyone else has noticed the same.

The other day I was thinking about the fact that it is British guys usually whi seem to be the masters of dicking women around in the early stages of a relationship. They are the ones who don't know how they feel, say one thing and do another. You feel like you have to pin them down to state their feelings and they're still on Tinder/POF or whatever.

By contrast the European men were very up front about their feelings from the outset (I've found). This does NOT mean they are perfect - I've had a different set if problems with them that's all. But if they like you it's as straight forward as 'I like you, you like me - let's be together'.

For this reason I've had few relationships with UK guys, except my ex husband and even he was the same - messing me about stressing me for about 6 months. Then finally deciding he could say he really wanted to be with me.

I'm sure some people will think I'm unreasonable for a variety of reasons. Yes it's a generalisation just like Brits binge drink etc.

I've always found British men very full-on and up-front myself.

But why do we need to generalise or systemise?

I completely agree, OP. And it starts young - my DD (12), at à French school, has had full on declarations of "Je t'aime" from boys at school and I even had a mother I had never met before explain to me how her son was desperately in love with my beautiful DD and never stopped talking about her 😮

Foureyes - yes your entire post reflects my sentiments.

I am a man

I can only comment about men from my observations as to how women I have known have been treated. There are issues with the way in which a significant proportion of British men behave towards women, but to say that European men are usually better is a generalisation and in my view not an accurate one.

There are men who come from or whose heritage is from other European countries who treat women very poorly- for example of all the Turkish men I have come across, only two seem to regard women with respect. Polish men by contrast have seemed respectful, which is different from what some other people on this thread imply.

it may be that, when dating across cultures, people in general are more up front and clear about what they want/think, because they are very aware of the problems of cross cultural communication. Whereas all the European men who date people from their own cultures dick them around just as much as you have found British men to.

This is a very good point BoomBoom

I don't have a lot of experiences with dating in the Uk.

I did go on a few dates (mostly with women, tbh, in the U.K.) but DH is awesome.

I do think I sometimes shocked him with being a bit upfront, but he never played games, requested naked pics (?????) or was cold for the first 6 months.

He was respectful, nice, interesting, tolerant (I love his tolerance), self-confident, funny and hot. And just a really lovely human (I mean he still is these things. But we're talking about the first 6 months, I think, so yeah).

I don't get these stereotypes. Maybe you simply have better tastes where other nationalities are concerned? Or simply get along better with people from certain cultural backgrounds in the dating department?

I'm just pissing my pants at 'European Men' being rolled into one

DH is Irish-Spanish-French-German. Do you want to sleep with him to test your theory? A shortcut, like.

OP - I'm 40 and I suspect a bit older than you , but I am Spanish, married and living to a British man in London for 15 years.

First of all, when I was dating, there was no Tinder, Whattapp, and whatever else so I can't comment on that. We could just about send texts on our Nokia phones There was none of the "sweet shop" kind of dating that seems to go on now and people tended to meet through face to face conversations.

Because I grew up in a rural part of Spain, things were a lot more traditional. My grandmother was a HUGE influence in our family and she always instilled in me that if a man is interested, you don't need to chase him. I think men where I come from are more obvious in the way they pursue women, yes. They expect to get knocked back more often than not, but this is just part of the course and they don't really care. Also, you DON'T sleep with someone to get to know them - it's very much the other way round! Yes men will talk a lot if bollocks, but women are expected to be wise to this and not make it too easy.

DH is fully British but half Argentinian, half Iranian and he always made a huge effort, was straightforward and had good manners from the start which was what attracted me to him - and still does. Thank god there was no Tinder "at the turn of the century" though!

When I lived in France, I noticed a very big difference from English men: the lack of game playing. French men seem to be very direct with their comments and asking out, it was all very refreshing.

British people will still be European after Brexit is finalised, but not part of the EU.

Yes!

(Clearly not everyone knows this!)

This is making me wonder if DH is just different or whether me being quite direct influenced the dating in the sense that he automatically reciprocated this frankness?

Huh. Fascinating.

OP, maybe you could just try being very open and honest and see if that would change the behaviour of these British men?

Although, I must admit, despite being 'just' 29, I've never used a dating app.

I have have found that the "game playing" is done as much by women as by men.

You have inspired me, OP.

I'm off to fuck my way across Europe and the British Isles to put your theory to the test.

Watch this space.

Imagine if a man asked the same question of UK women vs European women .... .... because there are only a few types of women and that's how every woman should be categorised .... [looks for heavy sarcasm emoji]

Great post Odfod!

I think you have a point OP although my experience is with UK versus other European women. The latter are imo more giving, open, honest, romantic and culturally engaging than British women, including the ones I have yet to meet.

MN14 - but my point is that although in the UK we like to think that women are seen as more equal, you only have to look at the Facebook profile of girls in the 18-23ish age range to see what kind of pressure they feel to present themselves a certain way. I think that things have gone backwards and not forwards. There are lots of pictures of quite young girls in their bra and knickers for their profile picture and I find this quite sad. And I think it happens because this is what UK men expect it and because they feel entitled to treat women like objects (especially younger guys). I have a 13 year old dd and I worry a lot for what she's got in store for her.

That said. In places like Sicily, the problems you would face as a Sicilian housewife are entirely different.

what my male freind as experenced in terms of dating that UK women compared to mainland europeans, are that the British females are the least commeted and more likely to have serveral partners on the go before they "pick" the one they like best, so it could simply British males adapting to this unuseal type of dating culture?

Or could be simple over generalization,

But Lottie, it always needs 2.

If the woman says 'no', notnlike this. Or is very straightforward with what she wants, likes, needs... don't you think this would have an impact on the man as well?

I'm not saying inequality and sexism doesn't exist.

But seriously, I haven't experienced British men to be especially intolerant or anything. Not at all, and I have lived in various European countries.

They do honk more than I've experienced in other places, admittedly.

The latter are imo more giving, open, honest, romantic and culturally engaging than British women, including the ones I have yet to meet.

SleepingTiger

I suppose it depends how big your sample is. Even if you've been with hundreds of British men and hundreds of "European" men, you are making a sweeping generalisation from a pathetically small sample.

What do you even mean by "European"? British men are European, and do you mean you've had intimate relationships with many men from every country from Ireland to Azerbaijan?

From personal experience, of a rather small selection, British men are no better or worse than their continental counterparts. You get nice ones, you get dickheads.

Honestly people here can be so quick to attack and jump on the sexist/racist/discriminatory high horse.

It is pretty obvious that there are cultural differences in dating styles in different countries. In some cases - massive differences - as someone up thread said the UK and the USA are a case in point.

It is also obvious that different countries have different cultural norms and that some countries (usually but not always ones that are geographically close to each other) are more similar than others in their cultures and underlying attitudes. UK and Eire; USA and Canda; Portugal and Spain. Western European countries are broadly more similar than Eastern European countries; Nordic countries again have more in common with each other.

If you really think that this doesn't distil down in to some accurate generalisations about dating cultures and that "you have to have dated all the men in a country" before you can make an observation that may be reasonably accurate you are really deluded.

A generalisation by it's nature will not apply to everyone. It doesn't mean that a fair observation can't be made.

Santa I agree, it's not saying everyone in a country is identical to point out that there are different cultural and national norms around marriage, dating, when to have sex, communication styles, expression of sexuality and so on, as well as between generations. Equally, they are unlikely to be completely unrelated in Europe. It can be quite difficult to have cross-cultural relationships because of these unspoken norms, or they sometimes throw up quite funny misunderstandings too, I've been in one for many years and sometimes enjoy the differences, and sometimes get tired of that lack of implicit understanding.

My tips, for what it's worth OP, is to have zero tolerance for flakiness so that if you get the dithering, the arranging then cancelling, the angst over where it's all going, just ditch and move on. I do agree the sweet shop culture is prevalent in online dating and I don't think that's exclusive to UK guys whatsoever especially in big places like London, that flaky shagging about giving mixed messages keeping more than one person on the go is becoming the norm, so the less time you spend with someone like that of any background, the more you get a chance to meet someone more straightfoward looking for a committed relationship (buy 'He's just not that into you' if you are unsure what counts as flaky). Also, just because some non-English guy has a cute accent and seems more straightforward in his declarations of love, it doesn't really mean anything about his long term intentions/personality, there are really awful people from all over unfortunately. Actions speak louder than words, so watching what someone does and how they treat others around them, rather than listening just to what they say helps with that one.

this differs than a lot of English men when I read the Relationships board where frank communication and stating your needs is so common

I'm sorry but as a non brit, this is NOT my experience. And this is a very general comment about British people in general.
They don't do frank conversation because their avoidance of conflict, most, and in particular women, will put up with crap because they don't like confrontation. A lot of comments are then PA (see all the MIL threads) and people spend ages trying to see of friend doing xxx means just what they said or actually yyy.

Fwiw, there is a thread running at the mo asking if this is a thing now to just have sex and expect sex after the first meet up rather than a longer dating process. So it's not just the OP that is finding that - have sex, do not talk about feelings and see if I actually like you.